Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 59)
TUESDAY 23 OCTOBER 2007
MR COLIN
DAWSON, MR
ROBIN BROKE,
MR GREGOR
HUTCHEON AND
DR SIMON
THURLEY
Q40 Mr Hall: A real quality improvement
in that would make a significant difference to the industry.
Mr Dawson: It would, because all
the planning evolves around information and statistics. Without
it you are really feeling your way in the dark to a very large
extent and it would be particularly important to produce a national
strategy based on that information.
Q41 Mr Hall: Would it be possible
to do it for the whole of the industry, or would it have to be
within the various sectors of the industry?
Mr Dawson: I think it would be
beneficial to do it sector by sector, but, in the absence of anything,
we will take what is available.
Q42 Mr Hall: That is quite interesting.
Dr Thurley: As far as the heritage
sector is concerned—and you might disagree with me, Gregor,
but I hope you will not—we are pretty happy with the coordination
that we have managed to put in place with VisitBritain and through
the work we all do together called Heritage Counts to put together
heritage data. That has recently been reinforced by DCMS's own
survey which was called Taking Part, which has been very helpful
as well. There are obviously always things you can ask and do,
but, in terms of our particular sector of the business, I think
we are reasonably happy with what is going on.
Mr Hutcheon: I would agree with
Colin that there are certain areas where we would benefit from
more data to help with our business planning, particularly around
the day-trips market.
Q43 Mr Hall: You just mentioned Heritage
Counts and you say that is a very good measure. Is there anything
that could be done to improve that? Is there any more information
that would be helpful to you?
Dr Thurley: We are continually
importing new sets of data into Heritage Counts. It has now been
running for five years and we are beginning to pull out some quite
interesting trends, but we are always keeping our eye open to
include more research in it, wherever it could be found.
Q44 Mr Hall: The Office of National
Statistics could help more perhaps.
Dr Thurley: Possibly.
Mr Broke: I think I am right in
saying—and I am not an expert in this area at all—that
there was something called the Allnutt Report in 2004 which identified
the major gaps in our statistics. Everybody in the industry, basically,
signed up to that and said that that is the situation. We really
need that to be implemented. Those gaps still exist. It has not
been implemented. We do not need to reinvent the wheel here; what
is needed is contained in that report.
Q45 Mr Hall: How much would that
cost?
Mr Broke: I would not know.
Q46 Mr Sanders: We need the statistics
to work that out.
Mr Broke: I think we would have
to say not large sums. No, not large sums: under a million.
Q47 Mr Hall: Is the UK Tourism Survey
of any use to you?
Mr Broke: Limited.
Q48 Mr Hall: Simon, you are nodding
your head. More than limited?
Dr Thurley: I would have to come
back to you on that. I could not rank it marks out of ten, I am
afraid.
Q49 Mr Hall: I was not asking you
to do that! Greg, do you have the UK Tourism Survey? It is a great
source of information on tourism, is it not?
Mr Hutcheon: Again, I am not an
expert in this area. Certainly I am aware that it has helped us
get an idea of trends, but, as to whether it has sufficient detail
to help with the other original challenge around business planning,
I am not sure whether it goes to the level of detail or is asking
questions in the right way to be useful to us.
Q50 Mr Hall: Is it right or wrong
to say it is now much improved? It is obviously not striking you
much at all, is it?
Mr Dawson: I think those are your
answers.
Mr Hall: Thank you, Chairman.
Q51 Helen Southworth: Could I follow
up on some of the answers you have given to Mike. What role is
technology playing in terms of data collection? I am interested
in testing out whether what we are actually seeing is an attempt
to get towards a way of collecting data which is remarkably old
fashioned and remarkably expensive, when in fact the world has
changed around us and you have a fragmented industry which is
fragmented because the majority of the players in it are individual
operators, not huge operators but significant operators who are
very focused on making their business work. The world has changed
for people like that who are now using information technology.
When, as a family, we want to go somewhere for the weekend or
whatever, we sit in front of the computer for half an hour before
we work out where we are going to go, and by the time we get to
where we are going, we know what the menus are going to be, we
know what the rooms are going to look like, we know what the area
around it is going to look like and we know what the visitor attractions
around it are and we have selected the ones we fancy from those.
You can do that in a very short period of time now. We pick from
those people who have put stuff up on the Internet. We are not
alone in that. We are probably at the top end of the generation
that does that, and we are certainly not young. You have a large,
large number of people who whizz through the Internet to find
out what they are going to do tomorrow or what they are going
to do next week. That is the vehicle that people are using to
decide whether they are going to go to Malta or Lanzarote or the
Lake District. What are you doing about data in that, managing
that, and encouraging people to put stuff up on the Internet themselves
and to use that as a data-collection process?
Mr Dawson: That is certainly happening
within our sector. The line for online bookings is an increasing
line, and quite dramatically so over recent years. Certainly that
does allow you to collect quite a significant amount of data from
there—indeed, there are many online questionnaires now,
for when people have been to their attraction or their chosen
location and then go back—but of course that is very geographically
centred and does not really give you the national figure. We are
trying to encourage people to invest in new attractions, expanding
their businesses, and it is that sort of information that is not
readily available for those decisions. Localised, small decisions
on what are we going to do next year are not a major problem;
it is what we are going to do in five years/10 years time with
their businesses that is the sort of information that is currently
lacking.
Q52 Helen Southworth: Should that
not be using the same technologies. I used an example of how I
do it but I was saying that the world has changed. The world has
changed, so what are you going to do about collecting your strategic
information using the changed world?
Mr Dawson: I think it is happening
but it is happening on a low-cost scale with individual businesses
rather than on a national scale.
Q53 Helen Southworth: What needs
to change to make it happen nationally?
Mr Broke: VisitBritain and DCMS
really needs central coordination and with the RDAs. That is where
this information should be residing and then being collated and
then being presented in a useable form. I am sure they are all
coming to give evidence to you later and I think it is a better
question to ask them. I know VisitBritain, within their very tight
budget, are being very proactive and I think they are funding
two places to go to the National Statistics Office or whatever
it is to enhance the ability to extract the information that is
needed for tourism. And there will be more to do. As Colin has
said, if you are trying to plan, those facts and figures are not
readily available.
Q54 Helen Southworth: That is a very
hierarchical way of managing things in a different world.
Mr Broke: I take your point. Ideally,
everybody is collecting those statistics and there is a way of
them coming up through the RDAs and on up. It would be very foolish
not to, as long as the Data Protection Act allows that to be used
in that way. VisitBritain is running a remarkable website which
keeps winning awards and they are hoovering up six million email
addresses and facts and figures on people there. I think you will
find that people are on the case.
Dr Thurley: There are two issues
really that you raise. One is about how we capture data from our
businesses and then share it. Some of that, of course, is commercially
confidential, because increasingly for each operator the data
they have about their visitors is a very, very valuable commercial
resource. We would love to get our hands on the National Trust's
membership list—all, whatever it is, three million of them—because
it would boost our members from a mere 650,000. That is the first
point: there is an issue about the data you keep to yourself because
that is your marketing base and the data you can share with other
people. The second aspect of your question is I think also extremely
important, which is the way the pattern in which we market and
promote sites is inevitably going to change. We have a network
of tourist information centres which have not been mentioned yet
in this debate. On the future role of those and the amount of
investment put into those by local authorities and the nature
of what is provided there and whether that will remain the same
in a world where people do what you describe, I think there are
some quite big questions that need to be asked on the marketing
side by the RDAs and the local tourism partnerships about the
sort of information they are providing and where they put it.
Mr Hutcheon: From our perspective,
what is exciting about new technology is its role as a marketing
and a communication channel, so that we can meet the consumers'
needs—in the way you have described how you go online to
decide where you are going to go for your weekend break. We know
from our own surveys, 50% of our members are online every day
and 80 or 90% of them have access to broadband. That is across
three and a half million members. It is not the issue about having
access to new technology, it is about competing and grabbing attention
to use it as a communication marketing channel. I am confident
we are learning some lessons, we are getting better at it, and
that will be part of the future about how the Trust and, I guess,
our other partners will promote ourselves. We do share data where
we can. I have just come from a meeting last week where English
Heritage and ourselves were sharing data about one of our most
important days of the year, Heritage Open Days, when over one
million people come to heritage sites. We have been sharing information
about that. But using new technology to capture data—and
it is an area I am not an expert in—we need to understand
what data it is and what is the best method to get it. I love
Trip Advisor and I look at Trip Advisor to help me decide where
I am going to go on holiday but I have not yet put a review back
on Trip Advisor about my experience. You have to be aware that
some of the data you get might be self-selected and quite skewed
and so you need to work out what you need and what is the best
way to get it.
Q55 Helen Southworth: I would like
to move our focus slightly onto environmentally friendly tourism.
Could you, first of all, describe to us about the changes that
have been happening in the industry in terms of environmental
sustainability. Secondly, I would like you to look at what that
means in terms of being able to draw in people within region or
across region in terms of domestic tourism. How are you attaching
to the new understanding of the environment?
Mr Hutcheon: I think there are
two issues. One is the nature of the tourism offer, where I would
argue that a high quality environment—be that fantastic
historic places, beautiful landscapes, fantastic coast and seaside—is
the underpinning of the market offer. Those things are what people
are coming to see—it is what they are coming to see, it
is what they are coming to experience. They want authentic experiences.
They want to escape from modern life. They want to feel refreshed
somehow. That is a trend that has been growing over many years
and we are benefiting from that trend. I am trying not to argue
that green tourism is a niche: it is a fundamental aspect of what
the tourism sector is about and what people want. On top of that
I do think that general environmental awareness among consumers
has grown hugely and therefore people are beginning to expect
their tourism providers to be doing what they can to minimise
their environmental impact. That is a slightly different issue
from what they are going to see and experience.
Q56 Helen Southworth: How effective
do you think the industry has become in doing that?
Mr Hutcheon: I cannot speak for
the sector as a whole but, in terms of the National Trust, our
new strategy launched this summer has, as one of the four main
elements, reducing our environmental footprint; so we are trying
to behave more responsibly and reduce our environmental footprint
across everything that we do, from putting in energy insulation
in our holiday cottages, to sourcing local food, to trying to
come up with green transport schemes. A greater proportion of
those visitors who arrive by car can be persuaded to come by other
means.
Dr Thurley: I think we—English
Heritage, National Trust and others—have to come clean on
this one because, essentially, we operate a rural tourist business
and the only really effective way of getting there is by car.
The biggest challenge we face is trying to find ways of reducing
people's dependence on the car travel. It is very, very, very
difficult because of course public transport in rural areas is
getting harder and harder and it is only in places like Hadrian's
Wall, where there is a very intense group of tourist attractions,
and particularly heritage attractions, where it is possible for
everyone to chip in a bit and get a bus service to operate. The
vast majority of country houses, parks, castles, abbeys, churches,
small villages can only be reached by car. That is the biggest
green challenge that faces us all and we do not have an answer
to it.
Q57 Helen Southworth: It is the fifth
largest industry, so what contribution is it making to tackling
climate change?
Mr Dawson: I think the awareness
of the Green Tourism Business Scheme has helped enormously. That
is a scheme that assesses a business over a number of environmental
factors: what it is doing about energy/water saving; what innovations
it is making in helping itself to become greener. We have an interesting
example: one of our members, which is a safari park, has found
a scheme of burning animal waste to create electricity and it
is now creating enough electricity from burning animal waste to
function the whole park—and there is a small amusement park
attached to that. It is all being done on biomass which is an
animal waste scheme. Also, we are now discussing with BH and HPA
their Green Awards, which have been enormously successful—the
Bellamy awards, which you can join at a bronze, silver or gold
level. We are discussing how we might transfer those across into
our attractions sector. We had a presentation at our summer conference
on this very subject to bring that to everyone's notice and we
are now encouraging them to do this.
Mr Broke: Colin just mentioned
David Bellamy. Rather controversially, I do not know whether people
saw in the Times yesterday an article there saying that
only 7% I think of all papers published on climate change between
2004 and February 2007 explicitly endorsed any consensus that
manmade CO2 is causing catastrophic global warming—quite
an interesting view—and today of course there is completely
the opposite view. Having said that, I think tourism is very much
doing its bit. We have just republished a new national Code of
Conduct for visitor attractions and in that is very much an exhortation
to act in a sustainable way. I also am aware that, on the accommodation
side, on their website they can accredit themselves with, again,
being environmentally friendly and sustainable and green, and
there are already indications that people are minded, like yourself,
when going in and booking, to favour those ones. It is in the
operators' interests to behave responsibly and the operators now
know that.
Q58 Helen Southworth: Have you made
any assessment of the opportunities that there are available in
terms of people who are becoming increasingly conscious of the
environmental impact of foreign travel? Are you marketing towards
that group of people? If so, what are you expecting from that?
Mr Hutcheon: I am not sure I have
quite understood the question. We used to have a high proportion
of our adverts in our members' magazine encouraging our members
to holiday abroad. We have taken a strategic business decision
to reduce the number of those adverts over time. Eventually, the
bulk of our advertising will be around the domestic environment,
for the reasons that we saw internal contradictions between our
stance against the damaging impacts of international tourism,
unbridled international tourism, compared to the more favourable
outcomes from domestic tourism. We are beginning to switch our
own behaviour to try to get that message across.
Q59 Helen Southworth: I was wondering
how sharp you were in seeing changing trends and of using those
opportunities for increasing business.
Dr Thurley: I am sure there is
a huge potential to increase business, particularly as those who
are the most environmentally aware to begin with start deciding
to spend their leisure time in this country. As operators, we
will, all of us, benefit. We certainly will be putting, as it
were, our marketing and our persuasive powers behind that. We
cannot help but benefit from it.
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