IT is not at all unfair for me to base my survey of the UK tourism industry in the views of Travel Industry Digest readers as Steve Price suggests (Travel Weekly February 28), especially when we supported those views with a pre-meeting poll of delegates to British Incoming Tour Operators Association’s conference, most of whom are UK tourism practitioners.
As the answers to the three key questions we first put to TID readers and the BITOA delegates show, perhaps, that not everybody is as sanguine about the domestic performance as Steve seems to be. Some 31% of BITOA delegates’ responses thought that the domestic markets were less professionally managed than the outbound sector (TID = 69%). But 80% of the BITOA sample thought the UK offered poorer value for money than comparable overseas destinations (TID = 73%); and 57% of the BITOA sample thought the UK’s quality had fallen behind too (TID = 60%).
Perhaps Leeds, Newcastle and Manchester don’t stir incoming operators’ blood as much as they do his.
If readers would like a copy of the full survey as presented to BITOA please send an e-mail to dbernasconi@eastcastle.co.uk.
Michael East, managing director, Eastcastle