Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
TUESDAY 23 OCTOBER 2007
MR COLIN
DAWSON, MR
ROBIN BROKE,
MR GREGOR
HUTCHEON AND
DR SIMON
THURLEY
Q20 Mr Hall: What did he say?
Mr Dawson: We have not had a reply
yet.
Q21 Mr Hall: I do not want to trample
over some of the questions that are going to come later on that.
Mr Dawson: I believe the announcement
is expected very soon, so until we know the result of those decisions,
we cannot comment.
Mr Broke: The problem is tourism
is not perceived as a failing industry. You have heard from us
today, we are not failing but we could be doing so much more and
that is the frustration. When you say to the Chancellor, "You
put £1 in and you can get £30 back and then you can
have some more kidney machines and some more books in schools"
and people do not take you up on the offer, that is the frustration
and it would be wonderful if we could do something about it.
Q22 Mr Sanders: It does not depend
on which bit of the industry we are talking about, but parts of
tourism are in decline. Our seaside resorts are not doing as well
as they were 30 years ago, but there are new tourism markets,
such as farm tourism, inner city tourism, with conference centres
being built with public money creating new tourism products in
city areas, whilst our traditional accommodation areas, the Blackpools
and the Torquays of this world, are struggling.
Mr Broke: Indeed, I think you
are going to hear evidence from them later this morning and I
am sure they will be able to answer that.
Mr Dawson: The point you are making
is very good. There is great concern about our coastal resorts
and that concern is increasing day by day. In recent times, if
we look at the impact the Gambling Act, which came into force
only on 1 September, has already had on our coastal resorts, I
have members who are running arcades on the coast reporting as
much as a 25% downturn already and we are only a little over a
month into it.
Q23 Mr Sanders: These tend to be
family-owned businesses?
Mr Dawson: These are family-owned
businesses operating on the coast. They have lost the machines
which allowed them to compete with the betting offices. As a consequence
of that, they have lost their principal market, particularly in
the lower season, and they have now shifted into the betting offices.
The strange thing about that is one of the objectives of the Gambling
Act was to reduce the attraction to the vulnerable and here we
are taking from an adult gaming centre into a betting office where
the opportunities to gamble are even greater than they were. It
is a strange thing. I am sure that was not the intended consequence
but that is a consequence.
Q24 Mr Hall: Robin, you keep referring
to tourism being the fifth strongest industry.
Mr Broke: Yes.
Q25 Mr Hall: Is tourism in the right
department then, surely it should be in the new DBERR department
rather than DCMS?
Mr Broke: Throughout my time in
tourism this question has been asked and whether we want to be
a small fish in a big pool or a big fish in a small pool. I think
the feeling is whichever pool we are in it is probably not going
to make a great deal of difference until the Chancellor of the
Exchequer and the Prime Minister get engaged and at that point
it will not matter which pool we are in. That is where the message
needs to get through to. Meanwhile, the DCMS struggle away. There
has been talk as to whether we should be in industry because we
are in an industry department or because we call ourselves an
industry. The Tourism Alliance discussed this at their AGM and
at the moment we feel we are happy with the DCMS, where we are.
Q26 Mr Hall: You are quite happy
to stay put?
Dr Thurley: Being the Chief Executive
of a body which people frequently say should be in another department,
I think it is irrelevant which department something like tourism
or heritage is in because the point is these are cross-department
activities, they are pan-government concerns and certainly the
way we would look at tourism is not as a series of individual
attractions. The reason people come to Britain, above all other
reasons, is because of our heritage, our history and the stories
we can tell and that is about what cities and towns and our countryside
look like. It is what Bath looks like, what Chester looks like
and what York looks like. You might go to York and not go to Jorvik.
You might just go there, go shopping and go and have a cup of
tea and stay there for a couple of nights and not actually visit
any specific attraction. For that reason the concerns of Government
over tourism have to stretch into areas of regeneration, planning,
land use and countryside regeneration, it is a huge series of
issues. Where it is in government does not make any difference,
the thing that really matters is that in each of the various strategies
the Government will have to cover these areas tourism is acknowledged
as a major, major factor.
Q27 Mr Hall: Would you like to see
a tourism tsar rather than a tourism minister?
Dr Thurley: You can call them
what you like. The important point is that tourism is taken into
account in a whole wide range of government strategies. We are
seeing this happening, we must recognise that. In the recent planning
guidance from CLG, tourism is recognised as being a major factor
which needs to be taken into account when you are making planning
decisions and that is the sort of thing we need to see.
Mr Dawson: It was interesting
that that very document was produced with the Tourism Alliance.
That showed how these things can work.
Q28 Chairman: Can I come back to
VisitBritain. We talked about the relatively flat level of funding
over the past 11 years and, Robin, I think you used the word "emasculated".
Obviously we do not know the detail yet of the CSR, however, the
fact that DCMS has trumpeted the amount of extra funding going
into arts, the Olympics and sport and the fact that tourism has
not been mentioned does not make one terribly optimistic that
you are going to see a sudden increase. If we have another year
of no better than steady funding at the present level with no
real increase at all, what will your reaction be to that?
Mr Broke: We are already getting
ready with a press release, in the Tourism Alliance, in case it
goes that way. Obviously VisitBritain is a very professional operation
and they will make do and will optimise the assets given to them.
We are back to the fact that with the Olympics coming up, as we
have said, what is the point of spending £9 billion on the
Olympics and then for the want of that last sort of £20 million
we are not going to reap the benefit out there. The torch passes
to us next year, this CSR is for three years. Meanwhile, VisitBritain
is now down to something like, I think our spend in America is
slightly less than Aruba and, remember, American visitors are
enormously important to us. I had to ask Colin where Aruba is
but it is an island somewhere. Then you will be aware that the
Australian campaign at the moment, "Where The Bloody Hell
Are You?" is more than I think VisitBritain has had for about
two years to market to the entire world. Does it make sense? The
answer is no. To answer your question, Chairman, I have every
confidence that VisitBritain will do the best with what they are
given.
Mr Dawson: In direct answer to
your question, our response would be one of huge disappointment,
and there are a number of concerns we have expressed continually
to VisitBritain and the DCMS. One of those is the lack of statistics.
We are being starved of valuable information as an industry because
the financial resource is not there to capture that information.
Q29 Chairman: Simon, this scenario
of seeing other bits of DCMS enjoy real terms increases while
one bit remains static if not falling in real terms is one with
which you will be very familiar. As well as VisitBritain, are
you able to tell us about your own outcome?
Dr Thurley: Yes, I am. As you
know, the DCMS's priorities, as announced by the Chancellor of
the Exchequer and by the Secretary of State, were maintaining
free admission to museums and funding the Arts Council which,
after he had given them above inflation increases, did mean it
was obvious that other parts would not fare so well. We made a
very strong case about heritage and the Secretary of State gave
us an additional £11 million over the three year period.
Given the very tight circumstances and the lack of manoeuvre that
he had, we felt relieved.
Q30 Chairman: It could have been
worse?
Dr Thurley: It could have been
very, very much worse. We could have been standing still, which
is what we had done for the previous ten years, so we are grateful
for the acknowledgement that heritage plays an important role.
Q31 Chairman: But as for VisitBritain,
you would share—
Dr Thurley: Chairman, I could
not possibly comment on another DCMS body's funding situation.
All I would say, though, is if you give an arm's length body a
set of objectives and you agree those objectives and you agree
the funding level which is necessary to achieve those objectives,
it is really for the Department to fund them properly.
Mr Hutcheon: I would agree with
the comments that have gone before. We will be hugely disappointed
if VisitBritain is not able to continue its good work, including
the potential for the new VisitEngland to continue marketing the
UK to the home market.
Q32 Chairman: Several of you, in
talking about opportunities available to VisitBritain, have talked
specifically about overseas marketing, the opportunities for the
Olympics to attract more visitors here and the role of VisitBritain.
It is true that something like 70% of VisitBritain's budget goes
on overseas marketing, but it generates only 20% of the revenue
from tourism. Should we not be spending more on trying to persuade
our own citizens to take holidays within the UK?
Mr Broke: Yes, but those are different
amounts in many ways, are they not? At the moment I have got the
domestic down as £67 billion day visits and general things,
and the foreign visitors probably worth £16 billion to us.
Now, we can argue about semantics, but nobody else is in the position
to market Britain abroad, Britain as such. Scotland can do a bit
for itself and Ireland and Wales, but that is their remit, whereas
I think within England, marketing England to the British, which
is the other role that VisitBritain have, there are others doing
that. The RDAs particularly have budgets which they can use for
that. That is something which even we in the industry can do.
Although we are very diverse and have very few big players—and
visitor attractions have just got a big player for the first time
in the merger of Merlin Entertainments and the Tussauds Group
producing Merlin Entertainments Group, but even they only employ
13,000 people in 12 different countries—there is not much
money around belonging to the operators and organisations. That
is why we would like some more of the tax that is generated by
the industry back. I think it is right that where we are really
hurting is in the budget to keep our global position and it is
by losing that global position that our balance of payments deficit
goes further and further out, which is unhelpful.
Q33 Chairman: Colin, in your sector,
you have said that your members primarily benefit from visits
from domestic tourists, not international tourists.
Mr Dawson: Yes.
Q34 Chairman: Do you feel we should
be doing more on the domestic front?
Mr Dawson: It is a question of
balance. I am not particularly concerned about the percentage
which is currently allocated to domestic tourism because I do
understand the need there. To give an impression that none of
our members benefit from overseas tourism would be wrong because
certainly within London, with the attractions like the London
Eye and Madame Tussauds, they certainly do benefit from the overseas
market. It is back to the question of the size of the cake, that
is really the problem. It is not the amount that is being spent
or the percentage that is being spent, it is the fact that the
cake just is not big enough.
Q35 Mr Sanders: What about what they
do in Canada, which is effectively a hypothecated `bed tax' to
pay for the marketing of tourism?
Mr Broke: Most countries spend
a lot on tourism—a lot more than we do, yes. There are various
ways they do it. If tourism is your very big issue, then of course
the third most powerful minister in Government is probably the
tourism minister. We are not in that position. But we are losing
our global position and we should strategically be looking at
where that takes us and whether, for what are really very small
amounts of money, we could arrest that decline and maybe even
reverse it.
Q36 Mr Sanders: You talk about "the
cake needs to be bigger" but how do we make the cake bigger?
Where does the money come from? I do not expect you to argue that
we should take it from another source, but is there a way we could
generate more ingredients to make that cake bigger?
Mr Dawson: Most certainly. Double
summer time will do that. £2 billion. It is a very economical
move to make.
Mr Broke: When we had a big campaign
behind Tim Yeo's bill last year, I wrote to my MP, as one does
on these occasions, who obviously passed it on to Jim Fitzpatrick,
Minister at the DTI at the time, and on 24 June he wrote back:
"The Government will oppose the Bill. However, the Government
remain open to any persuasive new evidence"—new evidence—"that
might come to light and cause us to look at this again in the
future." I would hope that your Committee might feel some
new evidence has come to light, particularly on the energy side.
We already know about the road deaths saving, but the energy saving
side is new evidence that is becoming very persuasive, I feel.
Q37 Chairman: Robin and Colin, you
have both made your support for this proposal pretty clear. Do
the National Trust and English Heritage take a similar view?
Dr Thurley: We do not have a position
on it, Chairman.
Mr Hutcheon: We have been supporting
ALVA on their role.
Q38 Chairman: It is not a central
part of the inquiry into tourism that we are conducting; nevertheless,
plainly you feel very strongly that this would make a real difference.
Mr Dawson: As, indeed, Chairman,
does the Tourism Alliance.
Chairman: We will take that on board.
Mike Hall.
Q39 Mr Hall: In terms of tourism
data, what could the Department of Culture, Media and Sport do
to improve the data we have on tourism that would make a real
difference?
Mr Dawson: I think we are lacking
in a number of areas. I think we are lacking in a quality list
of accommodation providers and on the attractions sector. It is
perceived, depending on whom you speak to, that there are 6,000
or 4,000 or 5,000 listed attractions in the UK, and the honest
answer is we do not know. We do not know the frequency and the
time stats on what day-visitors want from our market-place, other
than the research that is done by operators themselves. We have
no national picture. We have no detail on trends/short-term trends
that would help industries and sectors plan, and neither do we
have any real information on domestic tourism expenditure, other
than at a very local level.
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