Gordon Pearson, owner of WOW Scotland Tours is pictured with Scott Armstrong, VisitScotland Regional Partnerships Director
EDINBURGH, Scotland, 2016-Dec-01 — /Travel PR News/ — A Highland tour company whose offering includes a 12-hour Isle of Skye Tour to top sights such as The Old Man of Storr, the Quiraing and the Faerie Glen has achieved the highest Quality Assurance (QA) grading from VisitScotland.
Award-winning company WOW Scotland Tours Ltd has attained a 5* Tour QA award from the national tourism organisation for its day tours.
Departing from Inverness, the company’s flagship product, its Isle of Skye Day Tour takes visitors aboard a 34-seater coach and visits nine top attractions including Kilt Rock, Duntulm Castle and Eilean Donan Castle. Whilst they take in the stunning scenery and wild landscapes of Skye, a local tour guide provides an informative and entertaining commentary about the area’s history, myths and legends. This tour operates up to five times per week in the busy summer season.
The tasty lunches and dinners which visitors can enjoy on the Isle of Skye Tour, are made to order each day by The Little Cake Shop in Portree using a variety of fresh ingredients, many of which are sourced locally. For example, the salad and fruit comes from the Soiltote Nursery on Skye, or from a farm in Forres. The eggs are from free range chickens which live on Skye, and all the cakes are homemade.
WOW Scotland is an Inverness-based company run by husband and wife team Gordon and Kay Pearson. Since its inception in 2010, the company has consistently rated as one of the top tour operators in Scotland on TripAdvisor and in 2016 the company showcased the Highlands and Speyside to over 4,500 customers from all over the world.
With a great passion and enthusiasm for the Highlands, the WOW Scotland team aims to provide every customer with a world-class tourism experience.
WOW Scotland also offers two other scheduled day tours from Inverness – a Whisky Bus and a Highland & Speyside Explorer Tour, as well as shore excursions from the Port of Invergordon.
Developed and improved for over 30 years, VisitScotland’s Quality Assurance (QA) schemes are world-leading and provide a trusted, independent and impartial source of information for visitors. They allow businesses not just to meet visitor expectations, but exceed them.
QA can open the door to new customers. It is a powerful marketing tool and works well with online review sites in using an independent perspective to measure visitor experience against tried and tested criteria, so visitors know exactly what to expect.
Gordon Pearson, owner of WOW Scotland Tours, said:
“As WOW Scotland aim to provide a world-class tour experience to all of our customers, we are delighted to have been awarded a VisitScotland Five Star tour grading, which categorises our tours as exceptional.
“We are confident that this prestigious award, in conjunction with our excellent reputation, will inspire tourists to book a tour with us, in order that they can experience the absolute best of the Scottish Highlands.”
Scott Armstrong, VisitScotland Regional Partnerships Director, said:
“I would like to offer my congratulations to everyone at WOW Scotland Tours for attaining this award. It is fantastic to see the Skye tourism offering enhanced by such high-quality coach tours.
“Reaching such a high standard is vital to the tourism industry as a whole and I hope it inspires others to strive for such results. It is vital that everyone involved in tourism works together to offer visitors a fantastic experience when visiting and staying in the Highlands.
“Our Quality Assurance scheme helps businesses to reach their full potential and truly shine. The scheme is about more than just the ‘stars’ on the door – it’s about the entire visitor experience, about investing in your business and making it as economically sustainable as it can possibly be.”
For further information visit www.wowscotlandtours.com
For further information on VisitScotland’s Quality Assurance scheme, please visit www.visitscotland.org/quality_assurance.aspx
Notes to Editors
- Follow us on twitter: @visitscotnews
- VisitScotland is Scotland’s national tourism organisation. Its core purpose is to maximise the economic benefit of tourism to Scotland.
- The organisation’s core objective is to contribute to the Tourism 2020 Strategy ambition of growing tourism revenues by £1 billion by 2020.
- This will be supported by seven overarching strategies:
- Marketing: we will market Scotland and its outstanding assets to visitors from all parts of the world, including the promotion of Scotland to people living in Scotland to visit different parts of the country
- Events: we will support the national events strategy and its delivery, and sustain, develop and promote Scotland’s international profile as one of the world’s foremost events destinations
- Internationalisation and International Engagement: we will utilise all our platforms to enable Scottish-based tourism businesses to better understand international opportunities and market to a global audience and we will work within One Scotland Partnerships to optimise the potential of Scotland’s Diaspora and our strategic partners at regional, European and global levels
- Customer Experience: we will provide information and inspiration to visitors both locally and globally via their preferred medium of choice
- Quality and Sustainability: we will provide support and advice to businesses, with the goal of improving the quality and sustainability of the tourism sector in Scotland. We will provide quality assurance to visitors through our Quality Schemes
- Inclusive Tourism: we will strive to make tourism in Scotland inclusive and available to all
- Working in Partnership: we will listen to and work with the industry, partners and communities to shape our offering and support
- VisitScotland works together with tourism businesses to make tourism a success for everyone and ensure the industry continues to grow.
- The organisation employs 700 people and has offices and VisitScotland Information Centres across Scotland.
- Spending by tourists in Scotland generates around £12 billion of economic activity in the wider Scottish supply chain and contributes around £6 billion to Scottish GDP (in basic prices). This represents about 5% of total Scottish GDP.
- The Scottish Government is the Managing Authority for the European Structural Funds 2014-20 Programme. For further information visit www.gov.scot or follow @scotgovESIF
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- For holiday information on Scotland go to www.visitscotland.com
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