Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to support the tourism industry throughout the UK.

Our Tourism Recovery Plan (TRP) sets out an ambition to recover domestic tourism to pre pandemic levels of 99m overnight trips and spend of £19 billion by the end of 2022. We have been committed to supporting the sector to remain resilient and have already provided £37 billion to the tourism, leisure and hospitality sectors in the form of grants, loans and tax breaks.

The TRP also announced plans for a new rail pass, which we hope to launch this year, to help make it easier and more sustainable for domestic tourists to get around Scotland, England, and Wales.

The National Lottery Days Out Campaign is still running until 31 March, it offers people the chance to redeem a lottery ticket for a £25 voucher to be used in a variety of attractions around the UK, to support domestic tourism.

On 9 February, VisitBritain launched its £10 million international GREAT Britain marketing campaign ‘Welcome to Another Side of Britain’. The aim is to put Britain’s cities in the spotlight who have suffered most from the lack of international visitors during the pandemic. It will also capture the major events this year including HM The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games and ‘Unboxed,’ the UK-wide celebration of creativity. VisitBritain is also working with partners including British Airways in the USA and TripAdvisor in Europe to extend the campaign’s reach and drive bookings.

Related to the domestic campaign, in February the second round of the Escape the Everyday DMO Recovery Marketing Fund was launched. It provides the opportunity for English DMOs to apply for grant funding to deliver local marketing activities aligned to, and following on from, this national campaign.

In early March, VisitBritain welcomed 50 international travel trade buyers for a series of educational visits across Britain. Buyers from the UK’s three largest inbound tourism markets, the USA, France and Germany.

VisitBritain’s flagship global travel trade event ExploreGB is currently running virtually (21-25 March). ExploreGB Virtual is bringing together more than 330 global buyers to connect online and do business with 370 tourism industry suppliers and destinations from across the UK. More than 10,000 pre-scheduled one-to-one virtual business meetings will take place during the event.