Visitscotland dissension

I found an interesting article in the Ileach (Islay) Newspaper. Apparently there is growing resistance against the fact that the visitscotland.com website is in (foreign) commercial hands. The company owing visitscotland.com, is called eTourism Ltd., they also own visitbritain.com and visitengland.com. The fact that visitscotland is commercially owned results, according to some, in fewer bookings for accommodation owners and more money flowing in the pockets of eTourism Ltd. Visitscotland.com is the online accommodation arm of VisitScotland (Scotland's National Tourism Agency). As well as the name of the Website, it is the name of the a public-private partnership including VisitScotland(36%), Austrian booking specialist Tiscover(35%), and Atos(7%). Since being formed in 2002, the PPP has accumulated losses of £5.6 million. It is expected to return a profit next year according to Wikipedia

Here is the quote from the ileach:
Do you grumble about visitscotland.com yet feel you can do nothing about the situation? Do you long for the days when your contact details were fully visible on your web-page on the National Tourist Board website? Can you honestly say that vs.com have brought you the extra business that they promised? You CAN do something about the situation and NOW is the time! We’ve set up a campaign website to demand that our National Tourism Website is returned to Public control so it can be run as a service to industry rather than a commercial venture to make profits for a foreignbased multinational company. Go to our website www.reclaimvs.com and take action to support the campaign.

Recently the matter has even been discussed in Scottish Parliament where a petition can be signed to support this. The ReclaimVS.com Campaign is being run by the Association of Dumfries & Galloway Accommodation Providers (ADGAP) for the benefit of Scotland's tourism industry. ADGAP was set up in 2002 by a group of concerned providers as a result of the unwelcome foisting of the visitscotland.com scheme on unsuspecting members of Tourist Boards.

Why is the Etourism LTD. scheme harmful to Scottish Tourism? A quote from reclaimvs.com: "To benefit tourism, the national website should sell Scotland, the destination, by showcasing our unique tourism product. It should promote all accommodation providers and facilitate contact with them. Under the control of eTourism the main function of the website is to sell accommodation. To maximise sales, direct contact between consumer and business is obstructed. Pressure selling precipitates bookings at the expense of customer satisfaction. Commission charges increase costs to providers who pass them on to the consumer as price rises. Increased prices result in reduced volume of business overall. Emphasis on the website is room sales - Scotland as a destination comes second. eTourism has no interest in attracting new tourists to Scotland as it costs less to close sales to people already committed to holidaying in Scotland."

I have been reading the article in the ileach and studied the reclaimvs.com website carefully. I understand the fact that some, or a lot of people, would like to see visitscotland.com in public control. I understand as well that commercial companies shouldn't make excessive amounts of money whilst neglecting their most important customers and country they work for. What I dont understand is the following: if everybody is so concerned, why dont they, the National Tourist Board, or another public body claim a domain-name and run the entire tourist website themselves? If there is enough opposition, and it looks like that, accommodation owners should be glad to withdraw their listing from visitscotland.com and add it to the official tourist website of Scotland yet to be built. I think people have a choice here, but they need to have a good alternative first. If a new website is started by a national Scottish body offering the same or better services as visitscotland.com for lower costs, the accommodation owners would soon switch over. - Thus get active and don't waste time and energy in an endless discussion!