Guest Comment: Regional Tourist Boards’ role in delivering EnglandNet

Comment by Ken Male, destination management consultant The EnglandNet project is an attempt to bring English tourism up to date with its rivals in providing a national database of product, accessible to its potential customers ‘on line’. For years the VisitBritain site has struggled to promote the UK with inadequate information because of a lack of coordination of data. Many tourism destinations around England had Destination Management Systems which they had installed because there was a need, and no national solution. With the development of technology these systems are to be linked via EnglandNet to harness the existing investment, and resources, rather than ‘reinvent the wheel’. Well that was the philosophy but one wonders whether it is being implemented by all of the Regional Tourist Boards. Whilst some have clearly embraced the principle of working toward the development of tourism, others appear to be finding ways of justifying their own existence at a time when they are unsure of their future with the emerging development of the Regional Development Agencies. The RDAs have the strategic role for the economic development of the regions and the funding for its delivery. Instead of complementing the systems installed by the destinations some RTBs would appear to be establishing new ‘me too’ systems to directly compete with the investments made already (successfully) by the destinations. The RTBs should be encouraging take up of existing destinations’ systems and fill in the geographic gaps where cover is not provided. There has even been some misinformation that some of the existing systems will not meet the data transfer requirements for EnglandNet when this is clearly not the case. The risk of this is that the private sector DMS suppliers will become suspicious of the aims of EnglanNet when the need is for unity in order to move as quickly as possible and reduce the data input requirements for everyone. The time has come for the RDAs to determine the respective strategic roles for the private sector, Local Authorities, the Regional Tourist Boards and themselves to avoid further waste of public monies. The Regional Tourist Boards benefit from substantial inputs of funds from the public purse and these should not be used to undermine other investments from public funds. They should not be driven by their own commercial ambitions over the development of tourism for which they were established. EnglandNet provides the potential for considerable savings and it would be a shame to see these frittered away instead of being used to the benefit of an industry which has always complained of under funding. South West Tourism seem to have achieved a good understanding with their RDA and the relationship is one of mutual trust and understanding of their respective roles. Maybe theirs is a model to be followed by other RTBs.