Following Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg’s refusal to support a major UK tourism campaign, Britain’s national tourism agency, VisitBritain, has issued a response.
The UK tourism campaign aims to welcome back tourists from international markets such as India, China, Australia, Japan and Canada, in order to boost the visitor economy following the pandemic.
However, Rees-Mogg has declined to sign the Department for Culture’s £800,000 budget (which was agreed at the last spending review), despite green lighting £4m worth of VisitBritain campaigns.
This decision is expected to negatively impact small businesses and visitor attractions.
Rebuilding the visitor economy
Commenting on the news, a spokesperson from VisitBritain said: “Destinations across the world are battling to rebuild their visitor economies from the pandemic.”
According to The Guardian, international tourism is still 20% down on 2019 due to the pandemic travel restrictions. International tourism also dropped a further 40% in August due to flight cancellations.
“There is huge pent-up demand for travel and people have a lot of choice where to go. We want to make sure they choose Britain,” the VisitBritain spokesperson added.
The national tourism agency concluded: “International visitors spent more than £28bn in the UK in 2019, with that money going into local economies and supporting jobs.
“We need to be out promoting Britain across all our key inbound markets to be able to compete for that visitor spend, and to support the more than 200,000 small businesses that rely on tourism right across the country.”
