Tourism minister Sir Chris Bryant speaks exclusively to Travel Weekly’s Ian Taylor
Tourism minister Sir Chris Bryant has set a tough challenge for the UK inbound sector after barely three months in the role, saying: “I would like to see us rival France for inbound tourists.”
He concedes: “I know that is a big ask.” But by the time of the next election, he says: “I want to see us charging up the list of countries for inbound tourism.”
To do so, Bryant suggests: “We need to go through every part of the experience. So, when somebody lands at Heathrow, I defy them to understand how to get on the best train to London. We have to sort out these problems.”
He notes: “There is a whole set of issues which have a clear effect on tourism where the responsibility lies with the Home Office [and] I’m having discussions with them. We need to balance the needs of security with growth in the economy. I’m hopeful we can get to a good place.”
Like previous tourism ministers, Bryant sees drawing “more visitors outside London” as a priority, saying: “I want the visitor economy strengthened across the whole UK. It’s not great that everything comes to London, it increases hotel prices and makes us look expensive.
“I also want more people to consider the visitor economy as a career. Lots of countries do this better than we do. We need to learn lessons from them. A career in hospitality is a good career.”
He suggests “less aspic and more spice” in the UK’s image would help, arguing: “We’ve got a bit obsessed with showing people what we used to be like, but we want people to come for the here and now.
“An awful lot of people come to the UK to see a concert or to go to football and we need to build on that.
“There are so many parts of the pattern of visiting we need to look at.”
Bryant notes other countries have “national centres of excellence in hospitality or tourism and we haven’t got that” and says: “I have the building blocks of a plan in the back of my cerebellum.”
He adds: “I will sometimes challenge the industry, and one of my challenges is what have you done to ensure we train people and give them the skills they need? Because it’s one thing to complain about the many vacancies there are, but what has the industry done to transform that?”
Bryant insists: “There is a lot we’re on the verge of doing, a lot waiting on the spending review and the Budget.”
Asked if he is nervous about the Budget’s impact on departmental spending, he says: “It is very, very tough. There are lots of things we’d like to be able to do, but it’s tough.”
However, he sees the government’s focus on growth as positive for the sector, saying: “Everybody in hospitality and tourism talks to me about planning [and] Keir [Starmer] has said repeatedly we need to look at planning reform.
“I can’t stress enough how important economic growth is for us. My first question to everybody in tourism is, what is the barrier to growth that the government can deal with?”