Comments on: Why UK tourism is still all about London

By: Sean

Sean — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 12:31:50 +0000

I think any tourist to the UK would like to see London just to say that they’ve been there. There’s lots of other historically rich and vibrant places in the UK. Rather spending the whole of a holiday in the capital, they should book a hotel in Cambridge or Devon, where the pace is a little more relaxed.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 09:56:37 +0000

I think London is always going to be the most appealing place for foreign travellers. It’s the biggest city and probably the most famous city in the world.

On the other hand, for UK tourists (probably even Londoners), the South West and other places are popular. My local area (Devon) gets a lot of visitors from the North. Perhaps even more so due to the recession and flights going up.

By: Kendal Cottages

Kendal Cottages — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 11:27:21 +0000

Great post and subsequent discussion. This has long been a bugbear of mine and I think VisitBritain has plenty of answer for. Years ago, you would visit their homepage and almost everything on the page was London-oriented or, at best, very heavily skewed to the south and south-east. To be fair, I think they’ve got better in that regard and do promote Britain as a whole more, but I still find it’s invariably London-heavy. But perhaps that reflects the demand.

As an owner of a luxury self-catering property in a beautiful area (the town of Kendal between the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales), we have attracted some overseas tourists but by far the majority of visitors milling about the town are from the UK.Maybe that’s a good thing… we don’t want TOO many people to know what a lovely area this is.

Paul

PS – To Sandy above… £80-£120 a night for a room isn’t all that out of kilter with many other European countries, and don’t forget there are much cheaper deals depending on the location, quality of the hotel and the offer you get. Where you can really save is by self-catering. Our place, for instance, is currently £270 for a 4-night break (Monday-Friday). It sleeps 4, so that works out as as little as £16.88 per person per night. And that’s at the luxury end of the market. There’s far cheaper at the other end of the spectrum.

By: Do UK tourist boards offer value for money?

Do UK tourist boards offer value for money? — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 12:39:01 +0000

[...] from 501 places wrote a post about this, and is worth a [...]

By: Travel Bloggers Unite

Travel Bloggers Unite — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 09:51:45 +0000

Hi Andy

Certainly noted the question on #TNI about the Tube!?

I think the UK has so much to offer and it is indeed cheaper generally outside of London.

An example being the cost of a hotel in London next month would cost me £100+ a night. Yet a train journey to Heathrow and the same chain, same room is £39 a night!

London is great and so appealing to those that have never been. In much the same way New York appeals to me. Yet I think I’d also like the Catskills, just as Americans may well like the Lake District.

By: Jurek Lipski

Jurek Lipski — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 20:55:31 +0000

Hi Andy – Full disclaimer here: I work for VisitBritain and was involved in the UK themed #tni. I wanted to chime in.

This is a great post and I want to say that you and many folks who commented absolutely hit the nail on the head: the overwhelming majority of travelers don’t travel outside London enough! The Welsh Coast & Mountains, Scottish Culture, Devon, Cornwall, Lakes and Lochs, pubs and castles, theatre, art & music across Britain…where do we stop – there’s so much for every interest.

Whenever VisitBritain promotes the UK we always include destinations in England, Scotland, and Wales, in addition to London. If you follow @visitbritain, you’d see that we called out to followers before #TNI to share their wider England, Scotland and Wales experiences specifically – and many did. We also commented on and retweeted tons of discussions on non-London destinations in the UK. On travelmuse, we helped them develop 12 itineraries which included Cambridge, Oxford, Brighton, Warwick, the Jurassic Coast, and Edinburgh, in addition to London.

I’m going to be honest – in a world of finite resources where our cities are competing for visitors with Hong Kong, Tulum, and Sydney – it’s a definite challenge to get Britain’s entire offering well-known. We do things like sponsor #tni, stimulate conversation on our Love UK Facebook page, and send bloggers on press trips because we feel that accounts like yours, and those of writers, locals, and visitors – all who have that sense of adventure and appreciation of the richness of the entire UK – make a difference in inspiring people to go to London and beyond .

That is of course – until Oprah decides to take her next studio audience to Yorkshire for the weekend (and trust me, we’ll pitch it to her

By: John

John — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 12:42:34 +0000

Whenever I have .talked to or exchanged correspondence with people who have visited the UK. I have never received the comment. “You live in the UK, I you’re so lucky. London is so accessible to you”. However I have often received comments such as “I fell in love with the Wye Valley, I envy your closeness to it” or “You are so lucky living in North Wales, I visited once. It was wonderful”.
When I was a teenager I always wanted to visit New York City. When I finally got there, I found it did not live up to my expectations. However, I really liked Boston and New England, especially Vermont.
It is all very well blaming tourist boards for not promoting Rural Britain and the North, but what about all of the travel blogs? This blog is an exception in that it is one of the ones that doesn’t home in on the well known destinations. Many others though, concentrate largely on the big cities.
The one lesson I would take from the #TNI #LoveUK debate, is that there is more to a country than the obvious tourist traps. How can anyone complain if they feel that their locality is not visited by tourists, if they don’t make the effort to get far away from the main airports when they travel?

By: Kymri

Kymri — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 11:00:59 +0000

For what it’s worth (from an American), my response to Q4 was “train”, and I DID comment that I never knew the Tube extended beyond London! Back in the days of Britrail passes, visitors could get around all of Britain and that was the BEST way to see the UK, and the best deal. Once the rails became privatized it simply got too expensive for visitors to get beyond London, which is a real shame. Now it requires renting a car to really have freedom, and unfortunately many visitors to UK are intimidated with having to drive on the opposite side of the road. To be fair, it goes both ways. I meet so many Brits who “love America” yet have only been to NYC or Las Vegas!

By: Arantxa

Arantxa — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 10:00:49 +0000

I’ m Spanish and I’ve travelled to UK many times, in fact I’ve lived in London.
I simply adore the country, from the misty and foggy days to the misterious castles or neverending green fields.
As others have said, London have great offer to visit but if one is curious UK, which also have good connections by train, bus and planes, offer a wide range of special places to visit which I guess are not well promoted. Why? That’s the question
I Love UK
Arantxa

By: Mark Pawlak

Mark Pawlak — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 09:42:34 +0000

Hi,

Before I get to it, Marco: “England has bad weather, it means, it has a colder weather, that does not allow you to do a lot around (it’s not like Sweden or Iceland but should be compared to those kind of places.”

This is perhaps ‘the’ limiting stereotype that hampers foreign perceptions of this country. As a cyclist I know exactly how many wet/ cold days we have that could possibly limit cyclo-tourism, and I’m sorry to say you’re wrong.

Back to the plot:

Imagine your first visit to France (as an international tourist having paid several hundred pounds), I would suggest you’d head to Paris. Now here’s the hook – instead of fighting a pointless either/ or battle for business, we need to accept that London will always be the magnet, then develop out so that regions are promoted alongside.

Improve the logical connections – if we can’t affect the transport connections – and get tourists traveling for a few hours on a train. Annick – come on, if you want to get anywhere you have to travel, just book in advance online and there are some outrageous rail savings to be had.

Hotels are all in competition, so let’s get them working together: It becomes a package deal, with two destinations, two hotels, the power of double marketing; and the city and the shires stop crossing wires and get filling rooms!

I write for a hotel in Brighton, 50m from the beach, it’s 20c and the town is alive! If I’ve sparked any further ideas/ suggestions, I’d be happy to continue this.

Best wishes to all!