West Midlands Tourism Forum 2024

Thank you for attending the West Midlands Tourism Forum 2024 at thestudio Birmingham.

Questions from the session:

Are there any new programs / master classes , etc for West Midlands tourism businesses?

You will have had the chance to talk through a few of these opportunities with colleagues during the World Café session. Current programmes of work include Green Tourism Accreditation, Travel trade product development programme, and the Culture and Tourism Connected programme for cultural attractions, live events and festivals, and which also offers upskilling in collaborative marketing campaigns and Google Analytics. Some programmes are geographically based, including digital marketing for Birmingham-based businesses, and involvement with Destination Coventry’s Social Media Marketing course delivered by C&W Chamber. For these, get in touch direct with your tourism officer – contact details below.

Who do we contact about ideas\suggestions to improve support. For example lack of coach set-down places for coaches in our city/town centres - so simple to do something about but nothing happens.

Your local Tourism Officer (contact details below) will be able to work with you to contact the Highways department in your local council to follow up conversations. If you feel that the lack of action is because there is not enough knowledge in the transportation team about the importance of coach tourism and ease of access, we can then signpost you to colleagues at the Coach Tourism Association who will support with expertise, or other colleagues in the region who have been able to make progress.

What progress has been made for direct flights between Birmingham and North America?

This remains top of the active route development activity at Birmingham Airport. We continue to support BHX in this area with marketing campaigns to demonstrate the region’s desire to land (excuse the pun!) this route. The time lag is owing to the post-Covid supply chain issues for carriers, unable to source enough new craft to service all routes. We hope to see this come in 2026.

-18 percent in business visitors for WM - do we understand why?

This stat was specifically for inbound visits in 2023 compared to pre-COVID (i.e. those coming in from abroad). It is a larger reduction (or slower recovery) than other areas owing to 2 key factors. The first is that The West Midlands is particularly successful in the business tourism sector, with a strong national and international offer. We have the highest proportion of inbound business visits of any region. Business visits, however, have been slowest to recover post-covid, compared to leisure and visiting friends and relatives. So our higher performance in this sector has also made us more exposed to the slow recovery – and indeed, to the replacement of face to face with digital meetings and events. Secondly, we also underperform in inbound visits from the USA compared to other regions. The USA market is leading international recovery to the UK. Hence the focus on the direct USA flight to improve access and stays. These two factors combined means that we have seen a slower recovery in inbound visits compared to other regions.

Richards figures are worrying in part. What impact is Brexit having on visits from Eastern Europe and Europe?

It’s difficult to separate out the Brexit effect from other economic challenges, but we have heard from hospitality partners of the difficulty to recruiting and retaining skills team members now that there are fewer people from Europe. Anecdotally, this also therefore means a reduction of visiting friends and relatives to these British-based workers. Other issues are demand-side, with identity cards no longer accepted at the borders, which can be problematic for school and educational parties and encourage trips to alternative countries. According to the latest data from the International Passenger Survey, the European inbound market is recovering at a slow pace. Visits from Europe were on par with pre-Brexit levels in October 2023 but dropped in November and December. Throughout 2023, there were 25 million visits from Europe, down 9% compared to 2019 but up 19% compared to 2022. A similar pattern of recovery was seen from the EU in Q4, as 2023. For more information: https://www.visitbritain.org/research-insights#latest-releases

We’re starting to build our database of travel trade journalists and publications from afresh - where is the best place to source this data?

There are several database tools available for PRs and communications officers, which offer this type of information – such as Roxhill, Vuelio or Cision. Historically, and from conversations with travel writers – including the two who joined us at the Tourism Forum – it is often better to work together as a region to send information to these publications as part of wider updates. With this in mind, please feel free to contact Tom, who would be happy to chat through your plans and activity, and collate any relevant stories to share with writers.

Can we have PPT slides?

You can view and download the presentation here

Contact for your tourism officer

Birmingham
ben.hau@birmingham.gov.uk

Destination Coventry
claire.england@destinationcoventry.co.uk

Dudley
nicola.beckley@dudley.gov.uk

Sandwell
julie_mckirdy@sandwell.gov.uk

Solihull
sarah.ashford@solihull.gov.uk

Walsall
benjamin.parker@walsall.gov.uk

Warwickshire
aaroncorsi@warwickshire.gov.uk

Wolverhampton
heather.Clark2@wolverhampton.gov.uk

Register now for the Tourism Development Programme

The 2022 Commonwealth Games elevated Birmingham and the West Midlands globally, creating the right moment to boost regional tourism further.

The WMGC is delivering a 2024 Tourism Development Programme. This initiative supports tourism businesses in maximising opportunities through working with the travel trade and fostering sector growth.

We are inviting 50 of our best visitor attractions, experiences and accommodation providers across the West Midlands region to take part in this exciting, fully funded programme.

This programme will focus on helping your business to get export-ready through bespoke support and access to expertise and resources. If you want to get travel trade ready for 2024 and beyond then register your interest today.

Spaces are limited and are allocated on a first come first served basis, so please register now if you want to be involved.