Memorandum submitted by City of York Council
This is a response on behalf of the York Tourism
Partnership for the current inquiry into the tourism sector in
the UK.
BACKGROUND
The York Tourism Partnership is the private-public
sector partnership responsible for promoting and developing York
as a visitor destination. The partners are City of York Council,
York Tourism Bureau, York Hospitality Association, Yorkshire Tourist
Board and Yorkshire Forward. The Partnership is one of six Tourism
Partnerships which provide tourism delivery services in Yorkshire.
The York Tourism Partnership has been running since 1995.
This response is on behalf of the Partnership—individual
partners have their own distinct interests as well and may reply
in their own right.
SOME BRIEF
CONTEXT
The York Tourism Partnership is pleased to respond
to this consultation, and welcomes the interest of the Culture,
Media and Sports Committee in holding an inquiry into the tourism
sector in the UK. Tourism is very important to the City of York
economy. Tourism spending by visitors has risen by 52% since 1993
(to £311.8 million in 2005), and employment has risen by
over a 1,000 jobs in the same period to 9,561 jobs (2005 figures)—one
in 10 of the local working population. York is particularly strong
as a leisure visitor destination thanks to its well-known heritage
qualities (from York Minster and the city walls through to internationally
respected attractions such as the National Railway Museum and
the Jorvik Viking Centre) and has a growing conference and business
visitor market, as well as a strong presence as a destination
for shopping, eating out and for events and festivals
York's performance as a visitor destination
is such that the city is one of the ten most popular destinations
for overseas visitors (source International Passenger Survey)
and UK visitors (UK Top Cities survey)
YORK TOURISM
PRIORITIES
York has been managing tourism on a partnership
basis for a number of years now and has recently adopted a new
Visitor Strategy and Action Plan, emphasising the need to increase
earnings from visitors through investment in the quality of York's
visitor offer, and through improved marketing of the city as a
visitor destination.
We believe that this emphasis on enhancing product
quality, especially in the public realm, is a highly sustainable
approach to making the most of the city's opportunity to grow
the value of tourism, which in turn will help the UK and Yorkshire
meet their national and regional economic objectives. Such investment
requires resources, however, which we know are very limited at
the moment, but we believe that investment in the public realm
and city centre environment will unlock significant private sector,
commercial investment which collectively will lead to an even
bigger stimulus to the York—and the Yorkshire regional—economy.
RESPONSES TO
THE SPECIFIC
QUESTIONS IN
THE CONSULTATION
We would wish to make the following points from
a York perspective to some of your Committee's specific questions.
1. We do acknowledge the challenges facing
tourism into the UK and have certainly seen a downturn since the
mid-1990s in the number of overseas visitors to York, and of the
percentage of American visitors in particular. We understand that
there are a number of factors at work, especially exchange rates,
but also security factors and other features which have affected
the growth of overseas tourism to the UK.
2. York also acknowledges the potential
threat to the domestic market through low cost flights encouraging
prospective UK visitors to go overseas instead. Our understanding,
though, is that such traffic is not all one way. Jet 2 and Leeds-Bradford
Airport, for instance, who have been working York on a project
to develop a commercial express coach service to and from the
airport and the city, are showing that some 40% of their passengers
are of European origin—ie are from overseas. There's a potential
opportunity for York, therefore, which we can now measure as the
coach service has just started. It would be useful to see if there
is a similar phenomenon with other low-cost airlines elsewhere
in the UK.
3. York's response to these challenges is
to look again at the quality of the city's visitor offer, and
to seek to move York from being a very good UK destination towards
a world class visitor destination by, among other things, exploiting
and re-imagining the city's distinctive heritage features by using
innovative interpretation and information provision, lighting,
events and festivals and the skills from York's growing science,
digital and creative industries.
4. Regarding "sponsored bodies"
we in York already work with VisitBritain and will be pleased
to continue to grow this relationship. Though the number of overseas
visitors to York has fallen in recent years the city still remains
a leading destination for foreign travellers.
5. Tax—the Air Passenger Duty has
been implemented for understandable environmental reasons, but
is not so far pitched at a level which will inhibit UK travellers
flying abroad. Our view is that the way to encourage more British
travellers to eschew foreign holidays for domestic holidays is
to improve the quality of the domestic product—and its value
for money—rather than to expect a windfall from Air Passenger
Duty. "Value for money" is not solely a cost feature—but
is more about ensuring a high quality experience which people
will value.
6. On "bed tax", again I would
emphasise that individual partners may well have a different view.
The partnership overall is, however, very concerned about the
potential impact of a tax which is clearly specifically targeted
at the staying visitor, who on all available evidence is the type
of visitor that generates the highest level of spend and therefore
the greatest economic benefit to a destination. It is also not
clear at this stage how such a bed tax would be implemented, which
could lead to a high risk of inconsistent treatment across the
country.
7. Tourism data. Certainly there is always
a need for better and more up-to-date data on the economic impact
of tourism. Examples would include standardised questions in visitor
satisfaction surveys, which would help to tease out the real opinions
on the quality of the visitor offer, and the opportunity to benchmark
the UK, England, and individual destinations with other countries
and cities in Europe and elsewhere. There are some opportunities
available to do this, such as European Cities Tourism, but this
needs much greater encourage and usage at government level in
the UK.
8. Another area of data concern is the quality
of hotel occupancy figures. I am aware that there have been recent
changes to the collection of hotel occupancy figures through the
UK Occupancy Survey including on-line completion of the survey.
The main concern we have in York relates to the sample size (which
needs to be substantial to be statistically significant) and its
representativeness, as traditionally the major chain hotels do
not take part in such surveys, yet they are an increasingly important
part of the accommodation sector. Hotel occupancy figures are
important to destinations as they help benchmark their performance
both over time, and with other destinations, and they are also
integral components in economic impact modelling. Statistical
confidence in the reliability of the figures is therefore important,
and it is not at all clear that this is being taken into account
by VisitBritain.
9. Environmentally friendly tourism—In
transport terms, York has been engaging with environmentally friendly
tourism for many years, with a combination of a successful pedestrianisation
scheme in the heart of the city centre and consistent promotion
and expansion of park and ride usage (now running at three million
users per annum). Furthermore 28% of York's visitors get the city
by train each year (2005-06 figures), equating to more than a
million visitors. In this way rail investment in upgraded services,
rolling stock etc, and the whole issue of rail franchises, is
extremely important to York, not least because the city employs
hundreds of HQ staff.
10. In York's experience the most sure-fire
way to improve the environment is, as well as visitor and traffic
management, to encourage the staying visitor and ensure an economically
successful city, as this will encourage the use of historic buildings—empty
buildings are the clearest possible way to produce a deterioration
of the built environment.
11. The maintenance of historical buildings,
contributing to sustainable tourism more appropriately than new
build, does however come at a price. Heritage tourism is the principle
reason for York's popularity, but visitor spend on such tourism
forms only a small part of total visitor spend (expenditure on
visiting attractions formed just 9% of the total direct and indirect
spend on the visitor economy in 2005-06).
12. There is clearly a major funding deficit
within the historical environment. Revenue from tourism makes
a contribution but cannot directly meet the full cost upkeep of
even those parts of the environment used by visitors. We need
to consider new ways of support and how to redirect existing support.
13. As far as other environmentally friendly
initiatives are concerned, the city would wish to see more investment
in training and services for tourism businesses in "green"
marketing campaigns, recycling, composting etc.
14. How to derive maximum benefit from the
2012 Olympics.
I am attaching at the end an extract from York's
response to the Welcome Legacy consultation covering the key points
we wished to make [not printed].
March 2007
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