Tourism and Hospitality

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)]

My Lords, I add my voice to those who have already thanked the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for instituting this debate, giving us the opportunity to talk about the importance of tourism. Given the statistics that we have heard this afternoon, nobody can doubt that it is a crucial industry for this country.

This week, the International Festival of Business is under way in Britain. About 250,000 people are expected to attend. It is the country’s biggest festival for 50 years, and there are to be more than 300 events taking place over 50 days. I suggest that a few of us here may not have been aware of the festival going on. The reason is that it is not taking place in London. The festival is all about winning contracts and generating business, and it is being held in Liverpool. Each day visitor is expected to be worth £54 to Liverpool, and each overnight visitor £271. That is before they have signed the billions of pounds-worth of contracts that the Government are hoping will result from the festival.

The reason that the groundbreaking festival is being held in Liverpool is because the Government are not just intent on rebalancing the economy in terms of sectors; they understand the need to rebalance the economy geographically. We have already heard a lot about why that has to be done. The bias of tourism towards London is just part of that.

Tourism is not geographically spread in Britain. As others have said, London welcomes a huge amount of money, with over 16 million international visitors every year but too many of them venture no further. As the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, detailed, the number of inbound tourists to London has grown by 14% while that to other destinations has fallen by 4% since the start of the recession.

London is a wonderful city, but this is a wonderful country. Visitors to Liverpool will be able to enjoy a rich choice of museums and galleries, more parks than Paris has to offer, imposing architecture and music of every kind. Those who wish to can even visit the homes where John Lennon and Paul McCartney grew up. Here, I had better declare my interest, although the noble Lord, Lord Lee, did part of that for me: I am deputy chairman of the British Museum and am honoured to be a member of ALVA, the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, which he chairs.

Partly because of my role in the museum, I shall come to extolling the virtues of our great national arts establishments and their role in tourism. First, however, I want to mention some of the other unique attractions that this country has to offer the adventurous visitor. In Wakefield, for instance, there is the Museum of Mental Health. In Kent, Leeds Castle has a dog collar museum—dedicated to the canine variety, rather than those who grace our Benches. In Boscastle, there is a museum of witchcraft. Back up in Merseyside is what I believe to be the world’s only lawnmower museum, although I may be wrong.

In 2012, we saw how effective a great sporting event can be in bringing tourists to this country. The noble Baronesses, Lady Billingham and Lady Seccombe, referred to the Olympics. However, we do not have to wait for another Olympics to court sporting visitors. On 5 July the grand départ will take place in Leeds as the Tour de France gets under way, and there are the Commonwealth Games to look forward to.

For those who like their sport a little more offbeat, the UK has much to offer. The noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, failed to mention the world pea-shooting championships in Cambridge, the world egg-throwing championships in Lincolnshire or the annual bird man competition that takes place in Worthing each year and seems to demonstrate that man really was not built for flight. Then there is the annual cheese-rolling contest that takes place near Gloucester. We really should get more overseas visitors to see that; think what France could do in retaliation.

Britain can certainly boast that it has something for everyone but, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said, we are not getting enough people out from London to experience these varied delights. Festivals can draw huge crowds and we need more festivals. In 2012 in Sydney, for instance, there was a celebration that lit up all its buildings, which brought in a huge number of overseas tourists and yielded, I think, an extra £10 million in income. France is very good at festivals—not just film festivals but folk festivals, too. Every town seems to have a festival of some sort that attracts specialist visitors, who are often high-spending ones.

There are festivals in this country that work terribly well. We have heard about Hay but there are recently established festivals, too. In Folkestone, inspired in part by Sir Roger De Haan and his extraordinary philanthropy, there is now the Triennial arts festival, which draws large crowds into the town every three years. Some of that art stays, making Folkestone now rather more of an artistic hub than it used to be. However, there is still not enough to get people from abroad out of London. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, came up with the idea that perhaps there need to be more package tours. He is probably right but I do not see this as something for government to get involved in. Why can some bright youngsters not set up some travel companies? If this is to work, it should be a commercial proposition. Let us get on to it.

There are other things that need to be done to encourage tourism. We should be able to attract more tourists than we do and keep them for longer. Bruce Chatwin, the renowned travel writer, once wrote:

“Walking is a virtue, tourism is a deadly sin”.

How wrong he was and how much better Britain has become at treating tourists as if they are valued rather than merely tolerated or, as sometimes seemed to be the case, unwelcome. Yet it is not just regionally that tourism is unbalanced, as Britain runs a tourism deficit. What is going on at the Passport Office may do something to redress this but, at the moment, more people leave this country on holiday and spend more abroad than come here on holiday and spend. This is a challenge and an opportunity but we are in a competitive market. This week, for instance, the Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority is taking a six-strong delegation to Japan and Korea to stimulate visitor demand. It cannot boast about its cheese-rolling competitions or modern art galleries but it is making much of its golf facilities and the relative value for money of its hotels.

In such a competitive market, we need to make it as easy as possible for people to come here, which means talking about visas. Several people have spoken about those already but it is absolutely essential that we make it easy for those who travel further and spend more to come here. The Government are taking steps to improve the situation in regard to China. In particular, they have a pilot scheme under way enabling recognised travel agents to use a single set of data to issue Schengen and UK visas. I would be very interested to hear from the Minister whether that pilot is working and how it is to be developed. It is absolutely crucial to get those from what is now the world’s second-biggest tourism economy coming here. At the moment, we get only one-sixth of the Chinese visitors that France gets. I gather from a friend who was in Versailles at the weekend that there is a downside to having so many visitors at once. As we have heard, it is very difficult to entertain too many people at once but I would prefer to be wrestling with that problem rather than the lack of visitors. Nevertheless, the Government are taking tourism seriously.

My noble friend Lord Lee referred to the new tourism council, as did the noble Lord, Lord Harrison. Although that has been set up at the moment with a view to developing skills and jobs, it is a start to what could become the sort of departmental mix that we need to deal with tourism in a holistic way. There needs to be joined-up government here.

To start with, though, it is right to concentrate on skills and jobs. We have heard about the massive job creation that has come from tourism, yet there is still underappreciation of travel and tourism as a career. While the country’s appreciation of cooking and the rise of the celebrity chef have created a wave of enthusiasm for catering, there is still a misconception in many places about whether the tourism and hospitality industry is the place to go for a career. In fact the World Travel and Tourism Council, which has chief executives of 100 of the world’s major tourist companies on its board, has just launched a campaign to try to improve the image of a career in that industry, and it would be excellent news if those who influence our youngsters on future careers could take a look at that and bear it in mind when advising on career choices.

I promised to mention the importance of our country’s cultural institutions. As we have heard, those coming to this country often choose to come here because of what we offer on the heritage and cultural side. A survey of people from 20 countries found that the majority of respondents came here because culture and heritage were strong influences on their choice. Culture and heritage do not come cheap, though. At the British Museum, as at many of our museums and galleries, the doors are open to all comers but the public funding to support this is, inevitably, under continuing downward pressure. I understand why; as far as I am concerned, we have to tackle the deficit and cut public expenditure. Still, we need to support our museums and galleries. That means looking to kind donors.

So I make a plea to make it easy for donors to give money to our institutions. Major philanthropists are already being hugely generous, and the museum is one of the beneficiaries, but little donations mount up too. Last year the National Funding Scheme launched a digital fundraising platform called Donate. It started with just 11 members and now there are 180. If visitors to one of these institutions want to give—if they just suddenly feel the urge—Donate enables them to do it via a mobile phone app. It is painless and very quick, just as I am going to be now.

Donate had the enthusiastic backing of the DCMS at its launch. What it needs now, as it heads towards self-sufficiency, is a little more working capital. My plea is for this to be found. I do not expect the DCMS to provide the money but it could help to find it, either from wealthy philanthropists or from putting a collection cup around among all the potential beneficiaries.