VisitBritain, l'agenzia inglese del turismo, sta incoraggiando le strutture ricettive ad adottare lo standard internazionale di Qualità per rassicurare i turisti che il loro soggiorno in Gran Bretagna sarà confortevole e senza sorprese.
La decisione è stata presa soprattutto in vista delle Olimpiadi del 2012 che rappresentano una grande occasione per il Paese dal punto di vista turistico.
Le strutture che adotteranno lo schema previsto dagli standard di Qualità potranno usufruire della vetrina offerta dal sito di Visit Britain.
.
(PR-GB.com)
The UK leisure industry is being encouraged to sign up for new ‘welcome charter’ and quality assurance schemes being introduced VisitBritain, the national tourism agency, to reassure visitors that they will have a comfortable and welcoming stay.
Tom Wright, chief executive of VisitBritain, will be using his keynote address at next week’s Leisure Industry Week (LIW) Attractions Industry Forum on 25-27 September, NEC, as the national platform to announce VisitBritain’s development of a Welcome Charter - to accelerate improvements to customer services and visitor experiences – and to launch a new quality assurance programme as one of the key strands of the agency’s strategy to leverage tourism benefits in the lead up to 2012.
“The programme itself is not a new initiative,” says Tom Wright. “Quality schemes have been running in the leisure and tourism sector for 30 years now, so the basic idea is firmly established as a fundamental principle of customer service.
“What VisitBritain is aiming to do now is make accommodation the main focal point for the quality assurance schemes we offer. We’re looking to market all those products and services – such as those being displayed and demonstrated at LIW - that will reassure tourists that their visit will be a comfortable and welcoming one.
“The 2012 Olympic Games is a great opportunity - the ideal catalyst for us to accelerate this programme.”
To help speed the process, VisitBritain has introduced a charter which allows a much broader range of Britain’s 6,000 visitor attractions to sign up to a new national Code of Practice for quality assurance.
Both visitor attractions and accommodation participating in a quality assurance scheme will be promoted across all the VisitBritain websites and through different forms of marketing activity.
In Scotland, Wales and England, the national tourism agencies are responsible for marketing all companies and products that take part in their respective national quality assurance schemes.
“We want to significantly raise the number of providers of accommodation who are taking part in the national quality assurance schemes,” he says. “And we also particularly want to increase the amount of accessible accommodation. For the Paralympic Games especially, we’ll need to have a much greater stock of accommodation that meets the needs of accessibility than we do at the moment.”
In response to consumer demand, VisitBritain is offering a number of new quality assurance variations for a much wider range of accommodation. Quality assured agencies allow entire regions to be quality assured, rather than just the individual providers of the accommodation available within them.
Franchise schemes enable entire businesses to franchise themselves, while a range of additional criteria has been added to the traditional star rating system to allow providers of accommodation to show the market specialisms they focus on, for example, dog-, family- and cycling-friendly places to stay.
“Clearly there are considerable benefits to being in the national schemes,” explains Tom Wright. “The main one is that you're being benchmarked. In England, for example, you're being measured against over 27,000 other providers of accommodation. That allows your guests to effectively and comprehensively check the quality of your accommodation against a whole range of accommodation across the country.
“Secondly, there are all the marketing benefits, plus the general consumer recognition of the star rating system.”
His keynote address at LIW will also highlight the nation’s key tourism assets, and how VisitBritain is capitalising on them.
"I’ve always thought Britain offers a trinity of strengths to tourists. There’s the landscape, communities, all our history and tradition, and the nation’s deep and wide-ranging roots. There's a great richness and depth here,” he asserts.
Though history and heritage continue to be an important attraction to visitors, he is keen to emphasise that they are by no means the only assets at the nation's disposal for attracting more tourists.
"Our second great advantage has to be what lies at the heart of the country, and that is the genuine honesty and manners of British people, our fair play and our sense of humour. Britain has a culture that's alive, bristling with attitude.”
According to VisitBritain, an unrivalled calendar of sporting, social and cultural events at national, regional and local level makes Britain a key destination for visitors from around the globe.
“It’s vital for the leisure industry to recognise just how massive many of those events are. We shouldn’t forget either the fact that many of the most creative cities in the world are situated in Britain, not just London of course, but in the regions as well. Where else would you have in just one weekend the Tour de France, Henley Regatta and Wimbledon?
In today's increasingly squeezed market with audiences fragmenting into ever-smaller sections, Tom Wright is a firm believer in the value of niche marketing campaigns to win new visitors.
“Britain’s rich legacy of film and television is a critical attraction, so VisitBritain has been doing a great deal of work to promote film festivals and locations across the country.”
VisitBritain is already engaged in a number of specialised, focused marketing initiatives to persuade people to visit Britain, including a Bollywood Magic campaign, aiming to capitalise on the UK's great popularity as an exotic backdrop to Indian films, and a 'be a Brit different' initiative encouraging American visitors to discover Britain’s many unexpected experiences, such as surfing off the Gower Peninsula.
The next event guaranteed to unite the international community is the Olympics, and like practically everyone involved in the preparations for the 2012 Games, Tom Wright is convinced that the event will have a massive impact on Britain’s tourism industry.
In the meantime, he considers it vital that the UK’s tourism industry continues to offer all visitors the warmest of welcomes.
"We can do this best by remembering that our welcome extends to every aspect of their stay. That means that customer service and the quality of our hotels should be top class. To make sure that they reach this standard and stay there, we should be prepared to keep investing in staff training and the continued renovation and refurbishment of our guest accommodation."
(Vai all'articolo originale: PR-GB.com)