Acting for tourism - Ed’s letter

Our current news environment encourages us to believe that everything is new! And now! And never seen before! But, while every new occurrence certainly has its unique nuance, there are echoes to be found throughout history.

This hack was reminded of this earlier this month, when attending the Scottish Tourism Alliance & Hotel Partner webinar: Driving Success in Scotland’s hospitality and accommodation sector.

The webinar was held with the background of the tourism levies in Edinburgh and Glasgow, being echoed across England and Wales.

On it, David Orr, CEO, Resident Hotels, told attendees: “In 1969 the Tourism Act looked at the sector’s benefits, not just as something which could be plucked. Being viewed as a golden goose is a short-term message, you have to be able to give the government a solution. This debate is not just across Edinburgh or Scotland, it is more widespread, these debates are happening across the whole of Europe. We’re about to have Budgets north and south of the border and the message is that a growth agenda is deliverable.

“It’s important to respond in a way that government finds credible. While I am not happy with the levy, you cannot constantly have a negative approach to how government wrestles with these problems. We should be telling a growth story, showing that investment can speed up returns and showing ourselves to be flexible.”

So let’s look at that Tourism Act. The Act established a British Tourist Authority and Tourist Boards for England, Scotland and Wales with responsibility for promoting the development of tourism to and within Great Britain and provided financial assistance out of public funds “for the provision of new hotels and the extension, alteration and improvement of existing hotels”.

Sounds great, but why? “To encourage people to visit Great Britain and people living in Great Britain to take their holidays there” To give the sector one voice and, in doing that, recognising tourism as part of our lives and as part of our economy.

Those early hopes and dreams seem to have faded a little and the sector is now being picked over for signs of tax, something which is testing it to its limits, particularly in the team-heavy areas of pubs, restaurants and luxury hotels.

The hope is, as the Budget approaches, that the government will hark back to that long-term view and remember that the sector is about more than revenue, it’s about people’s quality of life and about the careers on offer.

As Orr concluded: “You can’t offshore it, it’s here; the sector, the talent.”