THE increasing importance of digital technology to the Scottish visitor experience has been underlined in a report by an Edinburgh-based tourism body.
The report, from Edinburgh Tourism Action Group (ETAG), highlights the growing trend of bookings being made on mobiles and tablets versus traditional desktop computers, and for tourists using mobile apps to plan their activities while on holiday.
Its report suggests more people in the UK make travel plans using mobile devices than in any other country in Europe. With one in five online travel bookings across Europe expected to be made on mobiles by early 2015, the UK is expected to lead the way at 21% by this time next year, followed by Italy (20%), France and Germany (18%) and Spain and Scandinavia (17%).
The ETAG report, which will was compiled for the Tourism Intelligence Scotland website, notes that global searches for Edinburgh rose by 11% last year, with the growth coming mainly on mobile and tablet devices.
ETAG, which hosted a conference on technology in tourism last month, noted consumers searching for tourism experiences on mobiles exceeded those using traditional PCs for the first time at Christmas.
Its report comes as Edinburgh prepares to launch a free public wi-fi service across the city this summer.
ETAG chairman Robin Worsnop said: "The UK consumer is miles ahead of anywhere else in the world in terms of using online to book holidays. And I think that's also reflected in the standard in Edinburgh and the industry. We're quite up to date with much of the technology and the opportunities that arise from it."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article