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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 133-vii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT COMMITTEE
Wednesday 12 March 2008 Riviera Conference Centre, Torquay
MS A PEARSON, MR A ROBINSON and MR M BELL MS L HOOKINGS, MR J MILNE HOME and MR M BOWATER Evidence heard in Public Questions 486 - 578
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Wednesday 12 March 2008 Members present Mr John Whittingdale, in the Chair Philip Davies Mr Mike Hall Alan Keen Rosemary McKenna Mr Adrian Sanders ________________ Memoranda submitted by Torbay Council and South Hams District Council
Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Ms Aviva Pearson, Director of Tourism, Torbay Council, Mr Alan Robinson, Strategic Director (Community), South Hams District Council, and Mr Malcolm Bell, Chief Executive, Southwest Tourism, gave evidence. Chairman: Good afternoon, everybody. Can I first of all perhaps say a few words about what the Committee has been set up to do and why we are in Torquay this afternoon. We are the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, which is appointed by Parliament to examine the administration of the DCMS, the Government Department, and also to look at all of the various policy areas for which the Department is responsible. We decided to focus on tourism for this present inquiry and we have been holding sessions in London where we have taken evidence from a number of witnesses, and most latterly the Minister for Tourism. We also believe it is important that select committees should have an opportunity to get out of London to go and see at first hand the challenges facing the tourist industry. Torquay was an obvious place for us to come and we have already had an opportunity to have a look round this afternoon, but we are also here to listen, and that is the purpose of this afternoon's session. I would like to thank the Riviera Conference Centre for hosting this afternoon's session. It is quite a big room and it may be difficult for some of you towards the back to hear. If we all try to speak up, and because the witnesses are facing in this direction this may apply to you particularly, we will try and avoid microphones, but if it becomes necessary we will use them. Just before we start, I know Adrian would just like to make a declaration. Mr Sanders: Yes. We have to make declarations of interest and tomorrow we will be visiting a number of visitor attractions, including the Paignton and Dartmouth Steam Railway and I need to declare that I have a small shareholding in that company. Q486 Chairman: Can I start by welcoming our first three witnesses: Aviva Pearson, the Director of Tourism for Torbay Council, who has already looked after us extremely well this afternoon; Alan Robinson, the Director of South Hams District Council; and Malcolm Bell, the Chief Executive of Southwest Tourism. Perhaps I could start by asking you to tell us how you view the state of tourism in the southwest, specifically in Torbay and South Hams, and whether you are succeeding in attracting more visitors or whether you are actually looking at a decline. Mr Bell: That is probably for me to kick off from the southwest. If we look back we are holding our own in the domestic market in terms of value. Volume is slightly down. I think you will notice that in the Bay we are seeing a loss of hotel and B&B stock. This is remarkably good progress. I am talking about comparisons over the last six years of variations up and down. This is remarkable when you look at the stiff competition we have had from low-cost airlines taking Brits abroad and some of the issues about maybe being able to tackle some of the other markets. There has been some slight growth, about 10% growth in overseas during that period, and one of the challenges in the future is capturing some of the low-cost market that is now crossing from Europe. The low-cost flight market and model was developed in the UK and in the last ten years it has burgeoned in the UK, but now there are something like over 30 low-cost operators in Europe looking for destinations and some of those things are a challenge for us. It sounds quite good to say we have held our own but that has been in a period of growth in tourism generally and the worrying thing is that maybe the underlying things about holding your own in a period of growth does mean we have got quite a lot of challenges and moving to more difficult times ahead. I do not think it is anything to be complacent about. The overall product is strong. We do visitor surveys every year. The quality of our welcome is our strength. The quality of the accommodation is strong, scoring way in the top eighties in terms of people's satisfaction being good, very good and all the rest of it. The quality of food and drink has probably been the biggest revolution in the last ten or 15 years, becoming quite a unique selling point, and the breadth of visitor attractions. All of those have their challenges with regard to the visitor numbers because, as I said, the value has held up, but visitor numbers are slightly down and the attraction market is the volume market. I hope that gives an overview. We are doing all right. Ideally, we should be doing a lot better but I do see that we have got challenging times in the next five years. We have had a fair wind in the last ten years but more challenges ahead. Q487 Chairman: Thank you. Ms Pearson: We pretty much mirror everything that Malcolm has said. We are holding our own. Even though we have had a loss in beds in this Bay from about 48,000 to approximately 43,000 we have actually seen an increase in the average length of overnight stay which is now at 7.35 nights when in 2004 it was 6.7 nights, so we are seeing a steady increase in that. Also, spend by our visitors in the Bay has gone from 445 million in 2005 up to 449 million as shown in the recent survey, the Value of Tourism, by Southwest Tourism. We are holding our own. What I want to focus on is what we can do better and ways we can improve and this is going to come into the realms of marketing and with VisitBritain. The DCMS have limited their budget as to what they can do, but if VisitBritain were able to get back some revenue so they could market us more effectively on the international as well as the domestic scene, which is where we would step in as a local authority, we could become more competitive with the low-cost airlines. Q488 Chairman: Thank you. Mr Robinson: From South Hams' point of view, which is obviously very different from Torbay in terms of the nature of the tourism product, our perception is that tourism nights and spend are falling based on the figures we have, but one of the issues you are going to raise is about the inconsistent collection of data and the difficulty we have in comparing. We are very clear that whichever figures you use, whether you use local figures or national figures, our prime market is the domestic market. Something like the high 80s to 90% of our visitors are domestic. Tourism is vital to the rural economy. It supports a lot of direct employment and also indirect support services. Because the environment is our key asset, for us what we are not trying to do is increase numbers particularly during the peak season because that undermines the product we are trying to sell. What we are looking to do is create a quality destination. We believe we have become one of the UK leaders in sustainable tourism and we have got Beacon status for that. It is about trying to encourage tourists over the whole year so that we can give our local people permanent employment, it is not based on seasonal employing. Coming back to your key question, are we doing well, we have a fantastic product but we do believe that we are losing some of our market. Just to give you an example in terms of domestic visitor spend, in 2001 we had something like £123 million being spent, according to the figures, and in 2006 it was down to £108 million, so a 15% decrease, and in the context of inflation that probably masks quite a significant decline. Q489 Chairman: Thank you. Can I ask Malcolm Bell, we have heard evidence in this inquiry about the challenges facing the tourist industry right across the UK, things like the growth in low-cost carriers which is making it easier for people to go overseas, but in the southwest you are holding your own at a time when growth is occurring elsewhere. Why are you not doing better here? Why are you not growing at the same pace as other areas? Mr Bell: There are two parts to that. One of the things that has happened, and it might be part of the explanation, is there has been a shift in tourism between Devon and Cornwall. 15 years ago the people in Cornwall used to say the problem was the trouble was visitors had to go to Devon to get to Cornwall and now I hear people saying in Devon, "The problem is people only drive to us to get to Cornwall". That is really about profile building, picking up on Aviva's point about marketing. There has been a sort of cache profile with Objective 1 money, a big profile building exercise of Cornwall and I do believe it is at the cost of Devon. Whereas people used to refer to "Devon and Cornwall" all the time, increasingly you do not hear the 'D' word, it is just "Cornwall". That comes up in terms of the problems we have got which are about profile and marketing. It is about PR. It does not all have to be about posters and TV advertising, it is about being smart with what you have got. I suppose the contentious statement I would make is we have got a great product, people know the product. There was an organisation that once thought that way and did not need to market, and that company was Marks & Spencer. It is an arrogance to say your product is all right and you do not need to market it because people know you exist. If you do not get out there the competition does and takes your customers away. We have got a good product, people do know us, we are holding the loyal customers, the repeat customers, but we are losing out on that extra growth of people who do not know us and do not know how good the product is because we cannot get to them. Q490 Chairman: You were presumably speaking for the southwest when you said you were holding your own. Mr Bell: Yes. Q491 Chairman: The fact that some people now prefer Cornwall to Devon, whereas previously it might have been the other way around, does not affect the number of visitors to the southwest. Why is the southwest not doing better? Mr Bell: It is pure marketing clout in terms of a challenging area. As I say, you only have to look at the papers with all the destinations that are on offer to people and it is a highly, highly competitive market. We are not a cheap destination, I think everybody knows that. You can see the World Economic Forum report that said out of 124 countries we came in at about 121. I would not swear to the figures but they were close to that in terms of competitiveness. On price, because it is a property based business and we are high on property, there are often borrowings against so you have got to do a rate of return. We comply with labour rules, we comply with health and safety rules, there is insurance and litigation. All I am saying is it is not a cheap place to do business and, therefore, we cannot sell on price. If you are going to sell on quality that means you have got to get that message across. You can be a bit lazy in promotion if you are only selling on price, you can get away with a cheap offering, but we have to get across the quality message to justify the price we are charging and in many ways holidays can be a commodity purchase, what is cheapest, and particularly with regard to the low-cost guys, and I do not criticise them, they have created a new phenomenon which is people do not expect to pay much to travel because they have lowered that cost distance-wise. Q492 Chairman: Do you think the quality itself needs to be improved or is it just a question of marketing? Mr Bell: I will be honest, quality must always be improved as with any product. It would be wrong to criticise the quality of what we have got, and I always say quality is what is defined by each segment of the customer, and all too often when people talk about quality they are thinking of 5 star hotels and Michelin star restaurants, but you can have a quality beach café, and that has been another revolution, and quality holiday parks. There is a requirement to keep investing but overall the quality is good. There is room for improvement, I have no doubt but some of the challenges are the product of the whole experience if you take a visitor experience from thinking about a holiday, booking it, travelling down, things like the Kingskerswell Bypass, the experience of when you get on the beaches. One of the issues we have is Treasury gain the money from tourism in taxes but the local authorities pick up the cost of tourism. When you look at some of the quality areas, people would like to see an improvement in the quality of the public realm, even though the public realm is quite good, standards are going up, but that takes investment from local government where sometimes cash is tight. We are not weak on quality, it is just that every year, like every other business and industry, you have got to get better and better and that is quite a stretch for the businesses and equally, if not bigger, a stretch for local government. Mr Robinson: I do not think it is just about marketing, at least in somewhere like South Hams. Because we do have this base environment that is really attractive, the problem is people think it is the natural environment but, of course, it is not the natural environment, it is actually very carefully looked after. There is an issue around the product. A big issue for an authority like ours is clearly pressure on council budgets. For example, tourism is a discretionary activity. As budgets get tighter for us, it is the discretionary activities that get squeezed, and particularly things like marketing. If I can just give you an indication of the scale of the pressures we might be facing: if we increase our council tax by 1% it raises just over £45,000, so in a realm of capping of, let us say, 4%, you can see that we raise 200K for the range of services, therefore there are some really difficult decisions that councillors have to make. The problem is if you think about the product and all the things that a local authority perhaps needs to invest in compared to perhaps spending local money on marketing, you are talking about beach management, public toilets, quality car parking, quality refuse collection, street cleaning, the whole planning regime and quality of development you are achieving, general contributions to environmental enhancement, so there is a whole range of areas that a local authority can help to invest in the tourism product but in the context of declining budgets it is a real problem. What has been a bit of an issue for us, and Malcolm raised the issue of European money, is we did have access to European money, Objective 2 funding, but that is all coming to a halt. We were using that money quite successfully to support a whole range of environmental enhancements but we no longer have access to that money, so that is an issue for us. Ms Pearson: If I could just address a couple of points that you raised about quality as well as value for money. A couple of months ago the BBC came down and interviewed us because they wanted to see just how much value we had here compared to other destinations on mainland Europe. Value for money here is quite high because we are extremely cheap if you compare us to a place like London or any other city. The quality of what they get here is quite exceptional. We have a lot of exceptional properties here, a lot of 4 and 5 star B&Bs and a lot of 4 star hotels, and you are staying in one yourself, the Grand Hotel. We do have a very good quality base of businesses here. We also have a quality officer on my team and in the coming months her job description basically is going to be making sure we have a quality drive here, always raising the game. We are going to be having a number of workshops. When we look at the rest of the picture of what we are offering here in the English Riviera, when we are talking about funding especially and the way that my budget has been cut - my budget has been cut by £111,000 - because I am part of the TDA, which is the Torbay Development Agency, which is a public-private partnership, we are actually given a lot more leeway to go and raise money in ways such as holding ticketed events, and we have just gone online with our first online shop and raising revenue which goes back into our pot which hopefully will not only cover the £111,000 cut but will even supersede that. Q493 Philip Davies: I am not entirely sure about your analogy with Marks & Spencer. I worked in retail for 12 years and Marks & Spencer suffered because they did not deliver what their customers wanted, that was the problem. I do not know if that is the same problem for you, that you are not delivering what your customers want. I was quite interested in the survey that you talked about at the start. You said that people like the welcome and things like that, but they only get that when they are here. I wonder if you could tell us from any surveys that you have done why people choose to come here, or if you have any information on why people choose not to come here? Mr Bell: I can tell you why people come here. The non-visitors are always a bit harder to pin down for the obvious reason that it is hard to get hold of them. The reasons why people come here, for 80% it is the environment, those sorts of issues, but the environment they look at is not just the natural environment, it is quality of life issues, aspirational issues, people like to go where almost in an ideal world they would love to live. That is one of the challenges with second homes, because the better you are it is almost the Victor Kiam thing, they like it so much they buy into it. It is about that issue of the quality of the environment, natural, the culture aspects with a small 'c' in terms of a good West Country way of life, it is perceived as a slightly slower pace of life, and warm and friendly people. Mr Sanders: Hear, hear! Q494 Philip Davies: There seems to be a lot of focus placed on marketing and you seem to say your product is fit to market. I am not a good judge of that, but how much is spent on marketing and how much do you think should be spent on marketing? Who should be spending it? Ms Pearson: The answers are not enough, all of us and more from this local authority, and I will tell you why. Q495 Philip Davies: How much? What sort of numbers are we talking about that you think need to be spent on marketing so you could say, "We are now doing it effectively"? How much would it cost to do it effectively, in your view? Ms Pearson: I really want to answer this question and I will give it to you American-style: how long is a piece of string. Basically, however much money we get, the more you invest, the more that you reap. That is the way it is. Right now, I would say approximately out of all the revenue that we are given by the local authority to spend, 200,000 of that is directly on marketing. That is from the online initiatives, newspapers, our guide, all of this, the poster campaigns, the entire realm, and we are seeing the effects of that. For the first time through the Southwest Tourism Survey and, as I said on the bus today, since 1999 we have gone into double digits for the AB1 market, which is the higher spend market, we are seeing our average bookings right now bucking £150 per booking. This is all because we are doing marketing. First of all, if we are talking about on the international scene, VisitBritain needs to be more heavy-handed in the way that they are marketing. Marketing is all about aggression, there is no such thing as a soft sell and, quite frankly, what they are doing is they are whispering against the wind. There are so many other destinations spending so much more money and they are reaping the benefits. The whole issue of destination marketing is very competitive and you cannot speak softly, you have to be in people's faces. In 1970 and 1980 Britain had one of the most aggressive campaigns in America. You would constantly see the men in the big fur hats marching in front of Windsor Castle and you would hear the music and see the happy people flying with the flags, Big Ben and everything, and that galvanised people to think, "I want to go there". It was not cheap to fly in the 1970s and 1980s, yet it was one of the times when the highest numbers of visitors were coming to the UK. This is now the time we should be doing that again, especially now that we are talking about the Olympics in 2012. Let us not fool ourselves, we know that London is going to reap most of the benefits, but with creative and clever marketing everybody in the UK could actually benefit from the way that we should be marketing ourselves in the run-up to the Olympics. Again, you are asking how much money should we be putting into it, the answer is more than we are now because we are doing well and I would almost like to say despite ourselves. I think we could be doing better if we had more investment because people are coming here because they know we are a good destination. I know you know this, it has been said many times before, we are number 14, 15 or 16 on the worldwide stage for welcoming people to the country. If we improve the welcome, improve that product and market ourselves aggressively and say, "We want you here and we want to look after you. We have a great destination", it will improve our bottom line. Q496 Philip Davies: Can I just press you on that. I understand the value of marketing, I used to work in marketing and that is my background, so I understand that it is valuable. Ms Pearson: I am preaching to the converted. Q497 Philip Davies: Whenever I went to my board at my company I would say, "This is what I want to do and this is how much it is going to cost", I would not just go and say, "Can I have some more money?" Nobody works on that basis. You go with a plan and ask for a certain amount of money. What I am trying to get to the bottom of is to market it effectively, to do whatever you think should be done so you can sit back and say, "I am now happy with that", how much would it cost? Ms Pearson: Are you talking on a regional or --- Q498 Philip Davies: From you, yes. Ms Pearson: --- from local? Q499 Philip Davies: Whichever, I just want some figures. Mr Bell: I will give you some figures. The southwest is almost bigger than Wales and Scotland and you know how much they spend. I would not want that much money because sometimes I think too much money is there. The role at regional level, and it is a slightly different destination, is often through PR and messaging, that brand and image work and the aspirational bit. There is a big industry that can work with destinations to convert that into business. When I heard people talking about 20 or 30 million for Scotland and 10 or 15 million for Wales, for the southwest I would say two million would be sufficient because that makes you work smart. It is four times more than we spend at the moment, but sometimes you have got to be clever and smart. The other challenge is because of the lack of leadership in tourism, everybody does the best they can and we work as best we can but, coming back to your marketing bit, there should be the whole idea of co-ordination. I get really frustrated. I used to be frustrated that Wales and Scotland out-pounded us, and I did not worry about that, but now you have got the English regions in danger of competing and we need things like the Partners for England initiative, trying to get people to work together in a coherent way, to say, "Let's spend three million nationally on explaining to people the wonders of staying in your own country and then spend some more down at the next level about the attributes of each area", rather than nine regions independently all trying to convert people to stay there without selling the sizzle about staying in the UK. We are not being cute enough. We still need some money but we are not being cute enough. That is the regional/national perspective. Ms Pearson: I see it from the local perspective. Approximately £250,000 to £300,000 would bring us back so that we could really compete, not just on the domestic level with the other resorts, we are one of the largest resorts right now, but I would like to see us compete up there with Eastbourne and Blackpool more effectively and aggressively, and they have just got in the realm of about £300 million to do a collection of marketing as well as infrastructure works. With 250,000 to 300,000 I think we could become more savvy and more aggressive with our marketing. Mr Robinson: I was going to raise the point in relation to marketing of some figures I have around parity and spend between England, Wales and Scotland. In England it is 29 pence per head of population, £8.63 for Wales and £7.33 for Scotland. In relation to marketing, because one of the questions earlier on was who should be spending the money and how much, one of the things that need to be inputted into the debate is there needs to be some sort of unified vision for tourism, a national strategy with an integrated approach to marketing and who is responsible. At the moment you have got a whole range of people putting a little bit in. For example, South Hams, it is going to sound peanuts, for our organisation we spend £46,000 a year on marketing, and again I come back to that 1% of council tax. Should we be spending that or would it be more useful for us to invest that into the product, in other words destination management with somebody else taking responsibility for destination marketing. It may be that we are investing that money and all we are doing is pulling people from north Devon, and does that actually help the region. I think those are some of the issues that need to be addressed. Q500 Mr Sanders: You have a strategy for tourism in the region called Towards 2015. It outlines the potential for significant growth in the industry. Are you confident that under the present structure and funding this potential can be realised? Mr Robinson: No, I am not confident because I think you can have a plan that is based against the growth in tourism and us gaining that growth but you have got to work on it, hence the previous debate, to get that growth. No, I am not confident at all. Q501 Chairman: It is your plan. Mr Robinson: It is a strategy, it is not a plan. The strategy is there, the plan comes underneath and that needs resourcing. Q502 Mr Sanders: Presumably Torbay and South Hams are part of that strategy, they bought into the strategy that you are applying across the region? Ms Pearson: Well, we are obviously trying to adhere to it as much as possible. I have been here for 14 months and we want to work in unison with everybody all the way up to DCMS level. One of the things which I will say is there are a number of points which are in the Towards 2015 strategy from Southwest Tourism which are very achievable to do with short breaks and the like which we are achieving at this moment. If I could just mention one other thing and that is Torbay is part of a new initiative under the charter I have in my hand, which I will pass to you afterwards, which is Partners for England, which is an initiative to co-ordinate the delivery of tourism through senior decision-makers in the public and private sectors. This is something which is being driven by the Southwest RDA and one of the stakeholders in this is Torbay. Basically this document, once it is put into play, and it also supports the VisitBritain body, should stop duplication and outline what everybody's roles are from the local authority all the way up to DCMS. It should also address the problems that we have with our statistics, because, quite frankly, anyone's statistics in UK tourism are just frightening. If it was not so serious it would be a joke because the disparity in the numbers is just not acceptable. I am also hoping that through this project, which is now achieving lift-off, we can address a number of issues to do with the way that we are duplicating our efforts and hopefully it will knock that out. Mr Robinson: From a South Hams' perspective, in terms of a huge potential for growth, as I said before, it is not about increasing our summer peak numbers because that will damage our environment; for us it is about spreading the season and that is where we want growth. Q503 Mr Hall: Could I take you back to the finances because you have given us some details about how much you spend on marketing, but what is the total spend on tourism? We have had some very interesting figures. DCMS say it is 350 million spent on tourism, local authorities say they spend 126 million and some people say you would spend that money whether it was a tourist industry or not. How much are you spending on tourism? Is there a figure that you can give the Committee? Mr Robinson: Me? Q504 Mr Hall: I seem to think there might be three figures coming forward. Ms Pearson: Our spend is £597,000. Q505 Mr Hall: You say that has been cut by 111,000. Ms Pearson: No, that is what it is now. I was £111,000 richer a year ago. Mr Robinson: In terms of our spend on tourism, it is £180,000 and £46,000 of that is marketing and the other aspect is salaries. As I have said, it is very difficult to break this down. Clearly we invest an awful lot in our environment, whether that is enhancement or maintenance, toilets, street cleaning, beach cleaning. We tend to invest more because we know our environment underpins our economy, and I can give you figures, but everybody spends something on street maintenance and public realm maintenance. For example, on toilets we spent £780,000, street cleaning £714,000 and beach cleaning £65,000. Mr Bell: 2.2 million with approximately 850,000 on marketing, that is directly and indirectly because we work with the Southwest Regional Development Agency on image and brand. Q506 Mr Hall: Is marketing the biggest factor of your expenditure? Mr Bell: No, tourism development. It is issues to do with sustainable tourism, e-tourism projects and other activities, research. Q507 Mr Hall: In some of the evidence you have given already, and it is an accepted point, you have said that spending on tourism by local authorities is discretionary and budgets are subject to whatever the vagaries of the local government settlement are and what your councillors are prepared to put on the council tax. How helpful is the decision by the Department for Communities and Local Government to reduce the performance indicators down from 2,000 to 198 and not include one of them that involves either tourism or the welcome? Mr Bell: My view on that is it is those sorts of decisions that potentially have a really rattling earthquake potentially on tourism. The old thing is you cannot manage what you do not measure, but equally I would reverse that one because people tend to manage the measures and, therefore, if you have not got a measure you do not manage it and it is not up the scale of the senior people when they are looking at assessments and scores on the doors and if it does not contribute to that it is not important. That is just human nature. That is the danger we are in. That is a general comment. Mr Robinson: I think that raises the issue in terms of PI of how important tourism is. As I said before, it is a discretionary activity. It is quite interesting that the Government is thinking of making local authorities responsible for economic development as part of a statutory requirement, but tourism perhaps is not being seen as a fundamental part of economic development. In fact, the fact that is being managed from within DCMS, if you like, rather than, I am going to call it the Department for Trade and Industry because I have completely forgotten the name --- Q508 Mr Hall: Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. Mr Robinson: That is right. I think that perhaps indicates an approach that is being taken in relation to tourism. Is it about economic development or is it about something else? Q509 Mr Hall: Could I ask you a slightly different question. We know that you have a strategy for tourism for the English Riviera and we were told this afternoon about the mayoral vision. Are they dovetailed or is there some tension between those two? Ms Pearson: No, they are dovetailed. The aspirations within the mayoral vision are pretty much what we would like to see happening in this Bay. If I could tack on to what Alan was saying. In the Sub-National Review, when they talk about economic development possibly becoming a statutory function I would like to think that in areas such as the larger resorts in the UK tourism would therefore become a statutory service because it is the economic development of the area. It is the major part of the development of the economy in areas such as this. It will be interesting to see what actually happens in the future with how economic development in itself becomes a statutory function. Let us hope it does become that. Q510 Chairman: Aviva, you have told us you are £111,000 poorer than you were. Ms Pearson: I am. Q511 Chairman: So what are you now going to stop doing? Ms Pearson: I am going to start doing more on raising revenue. I am not going to stop doing anything because we are going along the right track and that has been proven by the latest surveys: Devon Trends, Torbay Visitors' Surveys and the Value of Tourism surveys. We are obviously on the right road and it is not the time to stop doing anything, so we are going to start doing more: start more events; start getting more tickets out there; start selling like we have never sold before; more online sales; we have shops integrated with all of our TICs and we are going to go out there and become more commercial, which we can do because we are a public-private agency. Q512 Chairman: So you are going to try and ensure you make up the whole of the shortfall you have lost from local authority funding? Ms Pearson: I have got the team to do it and we are going to do it. Q513 Rosemary McKenna: I do not understand the argument you are putting forward between economic development and tourism. If tourism is your main industry in the area then clearly that should be where most of the economic development money goes. Why is it not part of the economic development budget of the authority? Mr Robinson: It is part of the process. The point I was trying to make was at the moment it is a discretionary function and when budgets are under pressure it tends to be discretionary functions that suffer. The issue is that because of the way the tourism industry works in a rural area, because so much of it is seasonal, much of it is relatively poorly paid, much of it is part-time, and in terms of improving our economy we need to diversify and encourage other forms of employment. Our recent focus has been to try and encourage higher paying jobs to come in and give us a broader diversified economy. Tourism is important but we have spent a lot of time attracting other forms of employment to give us a broader economic base. Q514 Rosemary McKenna: Is there still disagreement between the various bodies about the importance of the RDAs now that they have got tourism as part of their strategy? I certainly was very impressed by Juliet Williams when she came before the Committee and seemed extremely focused on how they could help the tourist industry. Mr Robinson: I guess from our point of view at the moment we do not know what will be the implications. There must be a potential risk with yet another regional body involved that there is perhaps confusion, perhaps more bureaucracy. I am not sure that we are in a position to make a judgment on whether it is going to be successful or not, at least from the South Hams' perspective. Mr Bell: Maybe I am in a better position to answer. We work very closely with the Southwest RDA and I do see the issues as dovetailed, to use your term. We are the delivery agent for lots of practical things to do with tourism. You have to look at things like the Rural Development Programme for England with large amounts of European money and a large chunk of that, about 14 million, for the development of rural tourism. That is where we work very closely with the RDA. The same is true on the skills agenda because that is where it crosses. Sometimes I do believe that tourism has suffered from being in a tourism silo and not part of a more integrated approach. To me, tourism has several facets. It is an economic force and these days that is probably not so much of an argument because the economy is not doing badly. Increasingly, it delivers on the cultural agenda, the sporting agenda, and I was even talking to the play people today about the new play initiative and play agenda to integrate play into the tourism activities. Tourism can be a tool for many things and that is where it is important it is integrated at local level, but the regional integration is absolutely vital or else you have got the Economic Development Agency dealing with the economy and then you have got this strange little thing over here called "tourism", which I think is disastrous if it is out there on a limb and that is why I am delighted with the way we work. Q515 Alan Keen: We are a scrutiny committee, we have not got executive power, but our report will go back to DCMS and they will have to respond to it. We came here to get the flavour of how it works at a very local level, and thank you very much for entertaining us, so is there anything you would like us to say in our report that is going to DCMS? Each of you has spoken very well about the problems of allocating money at different levels, but what would you like us to say? Mr Bell: Shall I start with my shopping list? Ms Pearson: You get your shopping list and I will get mine. Q516 Alan Keen: You do not need to be diplomatic, we will turn it into diplomacy. Mr Bell: Not because I agree with it and not just ranting and raving for more money and tax cuts, because there does not seem to be much opportunity for that, I have looked at a shopping list of what should be easy to do without having to raise taxes or find money from other sources. There is a challenge on the better regulation issue. You have probably been bored with the latest visa farce, not only the cost but to get a visa to come to the UK you have to fill it out in English. Q517 Chairman: We have heard a lot of evidence about visas but we have not heard that specifically. Mr Bell: Oh, yes, to get a visa to come to the UK you have to fill it out in English. I would suggest that if we were going to China we would find it quite difficult to fill out a form in Mandarin. Those sorts of barriers, to my mind, are just totally unacceptable. Likewise, I think we could be a lot smarter. There are things going on at the moment within fire regs and the food regulations about scores on the doors. I will not go into the details but we need to get a sensible approach to tourism. If there are issues and they need enforcing then enforce them, but we need sensible approaches and, again, tourism seems to be excluded. On the specifics, one of the things we are very keen on in the southwest is sustainability and green tourism, and all accolades to South Hams where it started, but one of the challenges is how do we get more companies to get accredited to get the recognition up. I think there are easy wins within government circles. If the Government is keen on and supportive of sustainability why are the accreditation schemes not seen as part of the scoring profile on procurement of government services? If most hotels, including this one, which is green accredited, knew to get a government contract it would help to be green accredited you could give the biggest boost to the accreditation of businesses to become green accredited and all the positive things that come with that with no actual money. The other area I would plug away at as a keen supporter, and I know it has already been raised, is double summertime, a one billion , two billion boost with no cost to anybody. The farmers in the southwest support it. Chairman: I am afraid, however, that last Friday the House of Commons did not. Q518 Rosemary McKenna: Again! Mr Bell: It is just remarkable that there is such a simple thing that does not need money that would boost things, help with safety, help the economy, help lots of things in the food industry. The other one is to get real support for what was raised in the Partners for England initiative about getting all the players in a room with a Partners for England type approach and agree the game plan. Sometimes in tourism, as you have probably noticed, it does seem a rather crowded pitch of players tripping over each other and occasionally missing the goal, and that is me being polite, and we do need that rallying call. The last one, I will not go on too long, I have got a longer list, is the most underused tool in public administration and that is the planning system. We have real challenges sometimes when we talk about quality of quite dated hotel stock at times, which is not their problem but the ability to do negotiations with property developers to say, "You can demolish that hotel and go for your fancy apartments", which are very profitable, "but we want a serviced hotel or an apartment hotel and some issues addressed on affordable housing for staff sorted within the same deal". That does not need government money, again, it just needs a new approach to the planning rules. We need to refresh our resorts, we need to refresh our areas, we have buildings that are quite old and need supporting. There is a very vibrant property market still, let us see how we get a decent deal which means we keep our holiday accommodation, they get their profits and we sort out some of the other issues. That is a quick gambol through what I would say are things that would not necessarily cost Government money, we just need to be smarter, if I may be so rude. Q519 Chairman: A quick shopping list? Ms Pearson: I am just going to hit on two things, because Malcolm has pretty much covered the other ones, double summertime and also GTBS. Number one is really seeing if especially for the resorts we can bring tourism back as a statutory function, which it should be because it supports the largest sector of the economy as well as the jobs and the emphasis has to be brought back for that to be a statutory function, especially in the resort areas. I would say as many areas as possible where the economy is mainly dependent on tourism, but definitely in the case of coastal tourism. The answer to everything is not supposed to be money, but it is going to sound like all my answers are about this. Number two is investing within the coastal resorts in the United Kingdom, which is extremely important. I think more and more people are going to get sick of taking off their shoes and belts and queuing for hours and sometimes it costs more to park at the airport than your actual ticket. I think there is going to come a time, especially with the price of oil going up and up, when those cheap tickets will not be so cheap. I do feel we are going to be back on the right foot in a very short period of time. More and more people are looking at doing short breaks to areas such as ours. I would also like to see more investment into VisitBritain, into marketing us overseas, and allowing the local authorities, especially in coastal resorts and areas where tourism is a high priority, to market ourselves because we are the most efficient people to do it, we are on the ground, we are talking to the businesses, we know what is happening and it would be easier for us to orchestrate not only the marketing but do the statistical analysis and have more robust figures so when we do go to inquiries such as this we can say to you without a doubt, "We know X per cent of people say this and the return is Y per cent" and currently we cannot do that because everybody and their dog is doing it. Those are my two points. Q520 Chairman: Thank you. Mr Robinson: A quick couple of points from South Hams' perspective. If tourist support does become a statutory requirement, fine, but can we make the plea that it comes with funding. We have lots of statutory requirements emerging and never have the funding, in fact the funding reduces. I will make a couple of other points just to reinforce the issue about sustainable green tourism. Bear in mind if we are going to get people to change their behaviour as part of the climate change agenda we have got a real opportunity to market holidaying at home, "Have a great time and reduce your impact on the planet", and that is something we should be putting through in national quality grading schemes. One other point that nobody has raised but it has started to be talked about is in relation to the welcome and the recruitment and retention of quality staff, which is really important in the service industry, and the respect we give to people who work in the tourism sector that is pretty key. Low pay in this sector is a real problem and there is an incredible high cost of housing in South Hams, I am sure you are aware of it. One of the issues around promoting yourself as a holiday area is when you get over 10% of your stock is second homes and we need to remember the implications that has for the other parts of the local community. If you add second homes plus the stock that is then let out as holiday cottages it is quite a difficult balance between promoting tourism and recognising the wider sustainability of rural communities. That is a really big issue. Q521 Alan Keen: Could I ask you about second homes. There must be a big difference between a family that has a second home and comes three or four times a year and the rest of the time it is empty and somebody who has a second home but lets it out part of the time. Could you explain how that works and how you regard the two different types of purchase? Mr Robinson: Our perception is that people who rent out their accommodation are probably more beneficial to our economy because you tend to have people there more often and they will spend more readily in the local community. The issue around second homes is clearly those people do make a contribution to the local community but it is a question of how often it is occupied and clearly it is incredibly difficult if those properties are left empty. The problem is that is mainly anecdotal. Blowing the trumpet for South Hams, we have also got Beacon status for our work around affordable housing as well as green tourism and we are using some of the Beacon money we have got to do a review of the impact of second homes and to test whether our assumptions about it is better to have holiday cottages let as opposed to second homes is actually true. We hope that document will be published later this year, so I may be able to give you the answers. Q522 Alan Keen: Is there anything you would like us to say about it? Mr Robinson: It is about this balance in promoting tourism. In a rural area where it is difficult to deliver new affordable housing, cheap housing, the more attractive your area is and the more you promote tourism, the more risk there is that accommodation goes to second homes. It is about the whole agenda of rural communities and their future vitality and viability. I do not know the answer to that but it is something we need to be aware of. Mr Bell: If I could add something. One of the great successes over the last ten years has been the sheer quality of some of the self-catering stock we have got. As Alan said, if second homes are rented then you are talking of several hundred pounds to even over a thousand pounds per week plus the food and drink market, and we all know they tend to use more local food and drink than us locals. To a certain level it is a contributor and it is healthy, but it is when it goes too far and starts to decay the community and take something away from the experience. One of the challenges we are going to have is what is the right level and composition. Certainly as a driving force for tourism our self-catering market is quite significant and the quality of our market. A slight bit of levity at the end maybe. I was talking to a Devon farmer the other day who had been in tourism for 30 years and he said, "I don't understand this any more. When I got into tourism the visitors had the mattress after I'd finished with it, now I'm having to spend a fortune on their bathrooms, 20,000 here and 30,000 there, and have spectacular houses I couldn't afford to live in". That is the way the market has gone and self-catering has become a big transformation, but self-catering can also be rented second homes and if you end up with a village just full of them then you actually destroy the product. Q523 Alan Keen: Your comment on visitors coming down and drinking more than you do, we could have taken offence if you had come tomorrow and said that, but you have not seen us yet! I am especially interested in air transport because my constituents provide more jobs at Heathrow than any other constituency but also suffer the noise, so I have a fascination and a particular duty to talk about air transport. What difference has Exeter Airport and its expansion made? What else would you like to see happen, integration in any way on a national basis? Mr Bell: Having come across as being overly critical of low-cost airlines, the one thing about operators like Flybe is that they have reconnected us to the north and Scotland. If I go back in the statistics, in the 1970s we used to have a lot of visitors from Yorkshire and the northeast, and particularly Scotland, but that was when they were on their fortnight breaks so it was worth the pain of coming down on the road system, but for a lot of those customers on a short break, three or four days, the thought of driving down from Newcastle for a couple of days in the southwest and driving back or, even dare we say, on the train is not attractive. Flybe and people like that have really opened up routes. On the overseas market, although we have done better we have not done as well because we have not got the gateways. What I hope, and this is getting round to answering your question, is places like Exeter Airport can reconnect us with past markets but, more importantly, with our wonderful coastal path and coast generally, connect us to Central Europe a lot more with some of those other low-cost operators so that the Germans, the Dutch, the Belgians and, increasingly, the Hungarians and Czechs can come here and experience our product by flying straight into the region. No disrespect to Heathrow or Gatwick, they are not the most wonderful experience to come through and if you are only on a short break and want to do walking or experience the southwest you do not want to have to go through London. Ms Pearson: We have just invested into a campaign with Flybe because we believe we can regain a lot of the markets in the north as well as the European markets. According to their figures, 700,000 people both enter and exit Exeter Airport on Flybe and, especially because we are doing a campaign with Avis quite soon, we are looking at people who are going to fly in, get a car and come down for their short break. Right now they are marketing us on their website and they are doing an e-marketing campaign with us. We are really investing in this because we see this as a very positive tool for getting new customers and hopefully some of the old customers back. Mr Robinson: From our perspective it is difficult to make a judgment. It is a double-edged sword because it may be easier to come in but it is also a lot easier to go out. We would have had local tourism within the region which may have come to the South Hams from Bristol, say, but may decide to go abroad rather than come down to us. It is difficult for us to make a judgment from our perspective. Q524 Mr Sanders: One statistical question. You gave some stats earlier about the value of tourism but what would be really interesting to know is how much of the money that is spent in tourism stays in the local economy today compared with 20 or 30 years ago. Unless you can get that statistic it is very difficult to give a true value of tourism to the local economy. Discuss. Mr Bell: I can kick off in one regard without being able to give you that statistic. The one thing that has changed quite dramatically is where visitors are spending. Thirty pence in the pound goes on food and drink and 27% goes on retail. The days of coming down with a tin of sandwiches and a flask of coffee have gone, lunching out, dining out, eating out in the evening is very strong and there are statistics on how that rattles through into the local food and drink sector. It is only about 21% on accommodation because tourism does include day visits. There have been quite big shifts in where the visitor spend goes. If you went back 20 or 30 years ago the amount on accommodation would have been a lot larger and the other aspects of food and drink and retail smaller. That reflects some of the changes in visitor patterns where shopping is part of a holiday experience. Ms Pearson: Even though we do not have any concrete statistics on this I am going to give you my professional guestimate that a significant percentage of revenue stays in the English Riviera because a large proportion of our businesses are SMEs or micro-businesses, ma and pa operations. I am not just talking about direct tourism businesses now, I am also talking about retail and even our petrol stations, post offices. Just from using those kinds of levels of intelligence in figuring this out, I would say a large proportion of that revenue would stay in this area. At this current moment in time, although we do know Whitbread is investing, we have very few national chains here where that money would be going elsewhere. If you were going to tackle me down to a percentage I would say 90% of the revenue would stay in the Bay. Q525 Mr Sanders: That sounds very, very high. Part of the problem is there are not these statistics, it is all guesswork. Ms Pearson: No, unfortunately there are not. I am just basing that on the number of local businesses. Q526 Mr Sanders: One of the things that we have been discovering through this inquiry is that it is the lack of statistics that more than anything has probably held the industry back. Ms Pearson: I agree with you, and this is why I am also pinning my hopes on the fact that with Partners for England we will iron this out and have one robust mechanism for measuring these statistics so we all fill out one form with one set of questions, no matter how comprehensive, even if there was an incentive not just for the businesses to fill out the forms but also the local authorities and to then hand these forms in to wherever they need to go, be it VisitBritain or DCMS, so they can compile these statistics. We do need to do this as a matter of urgency. We all had to give key statements into Partners for England on what we wished out of this and that was exactly what I wished for, our statistics to be robust. Mr Bell: We use a proxy measure. When it comes up to Easter, and you hear me saying, "What's Easter going to be like", as Southwest Tourism we do not go for the statistics, we go to the linen hire companies and laundries. When they say, "Last year was 15% down" and the national statistics come through, those guys hold records and something like linen records, not being funny, are a good base model because they do not change with the weather, they do not change with anything else, and if those guys tell me it is 2% up or 2% down I believe the guys washing the sheets more than I do government statistics. That is a bit of a sad reflection. Mr Robinson: From South Hams' perspective in a rural area it is even more extreme in terms of the number of very small businesses and micro businesses. We are pretty confident, given the nature of our area, that a lot of money does stay locally and you can see that in the number of small businesses, and particularly food and drink is a really big issue. Also in historic towns it is quite difficult for some of the major corporate bodies, whether they are retailers or hotels, to get in there and because they are small buildings they often are very much local businesses. We think there is a significant amount of spend captured in South Hams. Q527 Chairman: Aviva, I have got a question specifically for you, I think. The Committee came to Torbay because we wanted to visit a traditional English seaside resort and we are aware of the problems facing seaside resorts. This afternoon we have talked to amusement arcade operators, we have visited Paignton Pier and we have heard about the problems that traditional businesses, like arcade operators and the attractions on the pier, are facing. We also heard about the hopes that might come from the establishment of a new casino in Torbay. Do you see the tourist package on offer as changing? Should we adapt to a different kind of tourism package? Should we accept that perhaps the days of 'Kiss Me Quick' hats and arcades are now disappearing? Ms Pearson: I never want to see a 'Kiss Me Quick' hat in Torbay as long as I am here in post. I would like to think we are raising our offer anyway as seen by the marketing. As I was telling you before, we have totally changed the face of who we are addressing to come here either as a short break or a main holiday, and it is working. As I said before, for the first time since 1999 we are back into double digits in the AB1 market, which is the higher spend. I will tell you right now a casino as a product, if it is done in a certain way, which I will explain in a moment, would be a welcome addition to what we have on offer. It would need to be part of an overall entertainment package. It would have to have dinner theatre, a conference centre, it would need to be an iconic building, because it is only a small casino. We are talking a very small part of what could be a very big revenue generator as well as an employer. There are a lot of things we could do with somebody should they come and develop something like this in the Bay, the actual casino operators themselves, where we could say to them, "Fine, we want to see you train this many people in the Bay and it has to have X many local people from this Bay employed. You need to repair this much of the harbour", so section 106, which is something we do anyway. I feel the casino, as a product, would fit very well in here. I mean a tasteful casino. I know today on the pier the gentlemen who were there from BACTA were trying to compare us with Las Vegas and Dubai, but those are totally the wrong people to compare us with because regardless, if we have a casino or not, we need to compare ourselves like for like. You can compare us to Atlantic City and we will beat them hands-down and I would say that to anybody from Atlantic city. We have so much product on offer here and a casino would fit in very well with the offer that we currently have. Q528 Chairman: And arcades and bingo halls are also part of that offer? Ms Pearson: They are already here and obviously if a developer approaches them and wants to make them into a 5 star resort and that is where we would be pushing, we cannot say it is not welcome. There is still a segment of the visitor population we have coming here for their short breaks and main holidays who do want to go to bingo halls. Do not forget that amusement arcades are there for the children and casinos do not let anyone in who is under-18, so they still have to have that element of entertainment. If a family says it is okay for their son to spend his pocket money on trying to win one of those crazy frogs, who are we to stop them from enjoying themselves? As long as there is a market for that, and the gentlemen you spoke to this afternoon at Paignton Pier said there was one, then we are addressing a proportion of the population who feel that is entertainment. Q529 Mr Sanders: I would like to ask about the Olympics. This week LOCOG announced the details of the Cultural Olympiad, which is tailor made for seaside resorts to back on to. Does the southwest see itself as being a venue for a major Cultural Olympiad event? If so, what? Aviva and Alan, are your areas going to be putting in bids to be part of the Cultural Olympiad? Ms Pearson: From what I understand, yes, we are, through our Culture and Leisure Department and working in co-ordination we will be putting together a bid. I do see this as a fantastic way of offering, just like we did for SeaBritain. I can see us operating the same way with this Cultural Olympiad between the arts and culture and we can put together a fantastic offer together with everyone else in the southwest. Mr Robinson: From South Hams' perspective we have not made a judgment on it and I do not know the details of the proposals. The issue we have had in relation to the Olympics is it is going to be happening during the summer and that is when we are pretty full. Q530 Mr Sanders: The Cultural Olympiad runs for four years in the run-up, so you could run an event next year, the following year, the following year and the following year. Mr Robinson: We have not made a judgment or discussed that as a corporate body yet. Mr Bell: My view, and I totally agree with Alan, is the biggest enemy to sustainability of tourism, the economy or anything else is seasonality and there is not an awful lot we can do about that, but yes there is and that is called clever events and clever activities that feature us outside so people are not coming necessarily thinking they must have sunshine but are coming to a great part of the world. The whole approach to a major events strategy, incorporating all the local events, gets that richness across. It is quite right, we have got a great opportunity to get our acts together on events that feature in those lull periods, and we do get them. We have got Easter coming up, but we know we get a lull after that increasingly in the shoulder from May through to the school holidays because of SATs tests and whatever. It is a great opportunity to lay on events at that particular time as well as other lull points which will attract markets which are not deterred through external factors such as the school holidays and SATs. We have to be cute and clever about it and if you are laying on an event for tourists it has got to be as popular, if not more, with local people and we should get two hits on it. I think it is a great opportunity to get our events approach right. Q531 Mr Sanders: Is the southwest expecting more visitors during the year of 2012 or fewer? Mr Bell: If we get it wrong there will be fewer. I am a man who took up this job when the eclipse came along. What I mean by if we get it wrong is the first message is we have to make sure people do not think they have got to stay away. The first challenge of communication is making sure that people do not go, "Oh, the Olympics are on, we have got to stay away" and you can build on it. You have to take this market by market. Six million people in the Commonwealth owe their roots to the southwest, genealogy is the third most popular thing on the Internet and we have got great opportunities to say, "If your name comes from here and you are coming for the Olympics, come down to the southwest". You can use it in different ways to deliver your second objective, which is to have more, but it has got to be very cute with the events, the activities, how you tackle different markets and the connection of Plymouth with the American market. We can be cute about it, but if we get it wrong there will be less. Q532 Philip Davies: Can I ask one final thing of Malcolm which we cannot let not be asked. In the written submission from Helpful Holidays, who are going to give evidence next, they said: "We believe that the activities of Southwest tourism are not highly valued by the majority of accommodation, attraction or other businesses who serve the needs of visitors to the southwest. Only a minority of businesses are members." They are the people at the chalk face of this, so how would you respond to the accusation that you are more of a hindrance than a help to them? Mr Bell: We have got 5,000 members, so that is not a small number. There are probably about 15,000 businesses in the whole, but if you take those 5,000 members they represent the vast majority of National Quality Assured, so it is a large, large number. The challenge in the business I would segment in different ways. If this was a massive industry run by corporates we would not be needed, but it is a massive industry run by small and micro businesses. The ones that are very good and very effective in their marketing because they have backgrounds in other areas can get on and do lots of themselves, and they should. We are here to help businesses more at a destination level to help them with operational issues about filling their beds this year and doing things like that, or else they will be exposed. Regionally we are here looking at the markets for the future to keep them competitive because there is not that operational and corporate planning strategic role. There is validity in the point that not all businesses need Tourist Boards, and in an ideal world they would not need a Tourist Board because they would have the skills and ability to do it, but we have a very fragmented industry which is massive in terms of economic value but run by micro and small businesses, which is our strength in giving us some uniqueness and diversity but it is also our weakness in working with them. I do argue that we have got a role but I would not argue that everybody should be a member and everybody needs Southwest Tourism, the more that do not because they can do it themselves the better. Chairman: Can I thank the three of you very much. Memoranda submitted by Tamar Valley Tourism Association and Helpful Holidays Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Ms Lynne Hookings, Chairman, Torbay Tourism Forum, Mr John Milne Home, Secretary, Tamar Valley Tourism Association, and Mr Moray Bowater, General Manager, Helpful Holidays, gave evidence. Q533 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. Q534 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. Q535 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. Q536 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. Q537 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 ten 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. Q538 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. Q539 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. Q540 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. Q541 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 Lynn 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. Q542 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 --- Q543 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. Q544 Mr Hall: Could I return to the issue of quality. Moray, you said quality has to be good to provide value, yet the industry only has a voluntary code of practice in terms of looking at the quality of accommodation, which is the National Quality Accreditation Scheme. From what I can gather it is not universally popular. John, you mentioned the cost of this, £60 to £70 to register and it is £140 a year for the inspection. It does not guarantee any extra bookings and the system is quite inflexible. Mr Milne Home: Absolutely. Q545 Mr Hall: I suppose you are absolutely delighted that it is a voluntary scheme and not a compulsory scheme. Mr Milne Home: If you turned it into a tax and said all accommodation providers had to be registered, as I see it that would be the only way. Of our 140 members, about 80 are accommodation providers, 34 have NQAS and I reckon of that 40-plus if we said, "You have to be NQAS", as people like SECTA does out of Looe, we would lose half of them, if not more, who would just say, "I am not interested because it does not affect our bookings at all". In fact, when we first went into this business eight years ago, they asked, "Have you got a rolling pin here", although I think they have got past that stage, so we found it was a detriment and never publicised that we had been inspected. It is much better now and people do go for 4 star, 5 star or whatever. Q546 Mr Hall: But you would not countenance for this scheme to be compulsory? Mr Milne Home: No. There are so many ways of getting at this it could be so much more flexible. At the moment they say, "You will join us and you will pay this £140", but you can either go and be inspected through people like Moray's organisation or --- Q547 Mr Hall: You are anticipating my next question. If this scheme is not the scheme, what should we be doing? Mr Milne Home: They need to look at different standards. You could have something which says, "You have been inspected" and, therefore, the powers that be know that you are of a given standard, but at the moment it is gold plated and that is what is turning people off. My members are small, very small. I have three large hotels but the rest are small units like mine, a few houses they let, bed and breakfast, et cetera, restaurants, they are just not interested, they are getting the business so why spend that 200 quid plus. Q548 Mr Hall: You do not see the need for this particular type of scheme? Mr Milne Home: Quality is vital, absolutely vital. Somebody said that the need is going up and I am not against it, but what I am against is the VisitBritain syndrome which is the gold plated, cost an arm and a leg and we do not get the benefit. Q549 Mr Hall: There is no financial return for you at all? Mr Milne Home: Southwest Tourism provides various things like a good scheme for using credit cards, as an example, so that is a benefit, but for a weekly let, self-catering, you ask for a cheque; bed and breakfasts are more likely to use a credit card. There are benefits and if it was a reasonable price I would push it, but I cannot push into the TAVATA organisation because people would laugh me out of court. Q550 Mr Hall: Does that find an echo with you? Ms Hookings: No, it is the opposite in Torbay because to go in the English Riviera Guide you have to be graded. Mr Milne Home: That is what I mean, you have to be graded. To advertise in the Tourist Information Centres you have to be graded. We are paying for it but we cannot go in there because we are not graded. Ms Hookings: But you have to give your customers an assurance of what they are booking. If I was marketing myself I would be bound to say, "I am wonderful". If I am marketing my property, "Oh, it's wonderful". You have to have a form of inspection which is neutral that is going to tell you whether you are wonderful and you are 2 star or 5 star. Customers are looking for assurance. It is one thing booking whatever the property, serviced or non-serviced, on the basis of a star rating, and you might never book less than 3, you might always book 5, I do not know, but --- Q551 Mr Hall: This gives you the choice. Ms Hookings: You would tell yourself that is the sort of rating you would trust or you would go on word of mouth. You might go somewhere that is not rated if you have got a jolly good recommendation to go there, but word of mouth is nothing like as widespread as going on a rating scheme. I do not run a hotel anymore, but as a professional hotelier I have always been a believer in AA - RAC has gone - in getting a grading and assuring my customers of what they are likely to expect when they come to us and, indeed, if they do not get it they have every right to say to me, "What on earth are you going to do about it?" and put it right. Q552 Mr Hall: You would not like to see this scheme made compulsory? Mr Milne Home: We would believe it was a tax and I do not see why you should not have some measure of inspection coming through the organisations like Farm & Cottage and the one Moray runs which gives you a grading. Farm & Cottage will not accept a cottage which is not 3 star. They come once a year, have a quick look round, "Are we damp?", no, everything is smart, clean and correct. Q553 Mr Hall: Moray, how does this impact on your business? Mr Bowater: We started star rating self-catering cottages 25 years ago when we started the business. VisitBritain started their star rating scheme about five years ago. Q554 Mr Hall: You have got a bit more experience. Mr Bowater: We have got a bit more experience, we think. The most important thing to remember about grading schemes is that they are primarily marketing tools. It is a marketing tool for the business that participates in the grading scheme. The only purpose of going into a grading scheme is to attract more business to your business so that you can boast about whatever grading you have got. Inspections and gradings on their own do not drive up quality, it is the market that drives up quality, customers saying, "I want to go to that 4 star place or that 5 star place" and it is customers understanding what 3, 4 or 5 star means to them that drives up quality or drives the market to deliver accommodation or a product of the appropriate quality. We could all be 5 star if we were all prepared to invest the money but there would not be the market to support an entire market full of 5 star accommodation. The grading scheme is designed to try and give customers an idea of where that accommodation stands and it has got to be seen to be reasonably independent and reliable. Our customers obviously see our grading scheme as independent and reliable and we push that very hard to them. We think it is very rigorous and we work very hard on training our staff to make sure they know what they are doing and make sure the properties in our portfolio meet the expectations of our customers and we dump those that do not. John also mentioned the discrepancy between our inspection scheme and whether or not that is accepted as an official inspection scheme and the NQAS, which obviously is. This seems mad to me, to be honest. We have been doing it for a long time and about 100,000 people a year come on holiday to our cottages and very few of them complain about what they find. That is a vote of confidence which is beyond anything that anyone else can say about it really. Q555 Chairman: I live in Essex and if I wanted to come on holiday to Torbay I would go on the Internet and I would want to compare different possible accommodation providers and I would find it very useful. How do I know that your accreditation scheme, your star rating, is the same as another company's? What you might call 3 star somebody else might call 1 star. Mr Bowater: Do you have a feel for what you might call 5 star? Q556 Chairman: I have an idea of what I think 5 star means. Mr Bowater: And 3 star, 4 star, et cetera. Amazingly, if you go round and look at the various schemes they almost all coincide with what people intuitively understand to be about 3 star or 4 star or 5 star. Of course, all of these grading schemes are all star ratings but by a process of evolution they have sort of rubbed into one another. We reckon that our grading scheme is about a star, half a star, because we do half stars, better than VisitBritain, so something they would give 4 stars to we would give 31/2 stars to and something they would give 5 we would give 41/2 and so on. Does that really matter? I do not think it matters from a customer's point of view. Lots of people want to book our holidays and that seems to prove that it does not matter. Q557 Rosemary McKenna: I think it does matter and I think it matters because families who book, particularly families on a tight budget looking to get a holiday for their family either in a budget accommodation hotel, a bed and breakfast or a cottage, if they turn up and find they are in a damp, smelly, horrible place that really they do not want to stay in they are torn between allowing their children to stay or having to go home and not have a holiday. Do you not think a national scheme is the way to make sure that people know the standard of accommodation they are booking? Mr Bowater: No, because I do not think a national scheme guarantees that it will not be damp, smelly and nasty, because the inspector could have come round in October and they are going on holiday the following September and there have been 12 months since the inspection took place and in that time the property may have changed hands and you might have a new owner who is not nearly as conscientious as the old owner. There is nothing that guarantees a level of quality. Q558 Rosemary McKenna: They would surely have someone to complain to. That is the thing, they have got a comeback. Mr Bowater: Of course, that is exactly what happens. If someone arrives at one of our cottages and they think we have mis-graded it they are on the blower to me straight away. Q559 Rosemary McKenna: Yes, but you are not independent. Mr Bowater: Of course I am independent. I do not own the cottage, I am the agent who lets it. We have a commercial interest in making sure that those people do not phone us up. If they do there are commercial consequences of them phoning us up and complaining. I would have to do something about it and, most importantly, I would have to answer my mobile phone on a Saturday afternoon when I would prefer not to. There are strong incentives for the agency to ensure that the accommodation is of good quality and it does match the star rating we have given it. Q560 Chairman: What about all the B&Bs and little independents, do they say, "I think I am a 4 star"? You are an agent but lots of people do not use agents, they are independent, stand-alone accommodation providers. Mr Bowater: Yes, and in theory any independent could put on their website, "I reckon I am 5 star", they could do. Q561 Chairman: Or they could say, "4 star hotel", they do not need to say who has decided they are 4 star. Mr Bowater: Absolutely, they could. Q562 Chairman: But if you have a national scheme it has a symbol and it says, "This is accredited by an independent inspectorate". Mr Bowater: VisitBritain have spent some money on trying to explain to the population nationally that they have a scheme and this is what it means. Similarly, we have spent a certain amount of money over the years explaining to the population, or people who have been interested in our cottages, what we do, what it means and why we are reliable doing that. People trust ours and people trust theirs. There is room for lots of schemes but they have to be sufficiently well trusted by the public and as long as they are then they are useful both to the people who are booking holidays and also people who are delivering accommodation. I would not trust someone who just put on their website, "I reckon I am 4 star". Ms Hookings: I think there is a big difference between inspecting the properties that you market and having an independent inspector come in. I believe in self-catering they actually make appointments but in the hotel sector they arrive totally unannounced and I think that is of far greater value. I would not, however, say that VisitBritain has got NQAS correct and there is still a lot of confusion. Even I do not know what is a guest accommodation, a guest accom, or a guesthouse, I could not tell you, and I am in the trade. Of course, the problem they have got is their awareness campaign to the public of what you get if you stay in a 4 star guest accom or guesthouse or boutique hotel, whatever level they are inspecting. It is very difficult if they have not made enough money available to market the campaign and the value of independently inspected businesses. This is the downfall of the NQAS, the average person on the street does not quite know what all the different qualifiers mean. We have got rid of the diamonds, so we are 1 to 5 stars, be it self-catering or serviced accommodation, but I do not think the average man on the street quite understands exactly what all the different qualifying terms are underneath and that is the weakness of it. Q563 Rosemary McKenna: If we could move on to EnglandNet and, Moray, I believe you are challenging that through the European Commission. VisitBritain defended it very strongly when they came to us and said, "We are not a booking agency but we do pass on something like half a million pounds' worth of business a year". Do you still stand by your criticism? Mr Bowater: Absolutely. I was quite horrified to hear what Tom had to say about EnglandNet. Q564 Chairman: To us? Mr Bowater: To you. I listened to the tape on your website and I also read the transcript. I cannot remember whether it was Hugh or Tom who answered the question. Mr Sanders, I think you asked the question and it was a question which was clearly aimed at asking what the problem was with the booking system associated with EnglandNet and the answer came back, "EnglandNet is not a booking system", which is technically correct, but it was not an open answer to your question. EnglandNet is the database which sits behind all of VisitBritain's websites. It is a distribution system. It was set up and built and the project was originally designed for one main reason and that was to take bookings online and earn commission for VisitBritain and generate a revenue stream. EnglandNet sits behind all of the VisitBritain websites. Am I allowed to quote? Q565 Chairman: You are allowed to quote. Mr Bowater: This is a quote from the VisitEngland strategy document from Tom Wright to the Board of VisitEngland dated 29 November 2007: "enjoyengland.com", which is one of VisitBritain's primary websites, he says on page two, "will become the primary marketing channel. It will become the key site for visitors looking to travel in England with dynamic content changing on a daily basis to encourage repeat visits and loyalty. There will be much greater visibility of commercial and bookable products through the site with a clear call to action". All of that is driven by the EnglandNet database. When we initially made our complaint to the Commission in 2004, having tried to explain to VisitBritain why there was a problem, VisitBritain very quickly closed down the company which at that time was developing EnglandNet which was called Networks for Tourism. Tom Wright gave me, as the representative of a consortium of about 45 companies who were all supporting our complaint, certain assurances that they would not continue to develop EnglandNet as a booking agent. Actually, what they did was encourage RDAs, regional Tourist Boards and local authorities to develop their own websites with booking engines in them so that they could simply refer the inquiries down the line to the local authorities where the bookings would take place on their websites, thereby getting round the State Aid rules that had been explained to them by the Commission that they were in breach of. That is the course that they have been pursuing for the last four years despite a renewal of our complaint to the Commission in 2006 and an explanation of the reasons why we wanted to do that. The Commission, I should add, has come back to VisitBritain and has told them there are extremely serious issues with the EnglandNet system and the fact of the interoperability between EnglandNet, regional Tourist Board websites, local authority websites and what are called destination management systems, which are funded by the public sector. The State Aid rules on this are very clear and VisitBritain have encouraged local authorities and RDAs and regional Tourist Boards to invest in these systems and it is very likely that the Commission will find them in breach of the State Aid rules both on the grounds of taking bookings and also on the inclusion only of accommodation which has been graded to NQAS. They are going to get into all sorts of trouble over it. Q566 Mr Sanders: In a sense, does EnglandNet unnecessarily duplicate the role of your own company and perhaps the Tamar Valley Tourism Association and other like bodies? Mr Milne Home: We are not a booking organisation. All I would say about EnglandNet, and I had not heard of it until I found out you were going to ask questions on it, is in a way we are the enemy, you might say, as far as they are concerned because they do not want us to progress into a booking agency, not that I think we would. I would ask the question, what in the hell are they doing developing this. If you go on holiday and you want to go to Cornwall, you type in "Cornwall" and up comes Cornwall, or "The Tamar Valley, or Looe or Dartmoor" or whatever it is, you type it in and you go there. What in the hell are they doing trying to be Big Brother from the centre. Q567 Mr Sanders: That was actually the questioning of them in Committee and I was not convinced by the answers. Mr Milne Home: I would also make a comment about money. Nothing comes down to the Tourist Association, it just gets creamed off on these projects and it is more jobs for the boys as far as one can make out. Sorry about that. Q568 Alan Keen: Could I come back to something that was touched on earlier, which was the branding. Somebody, I have forgotten who it was now, illustrated how successful Cornwall has been and there is Cornish this and Cornish that. Do you agree, therefore, that the RDAs cover too large an area and it would be better if the money came down to places which could be identified rather than the RDA saying, "Come to Southwest England", which does not mean as much as Cornwall or Devon would? Ms Hookings: As local operators we would like it to be much more localised rather than marketing the whole of the southwest from Land's End up to Gloucester. Q569 Alan Keen: First of all, you feel there is not enough money spent on the English regions compared with Wales and Scotland? Ms Hookings: Absolutely. Q570 Alan Keen: You also think in England, where you are affected, it should not come to an RDA which says, "Come to the southwest" but to areas much more focused, like Devon or Cornwall? Before you answer that, apart from the specific problem both of you at the end have got with EnglandNet, do you feel that private businesses are not involved directly enough in what happens to public money? Ms Hookings: The way I understood what was said earlier by the previous speakers was that Cornwall has overtaken Devon in terms of the Wow! factor and drawing people down into Cornwall. We all know why: Objective 1 money, the fantastic infrastructure they have now got, the wonderful tourist attractions they have got, the money they have to spend on their regeneration schemes, their hotels and everything else, which sadly here in particular in Torbay we have not had. We have had a little bit of Objective 2 funding but nothing like the volume of money that has gone into Cornwall. Because of that they are able to stand tall, be proud and very bold about offering their product in Cornwall. In terms of regionalisation, if you were going to the Scilly Isles for a holiday you would probably zone into the Scilly Isles first and then you would choose which part of the Scilly Isles you want to stay at, whichever area I am trying to give as an example. Devon certainly should have a much stronger brand rather than just being part of the southwest. I am not undervaluing what Southwest Tourism do in terms of marketing the southwest but I do think we have to be a little bit more, not localised but county-ised, if you like. Q571 Alan Keen: I have got a Middlesbrough accent still but I spent 45 years in West London and when I see the northeast of England marketed, and there are some wonderful places, some wonderful coastline, I would be more attracted to something describing Northumberland and the castles and separately the Yorkshire Moors, which I identify with very well myself. Do you agree with me that is where the concentration should be, on smaller units? Ms Hookings: Yes. Mr Bowater: Southwest Tourism have done some interesting research on this and there are a number of brands that the public recognise in the West Country. One of them is Cornwall which they recognise as a complete brand; another is Devon; and, within Devon, Dartmoor is recognised as a brand and when you say Dartmoor to people they say, "Oh, yes, that's down in Devon, isn't it?" and it is thought of as a single thing. There is probably some justification for marketing each of those areas because they already exist in the minds of our customers as a separate brand. In fact, Devon County Council have recently done some work on this and have come up with a Devon brand, it is just that they have not told very many people about it, but it is rather good. They have a whole branding strategy, they have got quite a nice strap line, which I think is "Devon, a different perspective" or something like that. Q572 Mr Sanders: Devon 'elp us! Mr Bowater: Devon air! They have done some work on that and that is simmering along, I suppose. Q573 Alan Keen: My summary of what you say is more or less correct, that you want the private sector to have more direct involvement as well as the local authority, people who work very hard at it, but you want it more focused and equal money spent at a national level between Scotland, Wales and the English regions. Mr Milne Home: Could I bring it down slightly from your question. It is very dangerous to have too centralised an organisation, you do not get the personal touch, and I believe perhaps that is what has happened in the tourist industry now, that the destination management people in Cornwall have never come to me to talk about anything. We have never been consulted as TAVATA about anything. The drive to get together with three or four other associations and say let us try and go green in West Devon and East Cornwall and make something of that is coming from us, it is not coming from up top. You talk about the RDA, but they are somewhere up there and they do not impinge on us at all. Mr Bowater: They do not even impinge on us and we are pretty big in comparison to most businesses. Q574 Alan Keen: So really the tourism industry, right down to the local level, we all know is very fragmented and you are saying that not only is the industry fragmented but those working at a national and then regional levels are fragmented because they are not representing the views of the people. Mr Milne Home: They are not talking to us. Mr Bowater: They talk to each other quite a lot. Ms Hookings: Yes, I would agree. Q575 Alan Keen: Just one last question. I am a bit sceptical myself but can you see the Olympics having any relevance to your area? Ms Hookings: In Torbay we have successfully bid for three of the sports and I think that allows --- Q576 Mr Sanders: Five venues. Ms Hookings: I think that allows us to go into the training camp brochure or something and we hope that somebody picks up on Torbay as being a vital place to train as regards sailing, cycling, judo, et cetera. If we were lucky enough to be successful in encouraging people down here and, here we go again, how much money have we got to market it, how can we get out there and get the people in, then obviously we are going to benefit. Just on the basis of the Olympics being in London I would like to think that there is going to be a cascade effect, London is full and everybody cascades and says, "Hey, let's get to the coast and enjoy a bit of fresh air". I am not sure in reality that would happen. Q577 Chairman: We are going back to produce a report to DCMS and if you have got one issue each what would you like us to put in the report, excluding what we have been working very hard at in the last few minutes? Mr Bowater: I would say just cut all of the marketing budgets at a local level. VisitBritain probably have a role marketing Britain overseas and trying to bring people in from overseas but I reckon that is just about the only marketing spend that can be justified, all the rest of it, if it is taken away, if it is useful will be replaced by the private sector. My firm belongs to a consortium of holiday firms in Cornwall called CAHA, it is the big agencies in Cornwall and Devon that have cottages in Cornwall and most of them were outside all of the public sector marketing campaigns we were in until the rules changed a couple of years ago and we were shifted out. I cannot say anyone is clamouring to be back inside those public sector marketing campaigns because they have not noticed any difference. If our experience there is anything to go by then it is not very valuable. If we felt as a consortium that there was a need for a destination campaign or a campaign for "Book a Cottage in Cornwall" or something like that, then that group could very easily put together the funding to drive quite a significant campaign. As a firm, we spend over £600,000 a year on marketing, so we are knocking on the doors of some regions, and South Hams wish they had our money, but together those companies could easily put together quite a significant marketing campaign. There is no business case for it. We are all businessmen and there is no business case for it. Mr Milne Home: On a slightly different tack, I would suggest that the number of these agencies, which all seem to overlap, should be pruned down and those left should talk to the Association as part of their remit, which they do not at the moment. Mr Bowater: It should be run by the Association, should it not? Mr Milne Home: It should be run by the Association, quite right. It would be nice to have some of those quite substantial budgets flowing a little bit further down the bureaucratic chain. You end up with someone like us and Best of Bodmin, Southeast Cornwall, Drake's Dartmoor, we are all voluntary, we do not get paid a penny, and we are running quite big organisations. As an honorary secretary, I am probably doing two or three hours a day on it and you cannot go on like that. I do not think it is appreciated that we are actually providing a great service to our people which the paid organisations are not touching. Ms Hookings: Torbay Tourism Forum is not a marketing organisation, deliberately so. We believe in working in partnership with the people who have the wherewithal to do marketing. If I can turn that question on its head, so to speak. Obviously we all need marketing budgets of a value that are going to make a difference, an impact, and cause people to come to Great Britain, England, various parts of the country, but you cannot just throw more and more money at marketing if the product is not right. If I talk about Torbay, we have got a wonderful natural environment but our built environment is falling apart at the seams, as I hope you saw today. Money has to be found from central Government to support the regeneration of coastal towns in particular. Torbay Council on its own could never do it and the private sector do the best they can. You mentioned where you are staying tonight and you will see the reinvestment that has gone into the Grand, all private money. We cannot turn tourism around and we cannot stop the decline, even offering a quality grading, if the rest of the Bay does not come up to scratch and is a quality built environment. It is not just down to one factor at all and it is certainly not down to who spends marketing money in the best way, you need everything else in place to turn the fortunes of tourism in Britain around. Mr Bowater: I could not agree with that more, that is so spot-on. One bad experience from a visitor, a shabby street, an overflowing bin, the loos closed or even if the loos are open someone has taken a penknife to the wall plate that you wash your hands in. Tourism relies so heavily on the public environment so much more than any other industry. It is about the reputation of the public environment in the minds of visitors. The best marketing that you can do is to make sure the people who come and stay have a nice time and go back and tell their friends and family, "It's great, you should go too" and, guess what, it is free marketing. Everyone else who lives in the area benefits from the nice, clean streets and non-shabby roads and all the rest of that investment that is going into public spaces so you get an uplift in the willingness of the local community to welcome people as well: "Great, we're a tourist destination. Look at the place, it's great". Ms Hookings: We want to put pride back into our lives. Mr Bowater: Absolutely. That is marketing. If you really want to do marketing get the place looking nice and people having good holidays. Chairman: Thank you. We have one last quick question from Adrian Sanders. Q578 Mr Sanders: This is again on the statistics. I am determined that everybody is going to agree on this and it will be a firm recommendation. What statistics do you and other local businesses and associations collect? Is this data channelled upwards to the local authority or to a regional level? Mr Milne Home: None because it is something my members really are not interested in, and I do not have the time. Ms Hookings: Locally we would feed into the Devon surveys and if you are members of Southwest Tourism you would feed into their surveys. What I think is sad, and with all the experience we have in this country, is I cannot understand why the Government, I have to say the Government but VisitBritain if you like, does not develop a monitoring and measuring system that would suit the purposes. You are looking for facts and figures to justify your case, to justify the spend, if you like, but businesses do that within their own four walls. In terms of what statistics are going to stack up, I think the whole industry needs guidance from above and that aligns very nicely with what Europe is going to ask when we go for any bids that are available. There should be far greater thought put into what statistics are required from the industry and our role then would be to encourage all members of the industry to take those five or ten minutes filling in those statistics because we are terribly bad at doing that, and I am not proud of that. I think the industry can encourage participation when they see that we have gone away from guestimates and are actually getting some accurate data which will allow better forecasting and certainly better figures when it comes to what is needed. Mr Bowater: We collect statistics on everything. We track every inquiry, where it came from, how much that cost. We process it from the first time we hear from somebody right through to the fifth, sixth, tenth or fifteenth time they book with us. We have statistics coming out of ears and it is the lifeblood of the business. Without those statistics we would not know where to spend money, what was or was not working. In the past we have provided some of those statistics on a non-attributable basis to Devon County Council or Southwest Tourism when they have asked. I have to say we have sort of given up, partly because we have not been asked and we were maybe the only people who were giving them any statistics so when the results came out we knew what they were going to be. Chairman: I think that is all we have. Can I thank our three witnesses for their evidence. Can I also thank all of you who have taken the trouble to come and attend this evening. The Committee will be publishing the evidence we have heard on our website within probably a couple of days. We will be producing a report which will also be published, I would imagine probably in five or six weeks, and that will go to the Government and the Government then has 60 days in order to provide a response to our recommendations. Thank you all very much. |