As the UK continues its slide down the international tourism table, the chair of VisitBritain has said ministers “don’t get” tourism.
Nick de Bois, who was recently told his term will end on 31 October, was speaking after a crushing start to April for British tourism.
On 1 April, VisitBritain saw its budget for promoting the nation abroad slashed by 42 per cent at just 24 hours’ notice. On the same day, air passenger duty for many visitors to the UK increased.
On 2 April, the requirement for the £10 Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) was imposed on all European visitors apart from the Irish – with the cost set to increase to £16 within a week.
“Government and in particular the Treasury just doesn’t get tourism,” Mr de Bois told The Independent.
“It doesn’t see its power to drive economic growth across the regions, to encourage investment, to build positive perceptions of Britain overseas, to get people into work and train them up to have fulfilling careers.
“Even with domestic tourism, it fails to see that hotels in Blackpool are competing for money that will otherwise go to hotels in Benidorm and does nothing to address a huge balance of payments deficit in tourism.
“Over the past two years we have moved VisitBritain into a growth agenda and outcomes-focused organisation. Now it is more critical than ever. Everything we do – the only things that we should do – must answer the question, ‘How does this advance growth in visitors and in value across the regions and the nations?’
“We are entering an era when goods moving between nations may be reducing but the appetite for people to travel is growing. The challenge for Britain is to arrest the decline in our share of those visitors.
“We are fully behind the government’s sprint for growth, but for that to succeed we need the Treasury and the Cabinet Office to get behind the sector beyond warm words.
“Visitor numbers are growing, but at a much slower rate than our competitor nations. That’s a big challenge and unless government understand tourism we will always be held back with decisions that undermine our ability to compete.”
VisitBritain warned in February that spending is sharply down compared with 2019. This was the last year before the Covid pandemic – and also before the UK formally left the European Union.
After Brexit, the UK banned EU citizens from using national ID cards, insisting they carry a full passport. Around 300 million EU citizens have ID cards but no passports, and cannot travel to the UK. The move was described by Bernard Donoghue, director of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (Alva), as “a disastrous act of economic self-harm”.
A government spokesperson said: “The UK is one of the most visited countries in the world and international tourism drives billions into our economy.
“We are supporting the continued growth of this industry and will be launching a National Visitor Economy Strategy this autumn to help meet our ambition to welcome 50 million international visitors a year to the UK by 2030.”
To reach the target will require a 21 per cent increase on 2024 visitor numbers, which appears at odds with the increased barriers to inbound tourism and the 42 per cent cut in spending on promoting Britain abroad.
The cut in VisitBritain’s budget was deplored by the Tourism Alliance, which represents businesses across the UK.
Its executive director, Richard Toomer, said: “UK tourism is suffering from two important ills. On the one hand we are poor as far as cost competitiveness is concerned: the World Economic Forum ranks the UK as 113th out of 118 countries for the price competitiveness of our tourism offer. The recent ETA and visa fee increases just compound the problem.
“And on the other hand, the ability of our national tourist board to stimulate demand and compete with other countries for valuable inbound visitors is hampered by their already small budget, which the decision to reduce further this week, again, simply compounds.
“Government funding is certainly tight in many areas, but this level of a hit for VisitBritain is frankly surprising for two reasons. Firstly because of the Government’s inbound tourism growth ambition of 50m visits by 2030, and because of how much enthusiasm and excitement there has been – including from the tourism minister – at VisitBritain’s ‘Starring Great Britain’ campaign on film and TV tourism which is just ramping up, and will now have to be scaled back.”
A government spokesperson said: “The GREAT Britain & Northern Ireland campaign remains an effective tool in driving economic growth and we will continue to work closely with partners to optimise the campaign’s resources to deliver growth across the UK as part of our Plan for Change.”
The VisitBritain chair requested a second term as chair – normally a formality. But this was turned down by Sir Chris Bryant, the minister responsible for tourism.
Mr de Bois was Conservative MP for Enfield North between 2010 and 2015, and later served as special adviser and chief of staff to the-then Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab. He was given a CBE in 2022 for services for tourism and the economy.
