Im told that businesses that have allocated rooms to visitscotland.com are enjoying more business. Doesn that mean that the more providers that do so, the more trade the country will get?
A. A small minority of providers have found it worthwhile to work closely with visitscotland.com by allocating rooms to them on an on-going & regular basis. In return, visitscotland.com rewards them by channelling much of the trade displaced from the market to those businesses. Bearing in mind that there is no extra business, it is clear that providers who prefer not to work with the company lose a small amount of trade overall. Simple arithmetic shows that the more providers who work with visitscotland.com, the less extra trade each would get. If all providers were to do so, none would see any increase in trade (but all would suffer 10% commission).
