How sincere are government protestations of support for the tourism industry? From an announcement this week, don't count on it.

Gordon Brown, at the Tourism Summit in Liverpool, last month asked the industry for a list of key areas in which Government could take action to benefit UK tourism. What should they be? Here are six priorities: 1. Create an effective, independent national tourist board for England, working with and through Partners for England in order to ensure cohesion between the industry, the RDAs, local authorities and other destination marketing organisations. In this way, a national tourism strategy for England should be formulated and implemented with jointly-funded, coherent marketing programmes.

2. Introduce positive government action to encourage further investment in the hospitality industry. The tourism industry is already investing over £5bn a year in new and improved facilities but the withdrawal of the Hotel Buildings Allowance and the reduction in other capital allowances will severely hinder this expansion and improvement. At the same time, the imposition of new regulations increases costs and forces management to focus more on their implementation than on improving the standard of facilities and levels of service. 3. Recognise that the fall in the value of sterling will provide only short-term encouragement; in the longer term, Britain's competitive position will depend on continuous infrastructure investment and uninterrupted, well funded marketing.

4. Introduce an initiative to inform the banking sector of the need to recognise the financial sensitivity of seasonal tourism businesses, especially in the need for overdraft and loan facilities. 5. Support the continuous monitoring of domestic consumer activity together with valid research into key inbound and domestic source markets in order to identify additional visitor opportunities.

6. Encourage the development of a domestic and near-Europe marketing campaign for 2009/2010 and undertake essential planning and funding to optimise the tourism benefits of the Olympic and Paralympic Games and their legacy. In the last funding settlement, tourism was allocated the least of DCMS resources with funds for VisitBritain cut by 18 per cent by 2012 - just at a time when the maximum effort is needed for the legacy from the Olympic Games to be realised. As chairman of the Tourism Alliance, I wrote to the Prime Minister highlighting these priority areas. I also asked him to encourage the DCMS and other government departments to develop the full potential of tourism as one of the most important drivers of the UK economy.

Unfortunately only last week, Barbare Follett MP, minister for tourism, ruled out any additional funding to promote the Olympic Games. So Gordon Brown falls at the first hurdle. The government's refusal belies the prime minister's promise to consider ways of supporting the industry. We now have the answer: no support at all.