VisitBritain redundancies condemned – STORY UPDATED

The Tourism Alliance and Tourism Society have condemned VisitBritain’s forced redundancy of a number of staff.

Enjoy England sales and trade marketing manager Claire Hancer, voted this year’s SHINE Public Sector Woman of the Year, is amongst those whose positions have been made redundant.

Trade body the Tourism Alliance claims that upto 80 positions are being made redundant – almost 20% of the workforce – were disputed by a VisitBritain spokeswoman.

But the Tourism Society said 45 of the cuts would come from the UK and 35 from overseas offices. It urged the Department for Culture Media and Sport and the Treasury to urgently “reappraise the support for tourism and make the essential investments for the whole of Britain to reap the benefits”.

The VisitBritain spokeswoman confirmed a consultation process was being undertaken with staff and 30 jobs at the London headquarters were affected, together with nine in Ireland with the closure of VisitBritain’s Irish office.

Other jobs will be going across Europe but she said it was too early to specify numbers as the organisation seeks to refocus on growing inbound tourism markets such as Asia and eastern Europe.

Affected areas in London include the printing and IT departments as part of a wider global restructure.

VisitBritain said it had “updated its structure and staffing to enable it to take full advantage of the opportunities offered in the coming years”.

A single marketing director – Michael Bedingfield – has been appointed as part of a consolidation exercise.

The VisitBritain spokeswoman added: “Pulling together the International and International Marketing teams under the leadership of Michael Bedingfield will make it easier for the travel trade – both domestic and inbound – to work with us across our full remit.

“The reshaping of these teams has meant some posts being closed but other opportunities are available. We are, for example, creating a senior role of Partnerships Manager that would cover both the development of our links with the UK travel trade and with our overseas suppliers.”

A statement said: “This unification provides an excellent platform for the increased involvement of public and private sector partners across the whole of the marketing team.

“The successful marketing and delivering of the Enjoy England brand will continue to be delivered by a dedicated team led by Laurence Bresh. The funding for England marketing will continue to be ring-fenced.”

“A new Britain marketing department reporting to Michael will be established: this department will operate as an internal agency to provide services to the overseas markets including shared content and collateral.”

“A shared Marketing Support team will ensure that VisitBritain services British, English, Scottish and Welsh interests ever more effectively overseas.”

VisitBritain confirmed its office in Ireland will close at the end of October with a “smooth transition” over the coming months.

Garry White moves from heading Northern Europe for VisitBritain to Singapore to lead marketing across the Far East region. Three regional directors for Asia Pacific, America and Europe have been created with the Europe division relocating to London.

Chief executive Tom Wright said: “These proposals will enable us to take advantage of the opportunities ahead and show a continued drive for the most effective leverage of our marketing efforts.

“We want to extend our reach overseas to enable us to deliver on our core mission of building the value of tourism in Britain.

“We can see enormous opportunities for the promotion of Britain overseas around the 2012 Games and in reaching the faster growing markets of Asia and Eastern Europe.

“I am fortunate to have a strong and committed team of marketers who will join me in developing and implementing our ambitious and aggressive strategy for growth.”

But the Tourism Alliance claimed the cuts were being made to offset the Government’s failure to provide any increase in overseas marketing funding for more than 10 years.

The cuts come on top of more than 60 redundancies made three years ago.

Tourism Alliance chairman Tony Millns said: “It is simply incredible that such drastic cuts have been forced upon an organisation that has the full support of the industry, continually wins international awards for being the world’s best international tourist board and that the National Audit Office has confirmed generates more than £1bn for the UK economy each year.

“Moreover, this is a critical time for the industry with planning underway to maximise the tourism benefits to be derived from staging the 2012 Olympic Games. If we are to achieve the £2 billion target that the Government has set for additional tourism revenue to be gained from hosting the Games we need to be increasing VisitBritain’s resources, not forcing them to make almost 20% of their staff redundant.”

The trade body claimed that VisitBritain has been forced into this situation by the Government’s continued failure to support the tourism industry as a major generator of wealth and employment for the UK.

This is despite tourism being the sixth largest industry in the UK, employing over two million people and generating £85 billion for the economy.

Millns said: “The Government needs to be held accountable for failing in its responsibility for tourism.

“These cuts will be felt by the grass-roots of the industry – damaging the many thousands of small family-run tourism businesses that rely upon VisitBritain to compete in the global on their behalf and win the visitors that they need to survive.”

Tourism Society chairman David Curtis-Brignell said: “The Scottish and Welsh administrations and the Mayor of London have all recognised the vital opportunities that tourism presents. Against this DCMS has not increased VisitBritain’s funding for a decade, effectively cutting VisitBritain’s budget by 24%.

“During this time, Britain, despite the good efforts of VisitBritain, has significantly underperformed world growth rates, and the length of stay and spend by visitors to Britain has reduced.”  

Visit London Chief Executive James Bidwell said: “As we gear up to London 2012 the tourism industry simply must have increased investment to ensure the delivery of the estimated £2 billion of tourism legacy the Games will bring.

“The London visitor economy is worth around £15 billion or 10% of London’s GDP. Visit London works closely with the Mayor of London and the London Development Agency to grow tourism in London.

“In the last year an extra 1.3 million visits were made to the capital, London’s share of world tourism has risen, and London’s visitor economy has been boosted by £600 million.”

by Phil Davies