VISITSCOTLAND.COM, the tourism booking and information service, has signed a strategic partnership agreement with Tiscover, the world’s leading provider of tourism website technology.

And in a substantial restructure, the national tourism agency, visitScotland, will become the biggest shareholder in the website, taking a 36% stake.

Austrian-based Tiscover will take a 35% stake, while original partner Atos Origin will reduce its stake from 60% to just 7%. No financial details have been released, but Tiscover’s investment in the business is described as “substantial”.

The deal is said to be pivotal to a plan to develop the Visit Scotland.com website, contact centre and tourist information centre booking system into a faster and better service.

VisitScotland.com is the trading name of eTourism, a public-private partnership formed in 2002 to deliver tourism bookings for Scotland.

Marco Truffelli, chief executive of VisitScotland.com, said linking up with Tiscover would enable the company to answer some of the criticisms it has faced from within the industry.

“Tiscover are at the cutting edge of tourism technology. What we will be able to do now will help us be more flexible for people within the tourism industry and increase the number of visitors to Scotland,” he said.

Tiscover has 15 years of experience in the destination management-systems market with a proven track record in Europe, the UK and South Africa.

Since being established, the number of visits to the Visit Scotland.com website has rapidly increased.

The portal is the most visited national tourism website in the UK and last Wednesday had its most successful single day, taking £75,000 worth of bookings.