Culture Secretary says tourism marketing paying off

Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has praised the “fantastic” GREAT tourism marketing strategy and emphasised the Coalition government’s commitment to supporting the tourism industry.

Hunt

The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport told Marketing Week that the recent activity to build on the legacy of the London Olympics and increase inbound tourism “was going unbelievably well”.

VisitBritain has just launched the latest phase of its GREAT Britain campaign with videos featuring sporting greats such as Boris Becker and Lennox Lewis.

Hunt (pictured) added that the government was “committed to the tourism industry” and “has done more than any government in living memory” to support VisitBritain and the commercial stakeholders in tourism.

Latest inbound visitor numbers given by VisitBritain for April are strong with a record 2.9m visits spending £1.4bn, both figures are up 10% year on year. Of the visitors, 1.2m came for a holiday, up 5%.

Hunt also gave a speech at the annual reception for the All-Party Parliamentary Media Group addressing media issues and discussing the forthcoming Communications Bill, due to be published in the second half of the government’s term.

He said: “This year is going to be one of the most significant that the media has faced for a long time” and pointed to the need to protect freedom of expression and media plurality.

He also reinforced the government’s wish to have “the best super fast broadband network in Europe” and pointed out that when it comes to the digital infrastructure going forward this “must be mobile”.

He said: “If we get all of that {infrastructure} right we have an opportunity to do something really huge – to turn Britain into a media and tech hub for the whole of Europe.”

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