Visit Britain Annual Review (19/01/2020)

Andrew Campbell, Chair of the WTA attended the Visit Britain Annual Review (19/01/2020). In addition to recapping the highlights of the year,  Visit Britain launched their new five year strategy to take them through to 2025. This replaces the previous strategy - Delivering a Golden Legacy: a growth strategy for inbound tourism 2012-2020 – which aimed to leverage the London Olympics to generate 40m overseas visitors and revenue of £31.5bn by 2020. The new UK Tourism strategy has the key goal of attracting 49m overseas visitors and generating £35bn in revenue by 2025.

​However, there is no corresponding target for Domestic Tourism as the ambition to increase domestic tourism is predicated on being allocated funding for domestic marketing through the upcoming CSR process. There are five strands to the strategy aimed at supporting the delivery of the 49m visitors and £35bn expenditure. These are:
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• Growing the value of tourism
• Driving the dispersal of tourism value across Britain
• Supporting productivity optimisation
• Being the expert body on growing tourism
• Delivering a clear strategy for England - Wales has its own strategy, also launched this week (23/01/2020)

While there are no specific targets associated with these five strands, the strategy outlines the initiatives that will be undertaken to take forward the strategy and the market segments that will be targeted to deliver growth. These are:
 
•             Buzzseekers – younger, free-spirited and spontaneous, they like holidays full of action and excitement
•             Explorers – older, they enjoy the outdoors, sightseeing and embracing local culture at a more relaxed pace
•             Culture buffs – image and brand-conscious, travel is seen as a status symbol; they like well-known safe destinations
•         Free and easy mini-breakers – similar to buzzseekers, this younger domestic audience take short breaks to let loose or unwind!

You can view the latest Annual Review and Five Year Strategy .