SNP MSP Christian McKelvie led a member's debate on the work done by the #Scotlandhour team, who promote tourism in Scotland on 7 March 2013.

The team use social media such as Twitter to give potential tourists an opportunity to gain positive information to help make their visit to Scotland a fulfilling one.

At the moment it is a monthly chat on Twitter on the last Wednesday of the month.

The last Scotland hour had an audience of 596 thousand people and Ms McKelvie said "that is a huge, huge audience".

Ms McKelvie said this was the first time that Twitter had been used in this way to promote a destination.

She said it was "an excellent resource" for people considering visiting Scotland and congratulated the team "for having the initiative to use social media to promote our land".

Tourism Minister Fergus Ewing said the "immediacy and relevance of social media is becoming increasingly apparent to us all".

Mr Ewing said that visitor satisfaction surveys were very important with the latest showing that 94% of visitors were very satisfied with their trip to Scotland and that 98% would probably recommend Scotland based on their experiences.

He said he wanted to see what more the Scottish government could do to work with #Scotlandhour, "who have brought so much credit to this country".