What do almost all of EatScotland’s food award winners announced this week have in common? Apart, of course, from serving up some exceptionally fine food.
The answer is, we shouldn’t be surprised, a web site. Of the 40 eateries receiving the newly launched fine food awards, some 17 are in the HIE network area. And of these 17 establishments, all but one has a web site.
Of the 16 award winners with a web presence, all of them offer potential customers the option to contact them by email directly or via an online form on their web site. Are we starting to see a pattern emerging here?
Furthermore, recent statistics contained in an HIE-commissioned Highland Business Research report showed that:
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70% of UK adults use the web for holiday research
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94% of tourism turnover is home market
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52% of accommodation businesses get 50% of all business from their web site
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75% self catering and 65% B&Bs take at least 50% of their trade through the web
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95% of tourism operators agree that web bookings are increasing.
Impressive stuff if anyone still needs convincing that the web is now a fact of life in business and unlikely to change anytime soon. Admittedly, launching a web site won’t necessarily mean your culinary standards will improve. But it will assuredly mean more business being generated, with some web site TLC and promotion.
