To receive a presentation from Jonathan Neame and Sandra Matthews-Marsh of Visit Kent about tourist accommodation.
Minutes:
(At the commencement of the meeting, a Member raised concern about the online availability of the presentation. It was confirmed that the presentation would be made available on-line).
1. Mr J Neame, and Ms S Matthews-Marsh of Visit Kent attended the meeting to give a presentation about the visitor economy and tourist accommodation.
2. Mr Neame and Ms Matthews-Marsh then responded to the questions of the Cabinet Committee Members and made points including the following:
· There had been a increase in tourism in the UK in 2009, due to the staycation phenomena. Attractions such as Leeds Castle had also experienced a surge. Importantly, tourist attraction figures had continued at these levels.
· Data was compiled using the Cambridge model, which was used nationally. A key trend identified was visits to friends and relatives; visitors tended to spend in the local economy and often utilised overnight accommodation. In the last decade residents had become more knowledgeable about the places that they lived and were well equipped to guide friends and relatives around county.
· Visit Kent’s Partner organisation in Calais had identified driving on a different side of road as a barrier for French tourists wanting to visit the UK. Visit Kent were working to establish a way to encourage more traffic from northern France. In addition, since the Paris terrorist attacks, the French government had withdrawn insurance for French school visits. This had only just been reinstated, and so there had been a significant drop in the last year.
· There was an opportunity that the exchange rate meant it was presently cheaper for visitors to come from France. Cross Channel partners, such as P&O (part of Visit Kent Partnership) were looking to work together in the next year to increase inbound traffic.
· In terms of addressing the language barrier, the Hospitality Guild, which had been created two years ago, included a strand called Welcome Host, which had basic language components.
· Hospitality had not previously attracted many apprentices, with only a couple of hundred in the last couple of years, but the Hospitality Guild had an ambition to increase this number. The Apprenticeship Levy was a great opportunity to engage the sector.
· This data series shown in the presentation only went up to 2015 and as Air BNB was a recent phenomenon it was outside of the figures received. There were benefits for the County from the sharing economy, such as Air BNB, and it could be a substantial opportunity to increase capacity and economy. However, legislation was not keeping up with its growth. If legal rulings from Berlin where to follow into the UK, it could become illegal.
· Visit Kent as an organisation received core funding from KCC and other local authority partners and private investors. If a specific attraction was referenced in a campaign, they would pay a supplementary amount to invest in that. Match funding on top of this offered leverage. The Visit Kent Board continually reviewed its structure to see if a different business model would be viable.
· In previous years, Kent was overly dominated by Canterbury, Leeds Castle and Rochester as visitor destinations, but there had since been improvements in the quality of other attractions, and also new attractions had changed this situation.
· The Vision to gain 5,000 new jobs and 5 million new visitors was a county-wide ambition. ‘Honey pots’ such as Canterbury Cathedral, played a part in attracting and dispersing visitors, encouraging people to explore outside the area they were visiting.
3. RESOLVED that the presentation be noted.