Examination of Witnesses (Questions 569
- 579)
WEDNESDAY 12 MARCH 2008
MS LYNNE
HOOKINGS, MR
JOHN MILNE
HOME AND
MR MORAY
BOWATER
Q569 Chairman: We now move to the
second part of this session. I would like to welcome Lynne Hookings,
the Chairman of the Torbay Tourism Forum; John Milne Home, the
Secretary of the Tamar Valley Tourism Association; and Moray Bowater,
General Manager of Helpful Holidays. Can I perhaps remind you
to speak up, please, when you answer because I think it is quite
difficult to hear at the back. You have heard the evidence we
have just been given as to how the RDA and the local authorities
see the state of tourism in this part of the world. Can you tell
us your impression? Are things getting better, are things getting
worse or, as was said before, are you holding your own?
Mr Milne Home: We believe business
last year was as was, it has not changed very much. I have a little
cottage, it was the same number of weeks last year as previously,
which was about 29, so no problem.
Ms Hookings: I actually wrote
down "holding our own" when two of the speakers said
it because I was quite surprised. I feel that even standing still,
if we can claim to be doing that rather than going backwards,
is in effect a retrograde step, we are not progressing, we are
not growing visitor numbers, we are not growing businesses necessarily.
In fact, the number of businesses has declined substantially since
I moved to Torbay in 1975. I have only been here 33 years, but
that is quite a long time. Everybody looking for another outlet
went every which way they could, whether it was into self-catering
or retirement homes and now back to residential. Even with a substantial
loss, probably 40-50% of the bed spaces to Torbay, it did not
mean that everybody else remaining in the accommodation market
suddenly excelled in business, it did not mean that at all. We
lost our stock, we lost our choice, if you like, and it did not
have the resultant effect many people thought it would do. Whether
you are speaking to the serviced accommodation base or self-service
accommodation base, everybody in the Bay would say to you, "We
are open for business and yes, please, we need more". Nobody
is running at capacity, certainly not throughout the year. Another
thing that was said by the earlier speakers was about growing
tourism into an all-year round industry. This is something we
have talked about almost ad nauseam, and we are still trying to
do that. We are still trying to get exciting events to cause people
to move their holiday patterns either side of the main holiday
periods. I think the private sector has probably had a jolly good
go at helping itself. Certainly from my perspective with the Tourism
Forum, we have done the benchmarking visits, regarding resort
regeneration we have done best practice, we have done tremendous
training to make the people involved in the industry, whether
it is just the husband and wife partnerships or the larger businesses
employing 300 or 400 staff, and we have certainly helped them
develop their staff and make it a more professional industry but
there is an awful long way we still have to go.
Mr Bowater: I think it would be
fair to say we are going great guns. We have been growing at about
10% a year for the last ten years. We are hitting our head against
the top of what is feasible in terms of bookings. We average about
32 weeks per year per cottage now. Beyond that the cost of sales
becomes too high to make letting more weeks than that viable for
most owners and for us. If we could get more stock we would let
it. From our point of view, our sector of the industry right across
Devon and Cornwall, because we operate in both counties, is going
great guns.
Q570 Chairman: Would you say that
applies to the whole of the sector in the self-catering holiday
cottage area of tourism?
Mr Bowater: I think that most
of the agencies that operate in the mid to top end of the market
have seen similar levels of growth over the course of the last
ten years. We are struggling to keep up with the rate at which
our main competitors take on new stock. We see them growing at
about 10% a year as well and they would not be taking on that
stock if they could not let it, so their bookings must be roaring
along as well.
Q571 Chairman: Has there been a general
shift from the traditional seaside hotel towards the kind of holiday
which you are offering?
Mr Bowater: I suspect there has
been a huge shift, yes. The sort of holiday that we are offering
has become more popular because private sector operators like
us have driven quality. Because we understand the market we have
told owners that unless they produce a product of sufficient quality
that people are going to want to rent for a week or two weeks
they will not get any bookings, and that process continues and
is ongoing and will continue forever. Quality has to be good because
that is what provides value. If we do not have good quality we
do not have good value.
Mr Milne Home: I would support
Moray entirely. I am one of the end users, not yours but another
company, and they inspect us, they maintain the standard and they
are acknowledged as a proper assessment centre by VisitBritain,
but VisitBritain will not accept that qualification from us for
NQAS assessment. We do not know why they will not look at it.
It is infuriating because we believe that our standard, driven
by Farm & Cottage Holidays, is quite excellent.
Mr Bowater: I would say that the
reason why they will not accept it is because they do not get
a fee for it.
Mr Milne Home: I think that is
absolutely right, but not just a fee, a bloody large fee that
cuts everybody out. If you look at it, to join VisitBritain you
have to spend 70 or 80 quid and then 120 quid yearly to be inspected
and that is nigh on nearly 200 quid or more, and that is a week's
rent for a small cottage.
Q572 Chairman: We are going to come
back to the NQAS scheme shortly. I just want to probe a little
further on one aspect. We received evidence earlier in the inquiry
from Travelodge, who are expanding massively, opening hotels every
month, so clearly they are doing all right and you are doing all
right. The sector which appears to be struggling is the traditional
Victorian rather faded seaside hotel. Is it just that in order
to make that attractive again one would have to spend a huge amount
of money because these rather elderly hotels at the moment do
not offer the kind of holiday which people want?
Ms Hookings: The hoteliers that
have spent on Victorian villas in Torbay in the large are enjoying
good trade. They are reinvesting in their product and are succeeding
whereas others are slipping back. You are right, what used to
be the traditional holidaymaker to Torbay has totally changed.
Whereas a privately owned hotel can boast varying degrees of quality,
whichever standard, whichever rating they have achieved, a much
more personal service, many more facilities to look after them
than, shall we say, a budget brand hotel, the market is such that
there is room for both. A lot of people would feel that by buying
a brand, ie Travelodge or Premier Travel Inn that are coming here,
they know what they are buying, they are buying more a purpose-built
environment in which to sleep for the night, if you like, at a
recognised price. Victorian villas and conversions, however well
done, have tremendous variation and sometimes people feel safe
knowing what they are buying. Having said that much, we are very
lucky down here because in Torbay most of the properties are privately
owned, they are not chains of hotels. We have a couple of chains
in the Bay but not very many at all. We have the best of both
worlds probably.
Q573 Philip Davies: Moray, I quoted
your evidence in the previous session and you were very critical
of public sector marketing campaigns. In fact, you were very critical
of the public sector generally in your evidence from what I could
read. You said that the public sector marketing was poorly monitored,
it was based on guesswork, over the last 10 years you estimated
the combined spend had been between £50 million and £100
million on marketing alone, and that a close analysis of your
participation in these campaigns revealed they infrequently generate
inquiries that result in sales. The people we had before were
saying that they needed more money to spend on marketing but it
seems to me you are suggesting they should have less money to
spend on marketing. Why are they wrong and you are right?
Mr Bowater: I think what they
said during the course of their evidence was that they do guess
on the effectiveness and the feedback that they got from their
marketing campaigns and they do not have any way of measuring
the effectiveness of those marketing campaigns. The stats that
were quoted during the previous evidence suggested that £150
million on marketing is probably an underestimate, it is nearer
£300 million.
Q574 Philip Davies: So who should
be spending the money on marketing if they should not be doing
it because they do not know what they are doing?
Mr Bowater: Businesses that benefit
from the results of those marketing campaigns. I do not think
the public sector should put any money into marketing campaigns
unless it can be demonstrated that those marketing campaigns produce
a return for taxpayers. That does not mean just measuring return
on investment in terms of, "We have spent £1 and got
people to spend £40 on a booking", that means how much
tax has the Exchequer received as a result of the £1 that
has been spent on a public sector marketing initiative. There
is no hard evidence, and there has not been in all the time that
I have worked in this business, that any public sector marketing
campaigns actually work because they cannot monitor them properly.
You said that you worked in marketing and if you had gone to a
meeting and presented a proposal which suggested that you were
going to spend X amount of money and you would take a wild guess
at whether or not it had produced any results at the end of it,
I think you would have been laughed out of the boardroom.
Q575 Philip Davies: The argument,
and you probably heard it from Malcolm Bell earlier, is that your
organisation may well be big enough to look after itself and to
market yourselves effectively because of the scale of your organisation,
but lots of places in Torbay might be a one-man-band or husband
and wife team and they have not got the wherewithal, the money,
to spend on marketing, they cannot afford to and, therefore, they
need a regional body. You might be all right, but what about everybody
else in a place like Torbay, surely they need somebody to do something
for them?
Mr Bowater: That was the position
that all of our owners were in before they phoned us up and said,
"Do you think you could do some marketing for us?" and
we said we would be delighted to. At the beginning of this submission
I said we could take on more properties if we could find more
owners who would give us their properties to let, and there are
agencies like ours all over the southwest all of whom are scrabbling
around for properties to try and let. The reason why an owner
in Torbay or anywhere else in the southwest might not choose to
use a marketing agency like Helpful Holidays or Farm & Cottage
Holidays, or Classic Cottages down in Cornwall, all of whom do
an excellent job, is because they do not like the cost of that
and the public sector is stepping in to provide a cheaper route
to market but a less effective one.
Q576 Philip Davies: Lynne and John,
you are at the coalface so you can adjudicate between the two
arguments. Whose side of the argument are you on, Moray's or Malcolm's?
Ms Hookings: I can see both sides
of the argument. I am not simply asking the public sector to put
their hands in their pockets and sustain us just for the sake
of throwing more money at marketing, but the public sector is
very necessary in creating brand awareness and marketing the area
and the facilities rather than each and every micro business trying
to do that. They are struggling to market themselves effectively.
Here in Torbay we obviously latch onto the Torbay Development
Agency, our own Tourist Board marketing, to promote the brand
of the English Riviera. A micro could not do that on their own.
It is not a question of just taking the money from the public
sector because even with that money, whether it has come back
from government by way of some form of grant for Torbay or grant
from whichever pot of gold, do not forget the people who are living
here are still putting their money and contributions into the
local economy, it is not just for the benefit of the accommodation
or the tourism sector because anybody who is brought here who
has any level of spending power is going to be spending it, whether
it is on a taxi, a bus or a deckchair on the beach, if you like.
If tourism is allowed to fall any lower in Torbay it will have
a severe effect on the whole economy of the area because, sadly,
we do not have a balanced economy here at all. We tried to move
into the higher wage economy and we got all excited when we had
Nortel and the like, but what happened, they have all gone and
all that is left is the fishing and the tourism.
Q577 Philip Davies: So you acknowledge
that a body needs to spend money for the benefit of the micro
businesses but in a word, yes or no, is the money they spend on
marketing at the moment well-spent or not?
Ms Hookings: I would say at a
local level what the Tourist Board is spending is well-spent because
they have not got a huge pot of money to spend. A lot of the income
from that money actually comes from the private sector buying
into the guide which they are marketing. On a national level I
think we are very poorly funded and as far as England is concerned
I do not like the disparity with the spend between Scotland and
Wales. That is not because I am English, I am Scottish and was
brought up in Wales, so I am a right mixture. The disparity is
quite shocking per head of population.
Mr Milne Home: I would agree with
Lynne that we need something in addition, without doubt. If you
think of the Association, certainly from my perspective, we look
down, we do not look out at all. The leaflets I just handed out,
10,000 of them are printed and are pushed out locally, we do not
actually send them up to London, we have to rely on Malcolm Bell
and his organisation to spread the word abroad and elsewhere in
Britain to bring the people in. I would agree with what Lynne
said.
Q578 Mr Sanders: There are obviously
different jobs at different levels to be undertaken here. Lynne
has almost answered what I wanted to ask. Are we really talking
about branding rather than marketing and what we need is a brand
that is not just tourism, it is a brand for any products that
are made in the area, for any services that are sold in the area,
for any creative industries that there might be in the area. This
seems to me to be what Cornwall has been very good at with a Cornish
brand that runs right across from pasties to self-catering accommodation
to diving schools. It is not a marketing budget that Aviva necessarily
needs, it is a branding and a brand that runs consistently right
across all the strata of an area.
Mr Milne Home: I am sure you are
right. I would not be able to argue the differences, I am afraid.
Ms Hookings: We all recognise
brands, so they are obviously important and they are obviously
highly valuable. We are talking about the Travelodges, Travel
Inns, et cetera, everybody recognises the brands, so it is very
powerful, and if we can brand—
Q579 Mr Sanders: The only equivalent
that we have to a board of directors in a company is our community
and, therefore, it can only be a public sector endeavour that
creates that brand, or at least markets that brand.
Ms Hookings: I think the public
sector has a big return. I am only speaking for Torbay, as you
understand, but Torbay Council would have severe problems if the
income from tourism went any lower because they are one of the
biggest earners from tourism. I know they have to spend a lot
on the beaches, the toilets, et cetera, and we have a problem
having 22 miles of coastline and some of our beaches, sadly, are
now closed and many of our toilets are now closed, or demolished
in fact. They have a big problem, but at the end of the day they
also have big earnings from the presence of tourism.
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