myguideTravel Blog

British government score an own goal

November 9th, 2007

Growing up in Co. Cork during the Northern Ireland troubles, almost everyone complained about the British Government. It was a controversial time and clearly the British government found themselves in a very difficult situation. One of my abiding memories of that time was the number of own goals that the British scored politically.

Be it internment where 2,000 Irishmen were imprisoned without trial in the 1970’s or the hunger strikes of the 1980’s where 10 men starved to death. The actions of the British government in both occasions appeared to be counter-intuitive, even to a child like me. While the situations were undoubtedly complex, they were certainly handled badly by the British government at the time.

Thankfully, the 1990’s saw the return to normalised relations between the two islands. With the likes of John Major and Tony Blair we finally had British Prime Ministers that were not only respected in Ireland but were also popular. With the ensuing peace dividend, tourism between the two islands hit new records. Nowadays the biggest number of tourists to Ireland come from England and one of the biggest sources of tourists to the UK is now Irish residents. Tourism really can make the world a better place.

However, this week the British scored another own goal when it came to tourism. The Department of Culture Media and Sport cut funding to VisitBritain by 18%. This, according to UKinbound,will lead to a real cut of about 50% over a decade.

Other DCMS sponsored bodies have seen their grant in aid double over the last 10 years, and last week it was announced that an additional £50 million had been made available for the arts, galleries and museums; a figure totalling the current yearly funding of VisitBritain. Since then sport, film and heritage have also been given substantial increases in funding. By contrast this 18% cut for VisitBritain comes after 11 years of standstill funding that will amount to a decrease of over 50% in real terms by 2011.

Yet, unlike these other organisations, Government spending on destination marketing via VisitBritain has consistently shown an incredible return on investment and currently generates over £2.5 billion in tax revenue a year.

I don’t know James Purnell MP personally but from his photo he looks fairly young and inexperienced. I am sure he loves his art and is a sports nut, we all are, but this is crazy. All my friends and colleagues in the UK tourism industry are gobsmacked. Word on the street is that Tourism Departments across Europe are ‘high-fiving’ each other. Britain is a major competitor for all of them!

Entry Filed under: England, Ireland, Travel