Agenda item

To note the contents of the report.

Deirdre Wells, OBE (Chief Executive, Visit Kent) and David Statham (Managing Director of Southeastern & Visit Kent Board Member) were in attendance for this item.

1.    Mr D Hughes (Head of Business and Enterprise) introduced the report that set out the contract arrangements between Kent County Council and Visit Kent which were due to expire in March 2020. The presentation before the Committee included the results of the recently published independent research commissioned by Visit Kent and the innovative solutions to grow the visitor economy. 

2.    Ms D Wells presented a series of slides that exhibited the collaborative work that had taken place across Kent and the positive impact of this on Kent’s and Medway’s visitor economy and employment sector. Ms Wells drew Members attention to the results of the Cambridge Economic Model published in January 2019 which highlighted Kent’s achievement of reaching 65 million visitors, £3.8 billion in visitor expenditure, the creation of 77 thousand jobs; and identified the future challenges inherent to Kent during a time of unprecedented change and the importance of finding innovative solutions to raise the county’s profile as a key tourism destination.

3.    Mr D Statham (Managing Director of Southeastern & Visit Kent Board Member) addressed the Committee from the perspective of a private sector investor and thanked Kent County Council for its on-going commitment to help fund Visit Kent. Work had also been undertaken to identify opportunities within the niche organisations and businesses to drive high value visits to events such as the Open Golf Tournament in Sandwich and the Turner Prize event in Margate. Mr Statham advised the Committee that other tourism sectors outside of the county viewed Visit Kent as one of the leading destination management organisations and sought to adopt the Kent model within their own tourism sectors. Expertise within Visit Kent had also been deployed elsewhere in the UK to leverage further funding and to help link tourism authorities across England, all of which were key to driving the local economy in Kent.

4.    Ms Wells and Mr Statham responded to comments and questions from Members, including the following:-

(a)  In response to concerns regarding the visitor data set and supporting infrastructure to accommodate visitor growth, Ms Wells confirmed that out of the 65 million visitors, 1 million of those were from overseas. Visit Kent had identified opportunities to increase overseas visitors through the Discover England Fund from the Government which was supporting a number of Visit Kent projects, including the improvement of travel trade links to ensure Visit Kent was engaging with and identifying the needs of overseas visitors to increase overnight accommodation within Kent. The visitor data was generated using the Cambridge Research model and was scrutinised against Visit Kent’s own Business Barometer to ensure accuracy. The two-year period helped Visit Kent to identify and analyse trends over a wider data set. Ms Wells also confirmed that thematic links were crucial in order to link attractions across Kent and said that the new Visitor First Strategy was reviewing those links and working with partners to ensure cross-market advertisement as this would help to increase overnight stays.

(b)  Members raised concerns regarding the standard of hotel accommodation in Kent and the shortage of medium sized conference venues. Ms Wells agreed that accommodation encompassed a number of qualitative aspects including the type of room, where the hotel was situated, the facilities of that hotel such as conference rooms and the quality of service, all of which contributed to increased opportunities for overnight stays.  As part of the strategy, Visit Kent approached a group of private sector partners across the county to review the current accommodation and identify the key areas for future developments that would help to create jobs, drive tourism and increase local economy.

(c)   With regard to Brexit, Ms Wells said that Visit Kent needed to increase its digital platform to counteract the negative media coverage that may deter people visiting Kent. Visit Kent aimed to ensure the correct digital infrastructure was in place to support visitors with live data from across Kent (including the ports).

(d)  In response to concerns regarding business rates within the rural community, Ms Wells informed the Committee that she was appointed as Chair of the Tourism Alliance Body which aided the lobbying of Government on key strategic issues that faced domestic, inbound and outbound tourism industries and a key recurring concern in that role was the business rates for the self-catering sector. She assured the Committee that a significant degree of work was being carried out with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) to identify a solution to the burden of business rates as Kent should be encouraging investment and expansion, not constraining it.

(e)  Members raised concern with the content available on the Visit Kent site to which Ms Wells assured the Committee that Visit Kent were working to ensure Social Content Optimisation across all media platforms and was working in conjunction with partners across Kent to improve this. With regard to maps, Visit Kent identified that visitors had a tendency to find attractions when on-the-go and therefore were reviewing digital systems that could help visitors pin-point near-by attractions through digital mapping.

(f)    In response to concerns regarding staffing within the tourism industry as a result of Brexit, Ms Wells said that this was a national concern, however, a significant amount of work is being done with Canterbury Christ Church University and private sector partners to develop a degree level apprenticeship to promote careers within tourism hospitality. Ms Wells returned to the point about good quality hotels and said that staffing was crucial to a successful business and more needed to be done to invest in and retain staff.

(g)  Members raised concerns regarding the increased pressure on caravan holiday parks as a result of increased housing pressure, Ms Wells informed the Committee that specific research to this effect had not been carried out, although, this issue had been replicated across many coastal towns. Ms Wells agreed to take the query back to Visit Kent as the holiday park sector is an important part of the accommodation provision.

5.    RESOLVED that the information set out in the presentation and given in response to comments and questions be noted.