The chief executive of national tourism agency VisitScotland has said firms are risking losing business by failing to provide customers with digital payment options.
Malcolm Roughead told delegates at a Dundee and Angus Chamber of Commerce (Dacc) business breakfast event on Thursday that a huge growth opportunity remained in the tourism sector.
Latest estimates from Deloitte put the value of the sector to the Scottish economy at £11.6 billion, with the potential to grow to circa £25bn within 10 years.
However, Mr Roughead said firms had to get to grips with the concept of online trading if they wanted to increase their slice of the pie.
Mr Roughead said VisitScotland’s website had become a global shop window for the tourism trade north of the border with tens of millions of online views annually.
However, he said referring on potential business was a major problem as many operators in the trade were still unable, or unwilling, to take bookings and payments online.
In fact, he said just 30% of tourism firms that VisitScotland dealt with were e-commerce enabled.
“Digital is key to growth not just of the visitor economy but to the whole of the Scottish economy,” Mr Roughead said.
“We have the opportunity to place ourselves on the global stage and we need to take advantage of that.
“That means skills sets have to improve, we need to be more competitive and we need to get out there. Search engine optimisation and how to maximise presence online is an exciting area but it is a difficult one to get right.”
Delegates at the event, which was held at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, also heard from V&A Dundee museum development director Sandy Richardson.
He said the landmark museum project had moved from the concept stage and was now firmly in “delivery mode” ahead of the expected opening in 2018.
Mr Richardson said the V&A Dundee team were already working to collate collections for display within the new building and were working on fit-out specifications for the internal spaces.
Mr Richardson told Dacc members that principal funding for the £80m project was now in place but efforts were continuing to find £6m from private sources to complete the fundraising campaign.
“Our team is no longer developing an idea, it is delivering a project,” Mr Richardson said.