Thursday 3 November 2011

Tourism Boost

One of the successful bids from the regional growth fund was Visit England’s bid a three-year project ‘Growing Tourism Locally’. It's a bid I'm pleased to see be successful as I am big champion of our local tourism industry.

Tourism is vital to our area and is a key local employer. The Visit England campaign will focus on inspiring us to take more short breaks and holidays at home - helping to give our tourism sector a much needed boost.

James Berresford, Visit England’s Chief Executive commented: “This is a huge boost for Visit England as the country’s national tourist board, working in partnership to facilitate growth at a local level, and an acknowledgement of the value of our industry to England’s economy. With this additional money we can mount a serious campaign to stimulate domestic tourism that has the potential to create the equivalent of 9,500 full time jobs in areas across the country suffering economic challenges.

Our strategy is to work with tourism partners and the private sector at a national and local level. Our partners will manage elements of the campaign pertaining directly to their local destination, whilst Visit England will manage the national strategy which will support this local activity. We will work closely with Government on the next stage of the process which determines the terms and conditions of the funding.”

The national marketing campaign will see Visit England working closely with private sector partners to match fund the grant received from the RGF.


If you fancy a stay-cation in the UK there is no better place than Northumberland. Have a look here to find out why.