Chairman of Jurys Inn, Barbara Cassani, today challenged the British Tourism Industry to present a “cleverly fashioned, compelling and positive face for the country to the rest of the world” in the run up to 2012 Olympics.
In a speech at the UKinbound Annual Conference in Manchester, Mrs Cassani, founder of low cost airline Go and former member of the London 2012 Olympic bid committee argued that “UK tourism doesn’t need bail outs but it needs a compelling story to tell the rest of the world why it should visit.”
Key remarks made in the speech include:
- Calling on the UK travel industry to put themselves in their customer’s shoes to survive the downturn. She questioned whether the current visitor experience was strong enough to motivate return trips travel, asking: “Are we giving second or third-time visitor’s reasons to return to the UK?”
- Backed VisitBritain Chairman Christopher Rodrigues challenge to the industry warning of a “danger of UK losing our reputation for service”.
- Revealed Jurys Inn remains passionately committed to great service and that “great hospitality is more relevant today not less so - consumers want more for less and consumers want to feel valued in tough times.”
- Criticised budget competitors lack of ‘human interaction’ and emphasised the fundamental nature of service to “winning and keeping loyal customers in a cut throat market”.
- While she acknowledged that the Olympics will offer a fantastic reason for people to visit the UK, she challenged that “The run up to 2012 Games should begin with a clearly understood programme of events around the country, starting this year!”
- Confirmed Jurys Inns business was resilient offering a positive vision for the future of the premium budget, city centre hotel brand: “Bucking the market trend”, she said, “we have announced plans to create 1100 jobs in eleven new hotels we’ve committed to build in 2009 and 2010”.
- Finally, she urged the UK tourism industry to respond creatively to the fact the UK’s core visitor markets are changing with fewer Americans (down 10%), more Eastern Europeans (up 12%) and potentially huge future growth from China and India (100mn new travellers by 2020). “And it needed to move on from the ‘Cool Britannia’ image to a new dynamic brand.”
Barbara Cassani identified the City of Manchester as a “tourism success story in its own right suggesting that regeneration and marketing have made the City a leading leisure and business destination.”
Commenting in Manchester she said: “Growth in the leisure market has been very impressive in Manchester since we first invested some time ago. We are optimistic about the future too and will be investing over £1m on a major enhancement of the bedrooms with 2 floors complete in 2009. We will continue to recruit skilled local hospitality professionals to join the hotel, which recently won the National Front Office Team of the Year 2008.”
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For further information please contact:
Mark Hutcheon
mhutcheon@reputation-inc.com
T: 020 3178 4765 or 07739 181 352
