In fairness to the British government, at least they are publishing their tourism figures, unlike the Irish government, who are covering theirs up if Ryanair are to be believed. But could they be any worse than the UK figures? In a week when the UK’s two leading outbound operators, Tui and Thomas Cook, made fairly gloomy statements you would have thought Britain’s balance of trade in relation to tourism would be looking up. Marginally so, but the outlook for the inbound sector is almost as grim as it is for the outbound sector.
Year-on-year, visitors to the UK in the 12 months to June 2009 were down 8% from 33.1m to 30.5m. During the same 12 month period the outbound sector spending was down 7% to £33.8 billion, whereas inbound spending was only down 1% to £16.2 billion, meaning the resulting deficit is down from £19.9 billion to £17.6 billion. It seems the British government’s approach to tourism is to let both the inbound and outbound sectors flounder and hope the inbound sector doesn’t do as badly as the outbound.
There seems to be no strategy or accountability at government level for tourism and it appears to have fallen into the government wasteland since 1997. Visitors to the UK have dropped by almost 20% since this government came into power, but do they care? They make pointless gestures like sending Gordon Brown on holiday to the Lake District, but there is no real leadership or vision for the tourism industry.
What did our venerable Minister for Tourism, Barbara Follett, have to say about the figures? Nothing – perhaps she is on holiday. She has been busy though sending a letter to all her constituents justifying her expense claims (£25,000 for security patrols, £1,600 for cleaning windows). She ended the letter saying “I am sorry politics and politicians have let you down so badly”. Can she write a similar letter to everyone that works in travel?
