Sunburnt in Glencoe

The restaurant at the Holly Tree, wonderful location, is just 400 yards up the road from the cottage

We had this nice email from Jo.

We've just returned from a glorious week in Kentallen. sunburnt noses and a bag full of useless waterproofs - a happy situation to be in. we really enjoyed your cottage and it suited us very well. tried out a few of the walks, food suggestions etc - inc rather too much time drinking beer in the Holly Tree - we are a contented bunch.

20 brilliant walks around our cottage area
Easy hill walks in Glencoe
Why not walk up Ben Nevis one day?
Easier Munroe walks in Glencoe
Rock and Ice climbing in Glencoe
Cycling and fishing Glencoe
Spectacular wild life around our cottage
Golf in the Highlands, Dragons tooth golf course, Glencoe
Cruising the islands, using Glencoe as a base
Safe, beautiful beaches and bays in Glencoe area
Touring the Highlands by car from Glencoe,
Spring breaks, March April May Glencoe
Winter breaks, Jan Feb March in the cottage
Autumn breaks November December in the cottage

Walk along Loch Linnhe, on a dry road without traffic. Or cycle if you prefer.

The old Ballachulish Quarries. Some of us can remember when they were being worked. Now the blue slate is rare, and very expensive.

If I want to tell someone local where our cottage is, I'll say, "Do you know Jessie?" They always do. We tell them our cottage is more or less next door. She is famous in the area, a wonderful lady and Gillian and I are privileged to have her as a friend.

In the old days, before 1955, a famous railway line ran past the back of her garden, and ours. It ran from the Ballachulish Quarries to Oban. It carried slate to the markets in the South, plus a few passengers. It was renowned as one of the most beautiful railway lines in the world - the equal of the Jacobite train to-day which runs from Fort William to Mallaig and is packed with tourists. After the slate quarries closed, the railway closed.

You'll not believe this, but I promise it is true. With one of Jessie's lads on board after school, the train driver would slow down as it passed her house, the lad would throw off his satchel, and jump down. Can you imagine that happening to-day? Health and Safety would die of shock. Good.

You can see this line again to-day, you can walk along it and cycle along it because the track has been hard laid between Glencoe and Kentallen Bay.

On the way, you'll be beside the most beautiful sea-loch, watch the cormorants on the rock, pass beneath the infamous spot where Campbell of Glen Lyon was shot, the incident on which Robert Louis Stevenson based his famous book Kidnapped. You'll pass by the rock on which the alleged killer was wrongfully hanged and his skeleton left as a warning to the Stewarts. You'll see the herons by Ballachullish hotel and in Kentallen Bay, go past five ancient piers which were in use 100 years ago, and have coffee by the water in the Holly Tree hotel. Bliss.

One day, in the distant future, they will have this cycle and walking track stretching from John O' Groats to Campbelltown at the foot of the country. Bits of it in our area have been done already between us and Oban.

There are a few holds up before completion down to Oban. These are mostly around the old railway stations which have been sold for houses a long time ago. The Holly Tree Hotel has converted the old Kentallen station and was built right over the top of it. Despite pleas from tourists, few of the owners are keen to have cyclists charging through through their living rooms. Honestly, what has happened to the spirit of Highland hospitality? I mean if you can board and lodge a couple of hundred soldiers in your village crofts who have come to massacre you in Glen Coe then surely a few cyclists would not matter? Perhaps we are not in 1692 any longer.

They'll have to by pass these houses, giving a few up and down moments for cyclists. But it will be wonderful when it is completed.

John
Lochside cottage near Glencoe in the Highlands of Scotland
Last minute, late availability Glencoe, self catering cottage
20 brilliant walks around our cottage area
Spectacular wild life around our cottage
Golf in the Scottish highlands, Dragons tooth golf course, Glencoe
Weather in the mountains of Glencoe
Weather month by month in the area
Scotlands weather misconceptions
The Viking battle in Glencoe
The true story of the Glencoe massacre
Spring breaks, March April May Glencoe
Honeymoon cottages in Scotland
Find the best Scottish holiday cottages on the internet
Cut the costs of your holidays
Cheap travel in scotland
The Clachaig Inn - great atmosphere in this world famous climbers pub
The Glencoe and Loch Leven Association with 40 B+Bs
Email 14 properties with one click
The new Glencoe Skiing centre information website
Essential information for holidaymakers in Scotland, in one page
Video. Skiing on Glencoe mountain

HOW DID VISITSCOTLAND GET INTO THIS STATE?

On a hot day in June, Gillian and I thought to stay on Tiree for a few days. We had heard about it so often on the weather forecasts, we just wondered....

We got a Scottish Tourist Board catalogue. The Island looked nice. The book showed three self catering properties and a couple of hotels - one of them on Coll I think.

We didn't think there would be much to choose between the islands, silly us. we were young and ignorant. It was 1978 after all.

There were only three ways to find B&Bs or self catering in those days. You sent off for the Scottish Tourist board (later VisitScotland) catalogue or you called in at one of their many Tourist offices around the country. Their catalogues were then, and are to-day beautfiully designed. The third way was to go there and take pot luck in finding somewhere. That's more my style, but not Gills. We had a lovely time.

I've just looked up Coll and Tiree on the VS website. Two hotels and one self-catering. Both islands together. Then I looked up the community website for Tiree alone. 18 self catering owners and many more properties.

VisitScotland had done nothing wrong to lose that share of the market. The market shattered into fragments.

They lost their monopoly on accommodation, because more and more property owners started to do their own marketing using the web. As a visitor to-day you can still take the VS catalogue, you can still respond to small ads in the Travel Sections of the papers, you can still get referrals from friends, and pick up leaflets, you can still drive past and hope for luck - well, not for self catering maybe, but for B&B certainly. But the proportion of visitors doing things in this traditional way is getting smaller by the minute. One large modern commercial holiday facility with a world-wide reputation reports that only 17% of its business involves "literature" For them, and for most, past users and referrals are still big, but the biggest is the web.

Even the web itself is fragmented. You can find agencies which will book you into properties, charging owners from 25% to 35% and making a surcharge on the buyers as well. VS does this, but at lower cost. Owners often don't like agencies. We got shot of the only one we ever used within six months.

You can find directories which list the property details and the website together with photos and you can contact the owners direct. For this owners only need simple and cheap websites but the owners rely heavily on three or four listing directories plus repeats and referrals.

You can find community sites where everyone gets together for marketing their
area. Or you can search Google or Yahoo and find property owners websites for yourselves.

I love it. I've spent 53 years full time at the highest levels of marketing, around the world and I've never ever imagined a medium so rich, so quick, so responsive to ideas.

I made a change to our website last week and already I am excited to see the initial response. Last week? The web is wiping out industries as we speak and will wipe out more. VS was caught in the turmoil.

It is no good owners complaining that VS does not get them as many bookings as they feel it should. It can't. I can list our site openly on Undiscoveredscotland.com for about £70 a year, and also give them our late availability weeks to push. If they get me only three bookings a year that is an ad cost of under 4%. Sign up to three or four others and I'm in business with that kind of cost ratio. I'd still rather get my own visitors.

Are visitors who use VS happy with the grading facilities? I think they are very happy indeed in the main. We use it ourselves to find B&Bs, (but we do not book through it) My pal booked a two week tour of Scotland for four people through it, and each of us was very happy with the properties.

But practically all owner-members have complaints about VS, and these days if VS inspectors start getting stroppy with what they want, then owners tend to shrug their shoulders and
leave. When they do so they tell everyone they know about it, so the rot spreads.

The VS marketing and the grading systems need re-engineering. At one time so did ship building, textiles, gas lighting, candlestick makers, monocles, coal mines, horse and carriages, peat gathering, girdles, snuff taking, musket balls, right back to flint knapping. It never comes back in the way it was.

I'll suggest how to re-engineer in another piece.
John Winkler
bayviewkentallen.co.uk

Lochside cottage near Glencoe in the Highlands of Scotland
Fort William and the accommodation to the South
Last minute, late availability Glencoe, self catering cottage
Honeymoon cottages in Scotland
Weather in the mountains of Glencoe
Cottages Scotland and Coastal cottages
Scotland, how to find them
Weather month by month in the area
Last minute, short breaks, in Scotland, owners sites direct
Scotlands weather misconceptions
Facts about self catering holidays
Short holiday breaks, special last minute deals, self catering Scotland
Special self catering offers in Scotland
Advice on driving in Scotland
Skiing in Glencoe

Where does VisitScotland go from here?

I'm not known to be VisitScotland's best friend in their Facebook entry.

Some people have campaigned against them, others have petitioned the Scottish parliament, everyone has a story to tell about them which makes them look silly.

I'm not a member of VS but I'm one of their best friends.

Listen.

Gillian and I knew Scotland and its accommodation thirty years ago. To say that standards were pretty awful gives a new meaning to the word pretty.

We've just had a week at B&Bs in Orkney with Dumfries and Sutherland on the way. They were all brilliant. Standards were matchless. You won't beat them anywhere in the world.

They don't get many bookings from VisitScotland, and three out of five of them have pulled out. The last one said that their inspector wanted them to have furniture all with dovetail joints.
Another, in an old traditional building, had walls which were not at right angles. Another did not put parsley out with breakfast. Another did not have an underlay in some minor room which no one used. The inspectors use personal whims and fancies so they say.

In the Golden Mile in Fort William there are 38 B&Bs all doing well. In every one the standard will be world-class I'm sure. Only 9 of them are now in VisitScotland. But nearly all of them used to be in membership in days gone past.

That's the problem. VisitScotland without a doubt has set the standards for hotels, B&Bs and self catering. Without any doubt. But once the standards are set, then there is no point in being in membership. I believe that the standards they have achieved in the past are the envy of the English and Welsh Tourist associations.

So VisitScotland should be universally admired. But the words "by" "sell" "past" and "date" come to mind.

Unless, of course, members get bookings from VS. Now there is the rub.

People say they are not getting bookings from VS. In Stromness they tell me that their local VS office is far more important to them than the central booking service. Of course it is. They can grab the local girl by the throat if she slips up and they can't do that with a call centre.

The world has moved on from the days of hard copy directories and leaflets. Most people are Googling what they want. I can go to Google maps. Enter . I can then drag the map to Kentallen along the coast and find a nice cottage there. Where I want it. Ours. How easy is that? For hotels and B&Bs I can read visitors' reviews through Trip Advisor.

VS is trying to re-create the past. It is not at the forefront of the internet.

It is still very good at what it does traditionally, i.e. inspecting properties and creating booklets. Although these days it has not recognised the fact that most properties meet the standards they have set and they don't need now to go over the top.

It is very good at promoting Scotland generally. We've had masses of television programmes in England about Scotland. That may be due to Vs, or not. Don't know.

But it is all overbloated. Too many committees. Too many centralised managers. Stuck in past marketing ideas.

Slim it all down lads, take it easy. You've done most of the job that had to be done, so settle down to maintenance. Just bed in the new owners properly. You do that well.

John
ps We've put up two new pages in our site. Technical stuff really providing these links.

Fort William and the accommodation to the South
Lochside cottage near Glencoe in the Highlands of Scotland
Last minute, late availability Glencoe, self catering cottage
Several cottages in the Fort William, Glencoe and Appin areas