One of Visit London’s partner organisations, the London Dungeon, has claimed that the capital’s tourism body has been too slow in moving to counter the effects on tourism of July’s terror attacks on the capital.

Visit London has refuted this claim. “Visit London is part of the Tourism Industry Emergency Response group (TIER) which has been meeting regularly since 7 July. We have also run consumer focus groups in London, other parts of the UK, key European markets and the US to measure the attitudes of potential visitors,” said Visit London spokesperson, Hannah Collingbourne.

“While the research showed a generally robust attitude to visiting London, it also showed the domestic audience had reservations about visiting London during July and many said they would not visit at this time. The expenditure of large amounts of public money targeting this audience directly after the incidents would potentially be wasted.

“Our best estimate is that upweighting our efforts towards the domestic market in September would be the best approach.”

The organisation is set to launch its London in September campaign at the end of this month and will also be launching major campaigns in Europe and the US in September. It has also written to all its partners to ask them to provide details of any offers, services or new products they want the tourism body to promote at this time.

The Tourism Industry Emergency Response (TIER) group announced figures last month which indicate that the 7 July attacks in London could see spending by overseas visitors fall by at least £300m from initial full-year UK industry expectations for 2005. Details: www.visitlondon.com