Tourism round up.

A week after the announcement of the General Election I thought it might be an opportune time to offer a little light relief by highlighting 5 items that have little or nothing to do directly with it:

1. The recently released VisitBritain/VisitEngland’s annual review 2023/24 can be viewed here. The report outline VisitBritain’s considerable achievement. Highlights include, generating £1.26 billion in additional visitor spend in the 26 months between April 2021 to July 2023 from their international and domestic marketing.

2. Judgement Day for the water industry has been delayed by a full month due to the General Election and purdah. Ofwat’s will now make its initial pronouncements on the individual companies’ investment plans for the period 2025 to 2030 on 11 July not 12 June as originally envisaged. Those plans including the company’s intended infrastructure improvements and how they and their customers, through increased bills, will pay for it. All of which in current circumstance is reasonably controversial.  Between 11 July and December Ofwat and the companies will amend and develop the individual plans as necessary and announce the final versions which the companies will then deliver from 2025 onwards. 

It is anticipated that Ofwat will broadly accept proposals from the half dozen English and Welsh companies seeking increase of 30% or less, excluding inflation on consumer’s bill over the 5-year period.  It is thought that the rest, including one thought to be seeking c 70% are likely to have their plans rejected, or rather those plans significantly amended in the horse-trading period between July to December.  Others think that Ofwat may yet be willing to accept considerable compromises around investment levels, its speed and costs, the levels of customer costs and levels of now almost inevitable fines but only in order to avoid privatisation and the public picking up part of the accumulated debt and all of huge liabilities for outstanding investments and future fines.

The announcement on the 11 July may well help precipitate the collapse of at least one major company (Thames Water) and necessitate its return to public stewardship/ownership with significant implications for public finances.  Meanwhile, water quality, a long-term and ongoing issue for the coastal tourism sector, has suddenly becoming a real issue for inland rivers, lakes and waters. Issues that having been put off, ignore or deliberately hidden, will now take massive investment and many years to put to rights, during which time serious pollution incidents will continue to occur and the service providers, private or public, will face increased scrutiny and increasing financial and other penalties. Frankly the private industry has dug itself into a major hole which the public sector can’t now willingly or otherwise, easily afford to pull them out of.  This is a major immediate problem for the next Government and one that could and one that probably will run for several decades and impacting by default on tourism.

In recent weeks, several of the water companies have not helped the situation or themselves by again declaring annual dividend payment significantly higher than their profits for the year, for example, Seven Trent paying out £350m on pre-tax profits of £201m, or South West Water apparently paying £127m on a £9m debt.   Having announced 27 new, mainly riverine bathing sites in England, prior to the announcement of the General Elections, Defra ministers suggested that they intended to review the current bathing water regulation that stipulates that a bathing water which fails for four consecutive years should be declassified and permanently signed to advise against bathing. In all likelihood, this rule if unchanged will result in all the recently classified riverine sites being declassified within the next 5 years.

Pursuing a pragmatic change of this nature with the incoming Government should now be a priority for any destination with significant water assets and indeed I would now suggest for the domestic industry in general. We know, from long experience with coastal bathing waters, that the perception of poor water quality can have a disproportionate negative reputational impact on the whole of the domestic industry, including on the attitudes of potential international visitors to the UK.

3. I have added two reports to the Britishdestinations.net reports and statistics library. The 2023 report: Here, There and Everywhere, from UK Music on the importance of the UK music industry to tourism and the visitor economy and an updated Coastal Inquiry report from All Party Parliamentary Group for Coastal Communities issued this week, just before Parliament was dissolved. APPG report do not have the status of a Select Committee report, nonetheless the comments and recommendation may be of interest to the coastal sector. Both reports can be accessed as the first two main items in the library listing at:  https://britishdestinations.wordpress.com/research-and-statistics/

4.  I have recently noticed, what I perceive to be, a major change in Airbnb television advertising. In essence the advertisements are pointedly promoting the benefits of Airbnb, over and above the product of established serviced accommodation industry, in particular hotels. Nothing wrong with that I hear you say and, to a degree, I would agree.  However, it is arguably a marked change from their previous position and flies in the face of their historic and broadly accepted claims that they in the UK are not in competition with but are augmenting the established industry and are providing a complimentary, alternative experience, a strategic position that seems to me to have been broadly accepted by Government and there agencies. If I am correct, then destination managers and others may wish to take a renewed view on whether the seemingly ever-expanding Airbnb/ Airbnb style provision actively and openly competing with the established accommodation industry is broadly a positive or a negative development for individual destination and or the domestic tourism industry as a whole. 

On further investigation the apparent change of advertising direction isn’t just a figment of my imagination but a very real and quite deliberate change to Airbnb’s global marketing strategy.  A new strategy which started late last summer in the US market and has been rolled out internationally, arriving in the UK in recent months: https://skift.com/2023/08/30/get-an-airbnb-campaign-challenges-hotels/

5. Please don’ forget to book for the joint British Destinations, Tourism Alliance and Tourism Society tourism policy conference on 26 November.  The final composition is still being worked upon; however the timing of the event alone should ensure that this will be an important event in formulating policy within the industry and influencing a potentially brand new Government relatively early within its term in office. More detail and booking links at: https://britishdestinations.wordpress.com/annual-conference-19-march-2018/