Month: February 2017
New Governance arrangements announced.
Note action is required from members.
With effect from 1 April 2017 we are dissolving the old mainly senior representative base Board, and the mainly senior practitioner based Executive, to form a new single Board to govern and direct the activities of the British Destinations.
In future all destination members, regardless of size, destination status or subscription level will have three seats on the board one each for: a principle officer, a principal senior representative and a principal local industry representative. Where local circumstance demands it deputies can also be nominated for any of those categories, for example, where a Councillor is the senior representative some Councils may wish to formally nominate a deputy. As far as possible there will no longer be a complex set of rules governing membership of our “committees”, or formal elections, other than for the election of Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the “Association” from within the Board’s membership.
In future all member organisations will receive invitations to attend all Board meeting and the agenda for them. All three nominated Board representatives may attend and speak at the meeting but where a formal vote is taken there will be only one vote available between them.
A governance paper will follow shortly, meanwhile in order to prepare for the change can I ask you all to consult as appropriate with colleagues in your destinations and then complete and return the following proforma. Note the return also aims to capture detail of those you wish to receive correspondence from us in other disciplines including our formal coastal specialist area sub group: UK Beach Management Forum.
Governance-board-member-representatives-and-other-contacts-return
The proforma can also be found under the Governance page of Britishdestination.net, last item on the page.
These new arrangements have been brought in to place to ensure all members have equal opportunity to engage in the strategic debate of the board and have greater say on the direction to the organisation. They are also intended to open the governance up to your senior tourism industry partners, whether that is in the role of the principal senior representative or as the principal local industry representative or both.
Tourism Tax Update
Over the last few months may have seen various press reports about the prospect of tourism tax being introduced in the UK and in the last few weeks reports of its potential inclusion in City Deals for the Scottish and English Capitals.
As a consequence of the London Mayor’s comments the Tourism Alliance issued a very good technical briefing paper which I have sat on for a few weeks whilst I gather my though and did more research on what I sense is a potentially divisive and easily misrepresented and easily misunderstood set of multifaceted issues.
I’ve now put together an update on Britishdestinations.net with links, including that to the Tourism Alliance briefing note. If you have the time to read the update now or in the future if and when it starts to become a local topic of interest, I hope will help put some of the recent hype and core problem into context. Tourism tax in the UK is likely to be a reality in one, perhaps two large City area in the relatively near future but please don’t draw the natural conclusion from this that this means it will necessarily be a reality anywhere else in the UK, any time soon:
British Destinations 