£90 million boost for coastal tourism

THE UK GOVERNMENT has made £90 million available for coastal areas over the next four years to help boost tourism, create jobs, and provide training.

Grants of between £50,000 and £4 million are available to organizations such as coastal community teams, charities, local councils, development agencies, enterprise partnerships, private companies, and voluntary groups.

Communities secretary Greg Clark said: ‘We’re investing £90 million in exciting new business ideas across our much-loved seaside areas – bringing not just a wave of enthusiasm but also creating thousands of good new jobs, too. With grants of up to £4 million available, I’d urge our coastal entrepreneurs and communities to get involved.’

The £90 million fund will be additional to the £120 million the government has already made available via the Coastal Communities Fund.

Previous investments by the fund include £1.9 million to Blackpool City Council to transform its illuminations, and £500,000 to Hastings Borough Council to improve the seafront and visitor attractions. Scarborough’s market was awarded £2.7 million for refurbishments, and the Welsh National Sailing Academy and Event Centre in Pwllheli got £120,000 to create a sailing venue which brings an extra 10,000 visitors in a year. The National Coastal Tourism Academy in Bournemouth was awarded £2 million to set up a coastal activity park and train coastal businesses.

The academy’s annual report, Coastal Tourism 2016, shows that seaside tourism has regained its position as England’s largest domestic sector for overnight holiday trips. Seaside tourism is worth £8 billion to the economy, with 13.7 million seaside trips, making up nearly one third of overnight holiday stays in England.

The report suggests coastal communities can boost growth by attracting more off-season visitors, developing health and wellness breaks and reinventing seaside towns as business event destinations.

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Regional roadshow to showcase £40 million tourism plan

THE UK’S interim tourism minister David Evennett MP will tour the English regions during February to consult the trade about the £40 million Discover England fund. He is taking over the ministerial brief from Tracey Crouch MP while she is on maternity leave.

Unveiled late last year as part of the government’s spending review, the £40 million fund aims to help visitors discover destinations beyond London. The roadshow will travel to Bristol, Newcastle, Cambridge, Manchester, and Birmingham to engage with a wide range of people in the sector.

Mr Evennett said: ‘One of my first tasks in this role is an enviable one – I will be speaking to the sector about the fantastic opportunity open to English tourism at the launch of the new £40 million Discover England fund regional roadshow. This money will be central to us delivering the Prime Minister’s vision for tourism which encourages more tourists to travel beyond London and enjoy the national treasures and hidden gems the rest of England has to offer.

‘The government has given the clearest signal that we are behind the English tourism industry. It’s a direct investment that will help areas across the country grow their tourism offer and get more people to explore the breadth and depth of our country. Our aim is that over the next three years, regions and areas will work together to build world-class itineraries. This is a smarter way of working that will allow for greater coordination within tourism and beyond so we offer the absolute best to visitors from home and abroad.’

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Wanted: a fairer deal for English tourism; Wales & Scotland get better deals

 REGIONAL tourist boards, the Association of British Travel Agents, and UKinbound are among the organizations that have written to the government highlighting the need for greater funding to promote England as destination for tourists. 

More than 40 representatives from attractions, airports, and tourist boards have signed an open letter to Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne outlining the importance of VisitEngland and the need for extra funding.

The signatories are calling for an independent fund to be established to improve tourism in England, with a focus on regional counties rather than London.

 The fund would focus on product developments and require £20 million a year to ‘address the serious market failures in the tourism sector’. It is claimed that over four years, the work undertaken as a result of the fund would generate a £1.28 billion spend and support almost 24,000 jobs. 

The letter also highlights how much more funding VisitWales and VisitScotland get from the UK government. ‘While all the home nations benefit from marketing afforded by GREAT and VisitBritain, both VisitWales and VisitScotland supplement this activity with dedicated tourism budgets of over £20 million and £54 million respectively. VisitEngland, on the other hand, receives a core budget of less than £7 million to support the English tourism industry.

‘This is expected to fall below £6 million in the current Spending Review and will be made even worse by VisitEngland no longer receiving Regional Growth Fund money, which between 2012 and 2015 was successful in generating over £1.5 billion spend and supporting or creating over 29,000 jobs – a devastating double setback compounded further by the end of the South West and Northern Tourism Growth Funds.

‘English tourism in our view is being unfairly overlooked with real concern that VisitEngland may soon be forced to end its business development and domestic marketing activity entirely.’ 

It adds: ‘Chancellor, we ask you on behalf of English tourism, its businesses, and its destinations, to review the low funding and damaging imbalance that English tourism currently experiences when compared with VisitWales and VisitScotland.’

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