Three new reports added and some background news on IPS developments
I have added 3 new reports to Britishdestinations.net. All relatively high level and none of them lend themselves to be easily summarised or to recommend a few key pages:
1. Town Centres Whats next? Based on a survey of 250 towns and cities using 24 variables the Cushman & Wakefield’s Resilience Index has been updated with the government’s future High Street Fund in mind and has been designed to consider which locations have been more resilient and why in order to assess what needs to be done in future. The 14-page report summarises the key findings. Regrettably as a commercial taster piece, it doesn’t contain the detail for all 250 towns surveyed but does reference both the top ten and some of the poorer performers. Nonetheless, some interesting information presented largely by type of town and some thoughts on headline responses to high street resilience. Cushman & Wakefield would clearly be happy to discuss the detail further with individual destinations.
2. Destination London: The Expansion of the Visitor Economy. Produced collaboratively by members of the Tourism and Events Research Group of the University of Westminster the book analyses how and why the expansion of the visitor economy is happening and what effect this is having on the city. Although somewhat academic in style, some or all of the 11 individual chapters will be of interest to destination mangers in other cities, while some chapters, for example, chapter 3 – Unplanned Expansions: Renting Private Homes to Tourism, or Chapter 10 – Event Takeover? The Commercialisation of London’s Parks will be of interest to a wider destination management audience, potentially providing useful examples or supporting evidence for similar local concerns.
Access both reports via the Research & statistics by year page of Britishdestinations.net at: https://britishdestinations.net/research-and-statistics/
3. Interest in holiday activities in Britain. The latest edition of VisitBritain’s Foresight research is based on the results of an addition question sponsored by VB in the IPSOS survey in 2018 – 19: “If you went on holiday to Britain which of the following activities would you most like to do?”. Respondents in 15 countries were asked to pick as many activities from a list of 35 as they wanted. The survey has endeavoured to include some aspect of almost every destination type or an appropriate representative activity. By its nature some destinations will find this report more useful than others. This report can be found in the protected VistBritain page at: https://britishdestinations.net/members-area/content/visitbritain-november-2013-latest-edition-of-forsights-and-vb-trend-updates/ Members who have lost the password can email me for the detail.
At yesterday’s VisitBritain, British Tourism Industry Group meeting we were briefed on plans to revise the International Passenger Survey (IPS) results. Not something that VB the other partner National Tourist Boards or ONS would wish to do unless absolutely necessary, the action has been triggered by obvious anomalies in the visitor figures for China. The survey will be suspended for 3 month between September and October and adjustments applied. New figures going forward and revised figures for past years will then be issued. Overall inbound visitor numbers across all markets are unlikely to increase but total value probably will. Outbound UK resident numbers are also likely to increase, alongside the value. Other than for those directly involved in producing local value and volume statistic this one to be aware of rather than for any specific action now.
We were also told that having paid for an increased IPS sample size, the recent introduction of new technology used to collect the data had actually resulted in VB seeing a reduction in sample size. This has had a corresponding impact on the confidence intervals, but primarily only for the regions and nations already represented by relatively smaller numbers of respondents. For all other areas the impact would be negligible. This had been raised and ONS were addressing the issue to ensure the sample size was increased and maintained.
British Destinations 