MR TONY BIRD, MR RICHARD TOBIAS OBE AND MR IAN REYNOLDS

TUESDAY 19 NOVEMBER 2002

  100. Mainly by lobbying?
  (Mr Bird) Yes. That is where our strength lies.

  101. Do you have, as part of your agenda, the objective to develop an overall strategy for your industry, or are you going to target specific areas, such as the ones you mention here?
  (Mr Bird) You have a copy of our report which lays out a five-year agenda, and it is that that we are primarily lobbying on, but of course there are issues which arise continually and we will pursue them, but these are issues across the sectors.

  102. The reason I asked the question in that way is because as an amateur and just looking at the submissions we have had, one of the things which seems to be lacking, for me, as far as the tourism industry is concerned, is any sort of strategy. You had no strategy to deal with the two disasters which came upon us—Foot-and-Mouth Disease and September 11—and we now seem to be trying to cobble one together. I am interested in whether that is part of your objective, to help the various areas of the industry to develop a strategy.
  (Mr Bird) There are obviously elements to it. Initially there was a need to be doing things short-term and in order to overcome the crises of 2001. Then there is the longer-term requirement, where what we have discussing, in terms of marketing, is part of that programme, but by no means all.

  103. Just moving on a bit, the Department has a number of objectives for the industry. Again, from my perspective, all of them seem to do with quality. There is the training and skills issue, because there is a low quality of labour in the industry, and you make the point yourself in relation to the age profile and the difficulties there. Then there is the general quality improvement necessary in the industry that presumably raises services, facilities, etc. Destination marketing. I think, everybody accepts that marketing has been fairly poor internationally and nationally, and we have got support structures. One of the reasons why I am interested in your constitution, from reading through the paper, is that it seems all very CBI-ish to me. A lot of the issues that you are raising are issues that I heard when I was in the DTI, for example, working on the minimum wage and issues like that and employment relations legislation. To get political for a while, it is very much a bosses' agenda.
  (Mr Bird) Perhaps I can ask Ian to answer that.
  (Mr Reynolds) We are an association of associations who represent industry and all our members are coming from the industry. I think there is an important point to make that as an executive group we are always joined by representatives of the BTA, ETC and the Local Government Association because we are keen to work very closely with them, as far as the strategic agenda is concerned. They participate in our decisions. We do not take votes on things, we arrive at decisions by consensus but they are sitting round the table as equals. So it is not just taking an industry point of view, without taking into due consideration the views of local authorities or the ETC or the BTA.

  104. I just wonder whether the breadth of the organisation is sufficient for the job in hand. One of the key points and, again, why I raise the issue of quality is that you say in paragraph 1 in your preamble that you want to bring together other industry stakeholders. It strikes me that the most key stakeholders in the industry would be its employees. I do not know what the level of employment in the tourism industry at the moment is, but it must be very high. Later on you raise the training issue and the age profile; 17 per cent of the workforce is below the age of 20. I would guess that a lot of this is fairly transient labour.
  (Mr Reynolds) Absolutely.

  105. The difficulty in raising the quality is if you do not have sufficient numbers of people who see themselves as having a career in the industry and want to stop there. That is to do with terms and conditions of employment. I know from my own experience in working on the minimum wage that a very high proportion of low-paid workers are in the catering and hotel industry. I am trying to make a case for a wider tourism alliance, which takes into account the other interest groups.
  (Mr Reynolds) I believe that we would all see that employees within the industry are represented in the Tourism Alliance. The figures that we would normally recognise would be something over 2 million employees across all our membership. We definitely agree that a key item on our agenda has got to be the development and skills of those employees. That is a reason why we are supporting the formation of a Sector Skills Council to serve our joint needs and why we have supported particular initiatives like the Springboard Initiative, to try and bring people in and retain people in the tourism and hospitality industries. So I think we would all agree that this is absolutely fundamental to the on-going success of tourism in this country.

  106. I am not sure how to read that. Are you saying you might consider the involvement of trade unions in your alliance? I know that many of the individual organisations or companies that you represent sit down and see trade unions as a key part of their strategy. If you are going to have a skills council, for example, are you going to involve the trade unions in that?
  (Mr Bird) I think that would be at the individual association level, because they have the expertise in the specialisms. The Alliance is primarily there to lobby on behalf of the industry as a whole.

  107. That means no?
  (Mr Bird) That means that it is not something that has been considered to date, but it does seem to me to move somewhat away from the remit of the Alliance.

  108. Will you consider it?
  (Mr Bird) Certainly we will consider it.

  109. Mr Bird, you said just a few minutes ago that there are some countries where there is a secretary of state for tourism.
  (Mr Bird) Yes.

  110. Where?
  (Mr Bird) May I come back to you on that?

  Derek Wyatt: It would be very interesting to know.

  111. Israel had one but he was assassinated.
  (Mr Reynolds) Many of the outbound locations would have secretaries of state for tourism: Spain, Egypt, France I believe, and Greece.

  112. Secondly, if you are coming to Heathrow, as an example, the signage is in English; if you go by train to Paddington the signage is in English; if you come out of Heathrow and go to collect your luggage there is not a welcome anywhere to say "Welcome to London". There is no information about the Tube, there is not an on-line system of computers where you can type in "How do I get to Windsor" and get a translation. Is this the 21st Century? Do you think that the way in which we treat tourists is pretty second rate?
  (Mr Tobias) You are quite right in saying that the signage is predominantly in English, although within the last couple of years the Gatwick Express, for example, has given announcements in three or four different languages. That is something we welcome, have encouraged and have pushed through the relevant authorities—the relevant authorities being the train companies and the BAA. They are slowly getting there but I have to agree and acknowledge that our signage in languages other than English is poor. In terms of the quality of welcome to overseas visitors, like most countries it can be patchy. It can be extremely good at airports and ports throughout the country, occasionally—

  113. Where is it good? Where is best practice?
  (Mr Tobias) It probably really turns on the quality of human contact that our visitors get.

  114. Edinburgh is very good. Edinburgh says "Welcome. Scotland." It is in your face, you cannot miss it. This is not rocket science, this is about saying welcome.
  (Mr Tobias) I agree.

  115. When I arrived in Denver in August, as we were queuing up for passport clearance there were two brightly uniformed people from the City of Denver moving through the queue saying "Welcome to Denver. Can we help you in any way?" Would not that kind of thing be very nice?
  (Mr Tobias) Without any doubt at all. I suspect the first question I would be asked if I put that proposition forward would be "Who funds it?" It would certainly be excellent, although I would make the point, of course, that Denver welcomes slightly less visitors than London Heathrow.

  116. The Government is engaged in a Green Paper on airports, and yesterday I noticed that the Strategic Aviation Special Interest Group (SASIG), which is a sub-committee of the local authorities, has backed Cliffe Airport in North Kent. It said that we must have an airport levy of £4 per person in existing airports, we must have higher passenger duty at Heathrow and we must have an environmental levy to reflect the greater impact of flights. Do you think that is a good thing to attract tourists or a bad thing? What is your reaction to the SASIG comments yesterday?
  (Mr Tobias) They are certainly sectorial and partisan in their views. The industry has taken a view, so far, that the airport expansion in the south east of England is best centred on the existing airports—Stansted, Gatwick and Heathrow—rather than creating a new facility at Cliffe. Those propositions have been put forward for a whole variety of reasons, not least of which are economic. You are quite right in highlighting, if I am reading your subtext correctly, that any additional costs to visiting the UK should be resisted and any additional costs for visitors—whether it is a bed-tax or any other additional cost—should be hypothecated to ensure that the taxes or duties or revenues that are being collected are pumped back into the industry as an investment.

  117. Am I right in thinking, from that answer, that you have sent in your own submission? It closes at the end of the month.
  (Mr Tobias) As an individual organisation, we have.

  118. Have you also?
  (Mr Reynolds) As individual associations, yes.

  119. What is your view on the new London Airport?
  (Mr Reynolds) As far as ABTA is concerned, we are not supporting development at Cliffe, which we feel would be most damaging from an environmental point of view; it would be most unsuitable in terms of where people are currently based—businesses that have been attracted through inward investment to Britain—and the transport infrastructure would be extremely expensive to put in place. The whole project would be the most costly of all the projects. There are difficulties with air traffic control. We would much prefer to see a balanced development of a new runway at Heathrow, a new runway at Gatwick (which is not on offer at the moment) and a new runway at Stansted. That is the basis of our response. Just to add one further point, because you did talk about the additional charges that SASIG proposed, we believe—and I think this is a view shared across the industry—that the aviation industry should meet its known environmental costs. As we are advised that is broadly equivalent to the amount that is raised by APD today. So if they are talking about another £4 per passenger on top of APD, our fear would be that the leisure visitor to Britain and the leisure traveller from Britain are going to be priced out of the market if we put these additional increments on.
  (Mr Bird) We have not identified any particular requirements, other than the need for additional capacity, at this stage.