With 100 days to go before the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, national tourism board VisitEngland, has called on the industry to make England the most welcoming place in the world this year.
With Government support, VisitEngland is working with a number of partners to activate several initiatives to ensure visitors receive a genuinely warm welcome, including an Airport Welcome Project, first launched in 2009.
Fifteen airports across England are participating in a ‘Welcome Audit and Improvement Plan’ process, which reviews the visitor’s journey throughout the airport from booking, to arrival and departure.
Forums had identified a need for greater collaboration with local travel operators to improve onward travel links, partnering with Destination Management Organisations to offer enhanced visitor information onsite and customer service training projects.
The VisitEngland Awards for Excellence are also helping to drive standards up and a City of London Visitor Information Centre due to launch, 16 May, is part of a new partnership with the City of London Corporation. It will see the visitor information centre based near St Paul’s Cathedral extend its remit to provide information on destinations throughout England which are playing host to Olympic venues. The centre will also have multilingual staff and be open seven days a week.
Staff will be briefed to pass on to visitors inspiring ideas on how to get the best out of their trips outside of the capital.
Chief Executive of VisitEngland, James Berresford, said that “if the welcome isn’t right, our visitors from home and away will not come back. We want to say to the world 100 days before the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, that we are ready to show visitors the time of their lives”.
VisitEngland is also working on projects focused on customer service with skills experts, People 1st, and a project looking at the visitor experience at railway stations in partnership with Southeastern and Visit Kent.
VisitEngland supports key customer service training programmes such as World Host and Welcome to Excellence.
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