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Visit Britain and Visit England launch 2019/2020 Annual Review

Yesterday Visit Britain and Visit England launched their 2019/2020 Annual Review and outlined their new corporate priorities for the year ahead to support UK tourism to recover and rebuild. Read more about it below.


UK industry partners joined Tourism Minister, Nigel Huddleston MP, BTA (VisitBritain/VisitEngland) Chairman Lord McLoughlin CH and our CEO, Sally Balcombe, at our first hybrid event.

While the event was both a reflection of the past year, and a staging post for the journey ahead, our Chairman took the opportunity to welcome the proposed UK Government Tourism Recovery Plan, which will set out the role the Government will play in accelerating the tourism sector’s recovery.

This plan will be an important step on our road to recovery - our industry has been one of the hardest hit economic sectors from the COVID-19 pandemic. 2020 saw inbound spend drop 80% on 2019 levels, while domestic spend dropped 62%.

By working together to drive demand and build back visitor spend as quickly as possible, we can emerge from the pandemic a more resilient, more sustainable, more inclusive and more innovative industry.

We know that there is plenty of pent-up demand from people around the world to get travelling again. We want to make sure they choose Britain, whether it is as a place to do business or to explore our spectacular country on holiday. We want to make sure that people continue to make Britain their destination of choice, year after year.

Our priorities for the year ahead are clear:

  • To aid the recovery of both domestic and international tourism, by driving back demand as quickly as possible and moving quickly as international markets start to open to get the best prospects customers to visit now.

  • To support business through the recovery, helping build skills, helping with distribution and delivering business support and guidance.

  • To champion tourism across the UK Government, ensuring that every Government department factors tourism growth into its policy-making.

To find out more about our plans for the year ahead, as well as to see our results for 2019/20 and activity over the past year, take a look at the Annual Review (PDF).



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