Examination of Witnesses(Questions 360-379)
MR TONY
WINTERBOTTOM AND
MR PERRY
PHILLIPS
TUESDAY 17 DECEMBER 2002
Derek Wyatt
360. The issue is transportation in London.
(Mr Winterbottom) Yes.
361. The next question which follows that is,
if London is a city of attraction, which I think it is, what thinking
is done to say, "Look, if you are going to stay branded as
one of the great cities of the world, you have to re-brand London
completely." So what is going on with the ad agencies or
the brand agencies which will then say, "Despite these issues,
London is still a great place to come"?
(Mr Winterbottom) We are at one, because one of the
things when we did our research and looked into London, and it
was comprehensive research, was we came up with exactly that view,
that we needed to bring people together in a focused way, so they
could own the way this great city was being promoted. We have
a concept called Team London. One of the LDA directors, who is
the chief executive of McCann-Erickson, Tamara Ingram, who has
great expertise in this area, was appointed as head of the London
Tourist Board, and she is as we speak working on what the campaign
should be, what should be the brand, what should be the image.
The idea behind that is so that will have buy-in not only from
the public sector but also from the private sector. So we agree
with you completely. From that we hope we will get a real focus,
and all the other issues about marketing London which you are
talking about with the 3G operators is much easier then to play
in.
362. Do you think that the politicians seriously
understand in London that having a Mayor is not just about a Mayor
for London but it is having a Mayor to make London the greatest
city in the world? There are things which are not in London, things
which we do not have which not just do not work but which we do
not have. Are you confident that thinking inside the GLA currently
is to promote London not just as one of the riff-raff but as the
greatest city?
(Mr Winterbottom) I do not work directly with the
Mayor but I work closely with him and I can assure you the Mayor's
intention is to build on what we have and he has given considerably
more resources to tourism than were previously put into tourism.
His ambition is to make this a really great destination and he
sees the tourism and hospitality sector as a major sector.
Chairman
363. One can certainly spend an enormous time
in Trafalgar Square whether you want to or not.
(Mr Winterbottom) I know that, Chairman.
Derek Wyatt: Thank you, Chairman.
Rosemary McKenna
364. I am astonished that you say in your evidence
that your action plan for a Visit London website should be implemented
by April 2003. Is that accurate?
(Mr Winterbottom) Yes.
365. You do not have a Visit London website?
(Mr Winterbottom) No. The LTB have a website but we
are overhauling what they have and we are trying, as I have just
explained, to bring all that together so we have a interactive
website with all the other people involved.
366. I am amazed because in Scotland we have
had VisitScotland for the last couple of years and, not only that,
are just about to develop a cultural portal which people will
be able to access which will lead to tremendous information for
people coming. Perhaps you will be able to look at theirs and
see what help they can give to you.
(Mr Winterbottom) Yes.
367. But that is the situation?
(Mr Winterbottom) That is the situation. In some mitigation,
the private sector have run a lot of successful websites. They
obviously work well together so it is not to say there are no
destinations but a seriously well-prepared, well-organised, interactive
website is one of the things we discovered was required. I apologise
for that but that is the way it is.
368. You also say the Mayor thinks the tourism
and hospitality industry is a major industry. I agree with that,
I think it is absolutely crucial because I do think London is
the major city in the world and it should be the very best city
for visiting in the world and yet it is not, and a lot of that
has been to do with the way people are treated. I think it is
wonderful that we have young, visiting, overseas students working
in our bars and restaurants, I think that is great, but there
are huge areas of unemployment in London and, if there were proper
training in skills, we could have our own people living in London
working in those jobs, developing their skills, improving the
industry and improving the service to people. What do you intend
to do about that?
(Mr Winterbottom) First of all, can I say I agree
with you, with the frustration. One of the advantages of having
the London Development Agency looking after the strategic role
of tourism and then making sure we have an organisation which
delivers on the ground, is that given our wider brief, and this
might relate to DCMS-DTI relationships, we also have skills which
we have to tackle. We also have business development which we
have to tackle. We are concerned about diversity and one of our
objectives is to recognise the different ethnic mix in London,
in jobs and businesses. What our plan is is that although we are
putting a relatively small amount of our single pot resources
into tourism directly, through our mainstream programmes we will
use that to try and focus and encourage people into the tourism
and hospitality sector through training schemes and brokering
schemes. The only caveat is that this is quite a long-term job
but we will tackle it.
369. We have been told by VisitScotland, by
the Scottish Executive and Scottish Enterprise that this is one
of their major planks of development—training and skills
and getting young people in colleges and further education and
universities—and this has been on-going now for some three
to four years. What programmes do you have in place?
(Mr Winterbottom) We have not got any specific programmes
in place for supporting tourist businesses or the tourism sector,
but we are working on them at the present time.
370. Do you link into the local colleges and
encourage them to develop courses which will lead into employment
in the sector?
(Mr Winterbottom) Yes, but what we have to do is focus
on it much more. There are other people with a direct responsibility
for the skills and training in London, and another ministry which
directs that funding, and we have the Learning and Skills—
371. Yes, but you are responsible for economic
development and surely part of that is encouraging where the future
employment prospects are?
(Mr Winterbottom) Yes, and we are encouraging that
and we are working in that direction but we have to encourage
those people with the resources to deliver those programmes to
recognise that this is a very important sector, which I think
we have done, and now it is a question of making sure that they
devote the necessary substantial resources to training people
in that sector. By the way, tourism and hospitality relates to
the NHS very well. There are massive job opportunities and yet
we have got frustration for many, many people who do not have
employment in London. This is one of our biggest challenges. It
is not as simple as in Scotland. There are different ministries
with different responsibilities and there are different agencies
and one of our jobs, arguably our main job, is to pull everything
together and make sure it works.
Ms Shipley
372. I have to applaud you in your honesty about
"rip-off London". There was a long, pregnant silence
and then Mr Winterbottom you said yes, London is a rip-off. Good:
progress, honesty. My colleague Mr Wyatt showed you how poor transport
was. Let me point out another area. It did worry me that we had
an awful lot of shrugging of shoulders, "What can we do?
Oh, it is not us." Let me give you an area. Tourists coming
here are hugely affected by transport and the other thing they
have no option about is eating. Food in London is a rip-off. There
are some excellent restaurants if you are fairly wealthy but if
you are an ordinary family trying to feed your family for three
or four days it is awful. Here in Westminster we are in one of
the major centres of tourism in London, near Westminster Abbey,
Buckingham Palace, the Wheel, and there is nothing round here
they can eat that is decent at a reasonable price. Things are
expensive, poor quality, and at times I would say down right dangerous.
The example I would give is the hot dogs in St James's which is
an absolute disgrace. They are illegal, they are on every corner,
every entrance into St James's. I was told by the police they
could do nothing about them, they are illegal immigrants, they
cannot keep track of them. This is outrageous. What are you going
to do about that?
(Mr Winterbottom) Chairman, I would like to take away
that particular point and try and see what we can do and I would
like to report back because I share your frustration and I agree
with your points. It is difficult because the market determines
what land use should be. Maybe that is the way that we are going
to have to start thinking, as to whether or not we can talk to
the boroughs and say that in their UDPs, particularly in high
tourist-dominated boroughs like this one, we should put a requirement
on them to have certain space where proper eating establishments
can be set up because otherwise the difficulty is it probably
does not pay. That is the difficulty.
373. Right, the little green stall in St James's
that sells coffee is a good quality, nicely-run, clean good stall,
competing with this vile hot dog stall which is filthy. I do not
think any Londoner would buy from it and they know they would
go down with something horrible. I wonder how many tourists' holidays
are ruined by eating from there. It is serious and very, very
unpleasant. That should be stopped immediately—this week
stopped, something done about that one. Simultaneously by the
summer it is not beyond the realms of possibility to have franchises
available for very high quality mobile enterprises which would
not be competing with much round here, frankly, in the market
I have identified. What do you think about that?
(Mr Winterbottom) I think it is a good idea. I struggle
personally, and I have to come here quite often to meet people
and I slip into Boots for a sandwich. At least I know the area.
Where else do you go? I am with you. I think we will look into
what we can do to see if it is possible to get properly licensed
mobile food into this country.
374. Really for the spring market if I could
see no hot dog stalls any more because the Parks Police are required
to get rid of them on a daily basis because they are doing something
illegal, they are intimidating as well—and there are loads
of different ways they could get rid of them if the will was there,
and the will is not there—and if franchises were to be made
available as a matter of urgency so when people come to this part
of London they get a high-quality simple food experience, nicely
branded, let's have it branded.
(Mr Winterbottom) I agree. Obviously I just want to
explain our limitations—and I would say this wouldn't I—different
departments and different boroughs have different responsibilities.
So again we will use all our influence, and I know the Mayor will
agree with what you have said, and we will take that away and
see what we can do.
Ms Shipley: I am looking forward to spring.
Mr Doran
375. One of the themes that I have stuck to
all the way through this inquiry is what appears to me as an amateur
certainly in the tourism field a lack of strategy. You seem to
be working very hard on developing strategy but just tell us a
little about where you are. I think you said that you were expecting
to produce a full report covering everything in April. Is that
right?
(Mr Winterbottom) If I could just explain what we
have done. We conducted a strategic review of tourism in London.
That review has been completed. We had public consultation on
the key findings and we have produced a three-year plan for tourism
in London. It is quite detailed, it tackles some of the issues
which have been raised this morning, and that was launched on
20 September, so that is in the public domain and if you want
us to we can arrange for copies of that to be sent. The question
then is how do you implement the strategy and that is really what
I was trying to explain before where we have employed KPMG. They
are working with the London Tourist Board, they are working with
the London Development Agency, they are working with the Mayor
and we are negotiating as to how the London Tourist Board should
be restructured so it can be put into such a shape that it tackles
some of the issues we have talked about this morning, particularly
the marketing issues. What the strategy also has pointed out,
and I have taken steps to try and put resources behind this is
to look at how we should tackle issues such as making sure that
the skills and training and business agenda are plugged into tourism
and hospitality and that the LDA will take responsibility for
making sure that that happens. There is a whole range of other
issues, such as there is a question mark should London have a
convention centre and we think that that needs a serious piece
of work and the London Development Agency will support that piece
of work outwith the funding for tourism to look at that and appoint
a team of people to look into that. So the London Development
Agency will tackle those sorts of things that spin out of our
strategy and the core marketing membership services—trying
to improve the products in London, trying to improve communication—will
be done by a restructured Tourist Board and we foresee substantial
changes both to operations and to Board membership.
376. So you have a strategy?
(Mr Winterbottom) Yes.
377. What you are wanting now is implementation?
(Mr Winterbottom) We are.
378. One thing I was struck by, looking at your
CVs, is that one of you is a senior economist and the other is
a former investment analyst and a string of other things. Most
of the other people whom we have had in front of us giving evidence
to us have been people who have had a lifetime steeped in the
tourism industry, so you stand out a little in that respect. I
am struck by the business approach that you are taking, and I
can see strong benefits to that. In particular, in your evidence
you identify the lack of data, but I have been a little bit disturbed
at the way in which you have responded to questions today. My
colleagues have thrown a number of things at you on the gateway,
training and skills, the lack of a website, the state of some
of our biggest tourist attractions. Almost your response is basically
that "We'll go away and check on that" or "We'll
look at it." It is as though you are not doing a great deal,
but you are thinking a lot about it. How do you deal with that
criticism? It does strike me as a weakness in your evidence.
(Mr Winterbottom) I am sure it is a weakness, because
I think that members of the Committee have raised some criticisms
of London that I feel are justified. I do not think that I am
able to argue with that. As to what we are doing about it, I think
that is more interesting, because we are working with a whole
range of projects and we have helped a whole range of projects
through our investment projects. We did help Tate Modern. We have
helped the Globe Theatre. We are working with the Laban Centre.
We are working with a whole range of other projects. We are looking
at developing a world-class aquarium in the Royal Docks interlinked
with the new DLR to the City Airport. We are the custodians of
the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich where a new visitor centre has been
opened. There are many positive things that we are doing to try
to tackle issues. We are working all the time, trying to push
and bring sense and order to some of the complex problems which
have been raised today. I am sorry if I did not really look as
though we were focused on those problems. We are focused on those
problems, but I think it is important that you get the truth as
to what has happened.
379. Let me move on a little, then, to the gateway.
How much extra funding do you get from the DCMS to cover the gateway
aspects of London's role?
(Mr Winterbottom) We are currently in discussions
with DCMS about future funding, and indeed I think we are one
of the pathfinder Regional Development Agencies in those discussions.
I think they are watching what we are doing with interest. We
have £1.9 million allocated from DCMS, which we put into
tourism. That is the Government allocation for tourism in London.
Of that, £250,000 of that money is dedicated to the gateway
activity.
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