Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Visit Scotland – does Nairn exist, only just?

A recent posting I made about an article featuring Nairn in The List prompted a reply from nairnbairn with regard to the fiasco of this year’s Visit Scotland guide, ‘Freedom of the Highlands’ that negates to mention Nairn.
Looking at the Visit Scotland web site for
Nairn we fair pretty poorly.
The front splash page features a photo of the River Nairn in winter, fine if the majority of your visitors arrive during the off-season but ours don’t. The accompanying text gives a short history and says what a sunny place we have (Remember photo of River Nairn in winter). But now the text gets lazy, obviously not updated in years and mentions Nairn museum and the Fishertown museum, the latter has not been in existence for a long time.
Hopefully not too many visitors will pencil in the Fishertown museum as a ‘must see’ reason to visit us, the guide goes on...

‘During the summer months, Nairn hosts an extensive programme of family entertainment and major events’

This statement seems positive, the family will love all the entertainment, I click ‘Events’ in the side bar to see what exactly is on and plan to book my holiday around it. OK at the moment there are no events but the tourist season doesn’t really kick off until after Easter so I click on ‘Events for next 90 days’. By my reckoning this takes me into summer months when Visit Scotland promise ‘an extensive programme of family entertainment and major events’. As a potential tourist it would seem that up until the end of July Nairn has just one event according to Visit Scotland, ‘The Nairn Book and Arts festival’. This might be an excellent event, but lasts just 8 days in June, nothing else is listed and so as far as the potential tourist is concerned Nairn has just one event – whoopee, that will bring folk flocking in all summer long!
Undaunted by the lack of formal events I decide Nairn must have more to offer, I click on visitor attractions, just one listed, the Culbin sands, great place to come in… yes you’ve guessed it, winter ‘Large numbers of sea ducks can be seen offshore in winter’ and then there are the excellent directions ‘From Nairn railway station turn left down Cawdor Road, continue down High Street, right onto Bridge Street and follow as before. 2 miles.’ I'm lost, not sure how a tourist would fare?
As a potential visitor I give Nairn one last chance, I click on ‘Activities, Sports & Leisure’, and the long list given for the family? Two golf courses, I’m going to holiday somewhere else this year!
For any Nairn businesses that pay Visit Scotland I would be demanding an immediate make over of the web site and my money back for this year. If they can’t manage that satisfactorily, take Nairn off the site. We might get some visitors then!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did you mean,"Take Nairn of the S***E

Graisg said...

Ok Anon, it can be upsetting we know, the best thing to do to remedy this situation is to tell everyone to visit Visitnairn.com, where all will be revealed to would be tourists.

Jane Harkiss said...

Ok so it ain't disneyland Paris, but hey ho. I for one can do without Mickey Bleedin Mouse.

Anonymous said...

Well, I have actually taken the bull by the horns and have joined visitscotland this year after a major fallout a few years back. I will see what they have to say now that I am "in" and if they are not living up to what they promise, I for one will be going ape.

Jane Harkiss said...

They could in the time honoured tradition, open their gobs and ask. I find it helps. And I do have a very very big gob.
Pooks XX