BRITISH TOURIST AUTHORITY TRADING AS VISITBRITAIN ...

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VisitBritain and VisitEngland Annual report and financial statements for the year ended 31 st March 2010 Industry leadership VisitEngland’s role is to provide leadership across the industry, built on sound insights and robust data. In addition to managing official national surveys on behalf of DCMS, the England Research & Insights team initiated a broad programme of activity in support of industry during 2009/10, from monitoring consumer attitudes to the economic downturn and its impact on their propensity to travel through to analysing the impact of user generated content on the role of official star ratings (for both consumers and operators). The breadth of activity is impressive and a priority for 2010/11 is to ensure the insights developed are more widely communicated, understood and acted on. Marketing England Summer 2009 may in future be seen as a pivotal year for domestic tourism. Coined the year of the “staycation” it saw a 18% rise in the number of leisure trips taken. VisitEngland’s ground breaking Enjoy Every Minute; Enjoy England campaign responded to visitors’ financial concerns by focusing on England’s value offer and the range of experiences available. The award winning campaign creative moved away from traditional destination advertising and built on market insights which indicated a desire to explore England but a lack of knowledge regarding how to gain access to the breadth of its experiences and attractions. Campaign partner, The National Trust, reported a record response to the summer campaign which was scheduled to be reprised in spring 2010. The value campaign was repackaged for VisitEngland’s international markets with an emphasis on the near European markets where England has recently been seen as an expensive destination. Another campaign which translated well internationally was the Inn England campaign developed in conjunction with The Publican. The English Pub was awarded the VisitEngland Board’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Tourism at the annual VisitEngland’s Enjoy England Awards for Excellence and the pub certainly proved a popular winner which enabled VisitEngland to support the industry’s campaign to protect the pub’s position at the heart of many communities. With the devolution of lead responsibility in developed markets from VisitBritain to its strategic partners, VisitEngland’s Marketing team adopted a new approach to working with VisitBritain colleagues internationally. This new relationship enabled VisitEngland to ensure that the priorities of England and its constituent regions and destinations were fully understood and acted on in overseas markets. This was particularly effective in Australia with a campaign around the opening of the film Alice in Wonderland and in the USA where the Inn England campaign was successfully launched with the support of VisitBritain’s New York team. The domestic media played a pivotal role in supporting England’s tourism industry during this year of the “staycation” and VisitEngland’s communications team worked closely with contacts from broadcast and print media to provide examples and ideas which helped to build the positive coverage our operators received. VisitEngland’s online platform is to be relaunched in 2011 to better reflect a new national marketing strategy. The new platform will be intrinsically consumer focused and the Marketing team worked with the Research & Insights team to put building blocks in place during 2009/10 for this new online approach. Industry Services for England The Enjoy England Awards for Excellence 2009 were held in York at the National Railway Museum. These awards provided an exceptional platform to build awareness of the quality offer in England and to challenge perceptions of holidaying at home. Providing compelling destinations - a key plank of the Strategic Framework - relies on improving the consistency of the quality of experience offered. During 2010 the recommendations of a review of the role of the national assessment scheme executed during 2009 (and which involved extensive consultation with industry partners) will be implemented. Industry continues to invest in the wide range of quality assurance schemes offered by VisitEngland (with well over 25,000 accommodation and attractions businesses assessed) and research amongst operators confirmed an appreciation of the continuing value of a national assessment scheme. Sustainability, Social & Community Issues VisitEngland has continued to work to develop the principle of “encouraging responsible visitors and promoting sustainable businesses” with specific focus on engaging industry on taking up the challenge of embedding sustainability principles into their business operation. Towards the end of the financial year and with the launch of the Strategic Framework for English Tourism work began to look at creating an action plan to achieve a successful and sustainable English Tourism industry. 16
VisitBritain and VisitEngland Annual report and financial statements for the year ended 31 st March 2010 Sustainability, Social & Community Issues (continued) Work in this area has included: Stakeholder engagement FIFA 2018 World Cup bid. Working with The Carbon Trust, Positive Impacts and Envirowise, VisitEngland put together a one-off educational workshop on achieving sustainability goals for the bidding cities. The aim was to ensure that cities came together with a common understanding of sustainable development principles and how to achieve success. VisitEngland was also a contributor to the environmental part of the bid book. ISO 2012:2. Certification and management systems to embed sustainability are important to a number of organisations in the tourism sector. British Standards launched the first sustainable management standard for the event industry in 2008 (BS8901) that has been fast tracked to become an international standard. VisitEngland are on the steering committee to help develop this into ISO 2012.2 that is to be launched in 2012. Industry engagement activities Research into why businesses join certification programmes and the benefits gained resulted in a greater understanding of the role that certification plays but also identified where VisitEngland and its regional tourism partners could add additional value. A key output of the research included the development of a marketing and communications toolkit aiming to help businesses understand how to make the most of their sustainable credentials. This was commissioned as a joint project with the nine regional tourism delivery bodies in England. Further development of Green Start was made with a view to launch in early June 2010. The entry level awareness raising, entry level training, and business review tool is available to tourism businesses in England seeking to reduce their impacts on the environment or community in which they are located. VisitEngland co-ordinated a dedicated area on sustainable tourism at the Best of Britain and Ireland Show, on behalf of the other national tourist board in the British Isles. The aim of the area was to build on successes of the 2009 show and to increase further debate and action from industry. Visitor numbers and satisfaction levels of the sustainable tourism area were significantly higher. Tourism for all VisitEngland assisted over 18,000 tourism businesses provide an Access Statement - a written description of their facilities and services to inform people with access needs. VisitEngland provides an online template tool, which is being fully updated and relaunched at the end of summer 2010. VisitEngland provides the National Accessible Scheme, the only national scheme that rates the accessibility of visitor accommodation; an approach that is popular with disabled people. N<strong>AS</strong> membership has grown 15% over the last 14 months. VisitEngland led a national accessibility data collection programme across England to increase the provision of key information on facilities and services by tourism businesses. In 2010, accessibility information was introduced to enjoyengland.com and the VisitBritain and VisitEngland suite of websites under a new Accessibility tab on product listings. 2010/11 Priorities The following priorities have emerged from VisitBritain’s 2010/11 business planning: Strategic Priorities for VisitBritain 2010/11 VisitBritain starts the next year with a clear focused strategy to deliver on its mission of building the value of tourism to Britain. The key planks of this are: Inspiring travellers from overseas to visit and explore Britain Delivering a global network to support tourism promotion overseas Championing tourism and engaging industry and government in support of its growth, and Maximising the tourism legacy benefits of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. VisitBritain will be working alongside DCMS and the new Secretary of State and Tourism Minister to deliver the key tourism priority of ensuring that hosting the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games leaves a lasting tourism legacy for London and the whole country and not just for London. Learning the lessons of other countries, the ambition is to produce the best tourism marketing plans that any Games host country has ever had, to deliver a sustained and sustainable uplift in tourism. This is to be accomplished by creating a new fund with the goal of generating £1 billion worth of PR and marketing activity in our 20 priority markets in the years around 2012. 17
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