eTourism Ltd, the company which trades as visitscotland.com, has posted a 14% increase in sales for 2005 in annual results filed at Companies House this week.
The statistics exhibit a continuing improvement for the business over the course of the 2005 calendar year. Headline performance was as follows.

Year on Year Sales

Sales in 2005 grew by £482k (14%) to £3.8m as the business enjoyed a mix of organic development and service line roll out.

In general, this improved performance was attributable to growth across all business channels during the year. In particular Web performance was particularly strong with 51% growth year on year. Web hits totalled 10.5m, a growth of 4.1m (64%) on 2004. It was notable to the Management Team at VisitScotland.com that the propensity of consumers to both access information and book on line continued to gather pace in 2005.

Channel roll out also assisted in the development of the business as its booking technologies were extended to the Self Catering market place. Initial revenues were strong in the year and these have continued to deliver growth in 2006.

In addition to booking revenues, the business also benefited from the extension of services to the industry through such areas as CRM delivery and IT Consultancy, which were 472% and 29% higher year on year.

Year on Year Losses

Improved sales performance in the year led to a narrowing of Operating Losses. On an EBITDA basis these were reduced by £322k (26%) to £901k and this continues the trend of reduction in the funding requirement in the business.

Against Expectations

The reported 2005 performance represents a recognisable improvement over the business’ expectation for the year.

Marco Truffelli, chief executive of visitscotland.com commented:

“2005 was an encouraging year for the VisitScotland.com management team. Sales growth drove the business to improved financial performance, ahead of expectations. Operationally, significant strides were made across all business channels.

“We’re looking towards next year with great enthusiasm.  With enhanced technology and a wider capital base, visitscotland.com will deliver a quicker and slicker range of product offerings in 2006 and 2007.

“In conjunction with wider web access across a wider distribution network in Europe and beyond, the business is well placed to deliver its target of budgeted profitability in 2007.”
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