Scotland’s national tourist bookings and information company, visitscotland.com, has reported a 76 per cent increase in its online accommodation bookings for the first four months of 2006, compared to last year.

Booking revenues also increased by 111 per cent for same period. A regional breakdown of the figures showed that Ayrshire and Arran saw a 335 per cent increase and Dumfries and Galloway saw a 222 per cent rise.

Chief executive of visitscotland.com, Marco Truffelli, said: “These figures confirm that consumers are growing more confident in purchasing online and that increasing numbers of visitors to Scotland are choosing to book accommodation via the web.”