VisitBritain facing the challenges of a 34% budget cut.

VisitBritain, the national tourism agency, has announced its intention to ramp up its marketing activity to deliver a four-year match funded global marketing campaign. As agreed with its sponsoring department, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the organisation plans to use the major events taking place in Britain over the next few years - the Royal Wedding, the Diamond Jubilee and the Olympic and Paralympic Games for starters - to deliver an additional £2 billion of visitor spend and an extra 50,000 jobs.

Proposed organisational changes announced by VB on 9 February, take account of this ambition as well as addressing the 34% cut to VisitBritain's budget as announced in October 2010. The changes include reducing functions, activity and the numbers of markets in which it has a presence to ensure the maximum funds are allocated to marketing.

But VB will cut overheads overseas by reducing its presence from 35 markets to 21 overseas markets, based in 24 key cities (see appendix for proposed locations). These markets provide a wide geographic spread across the world, accounting for 80% of inbound tourism spend.

In line with the requirement to reduce admin costs, the agency will also reduce staff and budgets in support areas such as Finance, IT, HR and Communications.  VisitBritain and VisitEngland will remain co-located at their offices at 1 Palace Street in London, sharing HR, IT and finance services to ensure costs are kept to a minimum, an arrangement that has run successfully since October 2009.

These proposed changes will lead to an overall reduction of between 25-30% posts - around 70 posts. Staff consultation is underway. The final outcome should be clear by the end of April.

VisitBritain's Proposed Overseas Presence
The proposed locations are the USA (from New York and LA) Canada, Brazil, Austria (from Berlin), Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland (from Berlin), Sweden, Australia, China (Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong*), India (Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi), Japan and UAE (Dubai).
VB is proposing to withdraw from: Argentina, Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong* (to be managed from China), Hungary, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa and Thailand.

Full VisitBritain article.

Date added: Monday 14th February 2011
Latest updated: Thursday 8th March 2012