Apartment Service News 64

Tourism Society members and guests met on Monday evening in the impressive surroundings of Visit London’s boardroom with views stretching from St Paul’s Cathedral to Tower Bridge, to discuss how London can best boost British Tourism.

James Bidwell (CEO of Visit London) kicked off the proceedings with some startling statistics: Almost 50% of all overseas visitors to the UK visit London and London is the No.1 city destination in the world for international travel. 2006 was a record year for overseas visitors to London , the capital welcomed over 15 million overseas visitors, and London drives UK tourism – around 3 in 4 overseas visitors to Britain travel via London . James’ answer to how London can boost Britain ’s tourism is to carry on delivering London as a world class destination.

The London 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games were viewed as a pivotal point in the strategic timeframe for London ’s tourism representing a huge scale of opportunity. Benefits from the 2012 win are appearing already with a good relationship being struck with China, and some exciting events coming up which are thought to have come about as a result of the 2012 win such as an NFL game (New York Giants vs. Miami Dolphins) at the new Wembley Stadium which will be worth approximately £20 million for London’s economy.

The 2012 Olympics represents ‘a whole month’s worth of free advertising for the country’ and Britain needs to celebrate London more and understand the huge benefits it provides for Britain; London itself generates three times the visitor numbers of Australia so in answer to their recent ad campaign of ‘Where the Bloody Hell are you?’, the reply would appear to be London!

Negative issues raised included the confusion over the structure of Britain’s tourism industry, the fact that VisitBritain’s budget had declined in real terms by 15% over the last ten years, and that Britain is outspent by 47 others in promoting itself in the US and the negative perception of the ‘Londonisation’ of Britain held by some regions of the country as well as the perception of London as an expensive destination with low quality accommodation.

Skills and training was another topic for discussion. The feeling was that if we are to maximise the opportunities from the London 2012 Olympics and in general, the welcome offered to visitors to London and Britain needs to be excellent in order to both persuade visitors to extend their stay and travel elsewhere! This needs to be achieved through further training and initiatives such as the People 1st skills passport.

One interesting suggestion for getting London 2012 visitors around Britain could be to create an ‘Olympic Pass’ to allow travel around Britain .

Working in partnership with the regions through VisitBritain was the main answer to the question ‘How can London Best Boost Britain ’s Tourism?
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