Month: June 2015
Tourism priorities in the Rural Development Programme in England
We have added a section on the tourism priorities within the Rural Development Programme in England (RDPE) to the “New Funding” main menu tab of Britishdestinations.net. Hover over the tab to see the drop down menu of this and other current funding opportunities or go direct to the page on RDPE at: http://britishdestinations.net/new-funding/defra-rural-development-programme-for-england/
Tourism and aviation report published
Ahead of the Airport Commissions launching its Aviation Capacity report tomorrow (1 July 2015), the Tourism Alliance working with ABTA, the Airport Operators Association and UKinbound have produced a publication showing the importance and interconnected nature of the UK’s aviation and tourism industries.
The report, Tourism and aviation – How flights to, from, and within the UK underpin a growing tourism industry, can be accessed via: http://britishdestinations.net/599-2/content/tourism-and-aviation-report-2015/.
At only 7 pages of text, tables and case studies, the report represents an easily digestible summary of the arguments for: increased capacity and connectivity, reviewing and/or reducing air passenger duty, reviewing and improving Visa requirements and sets it all in the context of a call to improve the general environment for tourism and the visitor economy. It is well worth at least scanning the main sections, if not reading it in full.
GB Day Visitor Statistics 2014 now available
Published by the national tourist boards for, and covering: Wales, Scotland and England the latest GB Day Visitor Statistics for 2014 contain a wealth of detail down to individual County and Local Authority area. This important report has now been added to the British Destinations’ research and statistics library and can be accessed at:
http://britishdestinations.net/research-and-statistics/
Equivalent data for Northern Ireland (currently 2013) can be accessed via:
http://www.detini.gov.uk/deti-stats-index/tourism-statistics.htm
New ONS UK Tourism Satellite Accounts and more added to Britishdestinations.net
1. The Tourism Intelligence Unit (TIU) at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has published a Tourism Satellite Account for the UK for 2012. Due to revisions to the national accounts published by ONS, on which the TSA is based, it has also been necessary in this release to revise the entire back-series of UK-TSAs from 2008-2011 and a full set of TSA tables for each of those years is included.
They have also applied a ‘nowcasting’ technique to the UK-TSA to provide estimates of some of the key aggregate measures from the TSA for 2013 and 2014, for instance Tourism Direct GVA. Some of the main figures to emerge from the analysis are as follows:
- Tourism Direct Gross Value Added (GVA) was £57.3 billion in 2012.
- Tourism Direct Employment rose from 1.46 million in 2011 to 1.53 million in 2012.
- The number of Tourism Direct Full-time Equivalents rose from 1.15 million in 2011 to 1.22 million in 2012.
- Domestic tourism expenditure rose from £99.8 billion in 2011 to £106.6 billion in 2012.
- Inbound tourism expenditure rose from £21.0 billion in 2011 to £21.8 billion in 2012.
- Tourism Direct GVA was estimated to be £58.7 billion in 2013 and £59.6 billion in 2014.
See this and other major UK wide and home nation reports in the Britishdestinations.net reports and statics library at:
http://britishdestinations.net/research-and-statistics/
2. Also recently added: desk research entitled 2015 Coastal Tourism from the National Coastal Academy available in the library at the same link above.
3. Additionally we have recently updated the:
- VB reports and statistics page at: http://britishdestinations.net/members-area/content/visitbritain-november-2013-latest-edition-of-forsights-and-vb-trend-updates/
- The VE reports page at: http://britishdestinations.net/members-area/content/ve-staycation-2013-debrief/
- The VisitWales page at: http://britishdestinations.net/members-area/content/wales-visitor-survey-2013/
- The Northern Ireland Tourist Board page at: http://britishdestinations.net/members-area/content/northern-ireland-tourist-board/
- and added the latest edition of Tourism Around Europe Newsletter at: http://britishdestinations.net/members-area/content/tourism-around-europe-quarterly-newsletter/
Free entry to World Travel Market 2 – 5 November 2015
Register now for World Travel Market and you will receive four day access to the event – this includes exclusive access to Monday, normally reserved for exhibitor invitees:
http://britishdestinations.net/599-2/content/world-travel-market-2-5-november-2015/
New report added to the BritishDestinations.net research and statistics library
Getting Active Outdoors – A study of the Demography, Motivation, Participation and Provision in Outdoor Sport and Recreation in England has now been added to our extensive library of nationally important research and statistics reports.
Although Commissioned by Sports England and the UK wide, Outdoor Industries Association and ostensibly about outdoor activities in England this comprehensive report is applicable to and has utility across all the home nations and also to all environments, including urban destinations. The wider utility is well illustrated by the use as a case study of Plas-y-Brenin, the Sports England owned National Mountain Sports Centre, located in Capel Curig in Conwy Council’s patch in North Wales. Not everyone will necessarily agree, but UK tourism and visitor economy activities are seldom entirely hidebound by the niceties of national or even sometimes of international boundaries.
At 127 pages it is a big report, containing both major items of specific to subject matter intelligence and snippets and gems throughout of information of general use to marketing, destination, economic development and regeneration management. It covers the strategic but also goes as far as providing profiling tools for local destination/business analysis.
The summary at page 3 is helpful but in my opinion it doesn’t, due to scale, do the full content, full justice. At a minimum it is worth reading it then either scanning the entire document or honing in on specifics topics and if they then prove of interest, reading on. Areas include: from page 31 segmentation, from 56 demographics, from 64 geography, or the where, from 68 the when, from 72 trends and preferences, from 80 activity by age and life style stages, from 94 who provides what and from 112 mapping and profiling.
In summary a very useful report of nationally and locally importance,especially if now or in the future you wish to evidence the strength and potential of your existing provision, or are in need of background information and tools to support plans to grow or develop more provision in your destinations.
See the report in the Britishdestinations.net’s research and statistics library page at:
http://britishdestinations.net/research-and-statistics/
or on its own Britishdestinations.net page at:
http://britishdestinations.net/1194-2/content/getting-active-outdoors-2015/
VisitEngland launches drive to revolutionise visitor information via Twitter
It is now a week since VisitEngland, launched RealTimeTravelGuide.co.uk, a new online hub allowing users to tailor their break using real-time tweets from England’s tourism experts. A move that reflects the trend by travellers to find real-time information online.
A good proportion of England’s Tourism and Visitor Information Centres and a significant number of the English destination management and/or marketing organisations are already participating, but as yet not all. Now the guide is up and running we would urge colleagues in England to take a look at it with a view to considering/ reconsidering the options to participate and colleagues elsewhere to take a look, if only to see what other National Boards are doing for their destinations.
The press release with the basic background and links to further information can be accessed at:
British Destinations, Destination Intelligence Website updated
Over the years that we have been running a Destination Intelligence service there have been persistent questions asked and concern expressed about what exactly is included, or not included, in calculating the cost of providing a tourism service, within the annual local government’s figures produced by CIPFA (Charted Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy).
Although circulated in previous years, we have now added the latest version of the CIPFA code of practice to the Destination Intelligence website. The guidance note for finance departments very clearly sets out in a few pages what should be attributed to “tourism” and, as importantly, what should, by CIPFA’s definitions, be attributed to some of the other “divisions of service” headings within the main cultural and related service division reports. Whilst we don’t have to agree with CIPFA’s allocation of cost to tourism, we do need to know what they based on if we are to truly understand the meaning of any particular set of CIPFA figures. CIPFA figure for tourism in England by local authority areas and a copy of code of practice can be found at: https://destinationintelligence.wordpress.com/cipfa-local-authority-data/. We are still trying to source and get permission to publish the other home nation’s figures.
Over the next few months we will look at how those cultural and related activities that we know are managed by some of you but which are not then included in the tourism heading, for example events, can be presented in the 2015 intelligence survey. Any proposed changes will be aired and road tested with the user group before we consider incorporating them into the next survey to be conducted in late 2015.
The destination intelligence website has also had a new main section added for examples of local research, surveys and strategies. We are now actively seeking more examples of work like the excellent Wiltshire & Swindon Accommodation Futures study (2014) to add to the new page : https://destinationintelligence.wordpress.com/local-research-surveys-and-strategies/. If you have example of local research, studies or strategies that you happy to share with colleagues then please forward it to us here.
Houses in multiple occupation -a glimmer of hope on new approaches?
Houses in multiple occupation (HMO) continue to create problems for destination towns, impacting directly or indirectly as they do on tourism and the visitor economy and especial but not exclusively in coastal resort and university towns where they occur in larger numbers, very often in close proximity to the commercial hub. Long standing efforts to get a more robust licencing and enforcement regime have resulted in some improvement in both England and Wales but current mandatory licencing for larger properties over three floors in height and more recent selective licencing still don’t fully resolve the problems experienced, nor address key loopholes like historic conversions.
A speech by the Prime Minister on immigration on 21 May, could now offer a glimmer of hope of achieving a new much more robust approach: “We’ll also crack down on the unscrupulous landlords who cram houses full of illegal migrants, by introducing a new mandatory licensing regime. And, a bit like ending jobs when visas expire, we’ll consult on cancelling tenancies automatically at the same point. It’s not just through housing and jobs; we can track down illegal migrants through the banking system too”.
If the PM is true to his word then there will now be internal discussions going on in Government regarding HMO licencing and at some point there will then have to be a consultation in England and Wales on proposed new licencing provisions. Our objective now should be to ensure that Government brings forward proposals that “crack down on unscrupulous landlords” but do so regardless of whom they chose to use and abuse. However you look at it, sorting out poor, dangerous or exploitative housing provision surely isn’t a matter that relates to immigrants and immigration policy alone?
Now we are aware that there may be a DCLG(?) consultation and an opportunity to inform the though process before and during it we will keep you informed of developments. Meanwhile where HMOs are a tourism and visitor economy related issue, colleague might wish to highlight to perceived opportunity with relevant colleagues in housing and enforcement, on the off-chance that under an immigration banner it has slipped beneath their radar too.
More background information on the issues involved and on British Destinations’ efforts to address these can be found at: http://britishdestinations.net/599-2/content/houses-in-multiple-occupancy/
Full transcript of the PM’s speech on immigration is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-on-immigration .
British Destinations