The chair of tourism marketing body VisitBritain, Lord Marshall, lobbied for the appointment of a tourism ‘tsar’ and for the implementation of various reforms to unite the fragmented sector at a breakfast meeting with the Prime Minister today.

Lord Marshall reportedly focused on the tourism opportunities that hosting the 2012 London Olympics will bring. Those in attendance included culture secretary Tessa Jowell, tourism minister James Purnell, Lord Coe and Bob Cotton.

In the meeting, the government pledged that funding and other support for tourism will be fully co-ordinated at national, regional and local levels and that the interests of tourism would be fully taken into account in all Olympic policy decisions.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph yesterday, Lord Marshall said: “The funding that comes from government to the tourism sector could be and should be better directed and spent in a more effective way.”

He added that, due to funding for tourism being channelled through “five or six silos”, there is a lack of any real co-ordination, cohesion or overall direction within the sector.

Therefore, the appointment of a tourism supremo to bring the different parts of the industry together as one cohesive entity is essential. The tourism tsar would control all funding and would need to be an independent person “with a lot of private sector experience”.

In England, funding for bodies such as Visit London, the 560 tourist information centres and the eight regional development agencies is distributed through a mix of local and national sources alongside different government departments such as the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

According to recent figures, Britain’s tourism industry employs 2.1million people and comprises more than 180,000 businesses while almost £14bn is spent annually by foreign visitors in Britain. Details: www.visitbritain.com/corporate

See also Leisure Management November/December 2005 p44: Industry Opinion: How Can Government Support Tourism?

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