VisitScotland

VisitScotland, formerly the Scottish Tourist Board, is the national tourism agency for Scotland. It is an executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government, with offices in Edinburgh, Inverness, and London as well as other parts of Scotland. It operates alongside VisitBritain, an organisation with a similar remit for Great Britain as a whole.

VisitScotland brought VisitScotland.com, a public-private partnership, back into public ownership in 2008.

One of the organisation's tasks is attracting visitors to Scotland, which it does through advertising, promotional campaigns, as well as encouraging press articles on Scotland and what it has to offer the business or consumer visitor. Advertising campaigns over the years have been as follows.

VisitScotland also aims to work with the tourism industry in Scotland to maintain standards in visitor attractions and accommodation provision, which it does through its quality grading schemes. VisitScotland works with its industry partners on area tourism partnership agreements. VisitScotland also runs the Thistle Awards, which are awarded to the best tourism businesses each year.

One aspect of VisitScotland's work is managing a network of websites featuring a variety of travel interest and holiday activity themes. These include golf, walking, cycling, City Breaks, adventure, Ancestral, Ski Scotland and Wildlife.