New Mind Presents at Westminster Business Forum

New Mind's directors, Richard and Andy had an opportunity to present their views on the tourism landscape at the prestigious Westminster Business Forum this week.

New Mind was asked to contribute to a keynote seminar entitled 'The future for UK tourism - challenges ahead for growth, competitiveness and legacy'. 

Having worked exclusively with DMOs for the last 8 years, New Mind has experienced first hand the adverse affects of government policy, particularly over the last 2 years having witnessed the closure of TICS and winding up of RDAs and DMOs, loss of talented destination managers and marketeers and lack of investment in technology and marketing.

New Mind's presentation provided a platform for the company to represent the concerns of their DMO customers, primarily with regard to the question of who will take responsibility for 'place making' at a local level.  Richard's slot raised the following points:-

• Without DMOs, who will be responsible for branding, tourist information provision, tourism industry support (training, innovation, product development etc), marketing and research?
• How will we ensure that adequate resources are made available to visitors to the UK?
• What is the model for the future? - prior to 2010 we had an effective and well thought out DMO model, co-ordinated through the RDAs and supported by a technology infrastrastructure

The sessions brought together key policy makers in government and Whitehall with Destination Management Organisations and other players from across the industry. Deirdre Wells, Head of Tourism, Department for Culture, Media and Sport; Joss Croft, Marketing Director, VisitBritain and Ufi Ibrahim, Chief Executive, British Hospitality Association and Member, Tourism Regulation Taskforce have all agreed to deliver keynote addresses at this seminar.

Delegates also discussed the Government's recently announced initiatives to create a lasting post-2012 tourism legacy - including proposed investment in domestic, sporting and cultural tourism, as well as strategy for tripling visitor numbers from China.