High costs ‘a barrier’ to overseas tourism

Friday, 08 Mar, 2006 0

Improvements in the quality of UK tourism and efficient marketing tactics are being undermined by the high cost of operating in Britain, tourist chiefs have said.

UKinbound said the UK is losing out to more competitive nations, an issue that urgently needs addressing.

The comments from chief executive Stephen Dowd came as visitor arrivals in January and forward bookings showed an encouraging increase on the same month last year.

Dowd said that the UK “remains compelling” to overseas visitors but warned the potential may struggle to be realised.

“The industry should rightly take great pride in the vast improvements to product quality that substantial investment over many years has made possible,” he said. “Coupled with the innovative marketing and distribution at which the UK industry excels we have a solid base for substantial growth.

“However, whilst this will generate some business, a large proportion of our visitor economy is price sensitive and this is where we struggle. Our lack of competitiveness has been the biggest barrier to realising the potential of the last few years.”

He said the cost of doing business in the UK, particularly the “burden of taxation and compliance costs” has grown faster than any of its key competitors over the past decade.

“Unless this issue is seriously addressed by the government it could undermine all the good work on improving quality and productivity,” said Dowd.

He added the year-on-year growth of the industry is seen by the government “as a reason to do nothing” with the UK’s share of the global tourism market declining for “over a decade.”

Dowd said: “We are losing business to countries that truly understand the value to their economy on inbound tourism and act accordingly. We expect 2006 to be much better than last year but we know it will not be as good as it could, or should, be.”

Arrivals in January showed a 4.9% increase in last year with forward bookings ahead 0.1%.

UKinbound said the figures show consumers are becoming “increasingly inured to the hazards to the international travel.”

Report by Steve Jones