VE New Commitment to UK Travel Trade

New Strategy Unveiled to Drive Domestic Business Through the Trade

VisitEngland’s Chairman Penelope Viscountess Cobham, announced today in a speech at the ABTA Travel Convention the national tourist board’s plans to further grow tourism in England by working more closely with the travel trade.   Unveiling a raft of activity aimed at inspiring and educating travel agents to sell more holidays at home, Lady Cobham urged the trade to get behind the tourist board and support domestic tourism.

The tourist board’s ambition is to run a £2million television ad which will launch in Spring 2013, to encourage Brits to book a holiday in England through their local travel agent.  The campaign would require trade partners to provide marketing support through in–store promotions, database and website marketing, and participation in the new training programme run in association with TravelUni, also launched today:  www.englandexpert.com. VisitEngland will also launch a tool kit for the trade which will include a dedicated newsletter, website and a full programme of familiarisation trips to all corners of England through the forthcoming year.

VisitEngland’s Chairman, Lady Cobham said:

“The trend to holiday at home has been growing from strength to strength.  Now is the time to build on the feel good factor from The Games and harness that national pride by inspiring Brits to look at their home country in a different way – as their next holiday destination.

She went onto say:

“Tourism in England is worth £97billion a year and supports over 2 million jobs in this country.  Our mission is to grow this wonderful industry by 5% year on year, but we can’t do it alone.  We are asking you the travel trade to, get on board with VisitEngland and back this campaign.”

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For more information

Sarah Long, Head of Corporate Communications Tel: 020 7578 1452, Mob: 07500555651, Email: [email protected]   www.visitengland.org

Emma White, Corporate Communications Executive Tel 020 7578 1471, Mob: 0779303716, Email: [email protected]

About VisitEngland

• VisitEngland is the country’s national tourist board. We work in partnership with the industry to develop the visitor experience across England, plan national tourism strategy, grow the value of tourism in England and provide advocacy for the industry and our visitors
• Our work is underpinned by robust research and customer insights. You can access the latest in-depth market intelligence and statistics on www.visitengland.org/insight-statistics   
• For corporate information see www.visitengland.org, for consumer information see www.visitengland.com