Hello and Goodbye

When tourism runs out of road.

I was outspoken in my reaction to the news that Visit Buckinghamshire (Visit Bucks) will cease trading in 60 days. The announcement came at the end of the ironically-named ‘Focus on Tourism, Hospitality and Leisure’ conference hosted today at the Missenden Abbey conference centre.

We heard from Andrew Stokes, Visit England director, who presented headline visitor stats, including the value of domestic day visits in Q3 2023, that alone total £11.9bn, or £44 average spend per visit. This represents an impressive increase of 3% on the same period in 2022 with the South East region having 18% of England’s share. He then told us how his organisation is rebuilding inbound value to position Britain as: “dynamic, diverse, sustainable, inclusive, prioritising regional and seasonal dispersion” etc etc

Yet. Yet, their focus is the development of the England-wide visitor economy strategy in partnership with the new Local Visitor Economy Partnerships (LVEP’s). This will remove the need to have a dialogue with over 200 Destination Marketing/Management Organisations - DMO’s in old money….to having a dialogue with just 40 new LVEP’s instead. Working with 200 DMO’s was complicated, created duplication, not each was responsive, or had the resources to get stuck into destination-led marketing comms, or were swimming in the other direction. It’s early days, but who benefits? Who is going to be left out?

Funding choices

Add to this, cuts through decisions made by central government that fall heavily on local government which, according to the Local Government Association, 27% real term cuts to core spending power since 2010 has left councils lacking the resilience and reserves they need to meet their statutory obligations, such as social care.

Buckinghamshire Council is looking behind the sofa and in the cookie jar to boost their budgets and are now after new parking charges along the high streets across the county. Robbing Peter to pay Paul? They also failed to adopt the much-anticipated tourism strategy which has been shelved. It impacted the unsuccessful Visit Bucks’s LVEP application late last year. What a missed opportunity that was.

A visitor economy is not a statutory obligation for any council, some choose though to invest because they understand how the employment and economic spend stacks up. £100K won’t sound like much, but it will make all the difference to a DMO of 1.6 staff and their partnership and marketing comms work.

According to Buckinghamshire Council, visitor spending in Bucks supports more than 13,000 local jobs and over 2,000 small businesses across the county.

A soft touch

Just like the arts, tourism is a soft touch: no benefits, it’s all just wishy-washy businesses serving sandwiches and a sightseeing tour. Slash and burn, when our arts and tourism sectors are the soft power, the reason 31-million visitors flock to these shores. That’s without the above-mentioned domestic stats. It’s bonkers.

Wrapping up fell to Lucy Dowson, who very calmly announced that Visit Bucks is in jeopardy. To a horrible silence across the room. Except for me, I had to say something about needing to invest in local business, to not hollow-out the offer and partnership working. A shameful decision! And there’s no help. It’s up to us. And it’s going to take a lot more than a few hundred quid from each business. I know, I have been there. It’s not easy.

The gaps

There are four counties that make up the Chilterns: Buckinghamshire’s share of tourism businesses is the largest at roughly 60% and there is an empty space in Bedfordshire. What I want to know is: what happens to those business without an LVEP if they are outside the Hertfordshire and Experience Oxfordshire areas?

Here’s what you can do

Write to your local MP and tell them the situation. Tell them how your business will be affected. How your customers will be affected.

If you are based in the Chesham and Amersham constituency, the local MP is having a roundtable discussion on tourism and hospitality on March 15th.

Write to Lucy Dowson and tell her how this is going to affect your businesses. While you are at it, write to Andrew Stokes and tell him too.

If you are a tourism business affected by this, you are warmly invited to join our First Monday of the Month online networking. Contact me in the usual way.

Consider your next steps and what you can bring to the space. Please do leave a comment here, it’s time to make your voice heard.