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Rule, Britannia!

Vikki Carley sits down with VisitBritain’s new head of business visits, events and partner marketing, Simon Mills, to discuss how the convention bureau plans to generate new business for the country.

How do you hope to generate new business for the country, in light of the recent survey which found business visits to Britain have dropped 20 per cent?
Our strategy to arrest this decline is fourfold. We intend to get a better understanding of our markets through our overseas network and deliver high quality market insights, We want to raise our game and deliver support via eventBritain to the nations, cities and regions of Britain when they bid for large events. We aim to grow opportunities for industry partners in longer-haul and under-developed European markets. We want to take advantage of the Olympics opportunity, which will provide increased opportunities to view and profile Britain as a destination for business and event tourism; and as a destination for conferences in the run up to and after the Games. We are also fortunate that the exchange rate with the Euro is currently favourable, which puts us in a great position for bringing European events over to Britain.

Internationally, where have you seen the most business wins in the last year?
As a nation, we have seen wins from across the globe, which is encouraging in what has been a challenging time. Key markets for business to Britain continue to be France, Ireland Germany and the US.

Have you seen a rise in local clients?
VisitBritain’s sole role is to drive business visits from overseas markets. We focus only on inbound business and tourist visits.
Britain is doing better than most: visits from Europe have been fairly resilient to this year's economic climate, helped in part by a weak pound improving Britain’s affordability. It is true that international business visits have dropped but by comparison domestic overnight business tourism was around 10 per cent lower in the year to August 2009 than in the year to December 2007. This year will see a sustained recovery in the volume of business tourism, if for no other reason than 2009 was so poor.

What have been some challenges VisitBritain has faced over the past year? How have you combated this?
Tourism is a £114bn industry supporting 2.7m jobs. As the fifth largest industry in the UK, we are well positioned to pull Britain out of this recession. Our goal at VisitBritain is to lead and support the industry across the sector and ensure that we are not sidetracked in achieving this, especially during hard times.

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