The team at Visit Isle of Wight are at the forefront of developing a new nationwide Tourism Standards scheme with Visit England that will be launched soon to help kickstart the UK’s tourism industry.
Working in collaboration with Visit England, Visit Cornwall, Visit Devon and Cumbria Tourism, the Visit Isle of Wight team have been developing a local framework to offer reassurance and confidence to visitors, tourism businesses, attractions, destinations and the local population and linking this into the development of a national framework.
Tourism brings £127 billion to the UK economy – it will be seen as one of the first indicators as to how the economy will begin to recover.
The framework is being developed nationally by Visit England with input by Public Health England, national trade bodies and local Destination Management Organisations to ensure the integrity of the scheme which will be completed online, with a toolkit including logos and certificates.
On the Isle of Wight, the tourism and hospitality sector is acknowledged as one of the main economic drivers, with an overall economic impact of nearly half a billion pounds annually and responsible for 16% of the population in employment. The Isle of Wight welcomes 2.4 million visitors each year who spend £303 million.
Visit Isle of Wight Managing Director Will Myles says the Tourism Standards scheme is a vital piece of work:
“This process is very important, It will offer assurances and confidence to visitors that the destination and the tourism businesses are of the standard required, it will also offer confidence to local residents and businesses that national standards are being adhered to whilst attracting visitors to their island.
“Working on this project for the island is critical to ensure that our tourism and hospitality economy can revive itself and that we can welcome visitors back to the Island when the time is right”.
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Isle of Wight MP Bob Seely says:
“I welcome this piece of work. Many Isle of Wight businesses rely on the visitor economy including our B&B’s, hotels, pubs, restaurants, leisure attractions and many more.
“When the time is right we need to start welcoming guests – on and off the Island – we must do so in accordance with the official guidance.
“No one is talking of lifting the lockdown. We will only do so when all necessary measures have been put in place. We need to protect the NHS here, be mindful and alert to risks and look after each other.
“However, we do need to start thinking about this now so that when the time comes we can ensure that measures we have put in place are the right ones to reassure people, including Islanders.
“This scheme will provide reassurance to visitors that the Isle of Wight is acting responsibility as a tourist destination. We need this reassurance for ourselves and our visitors”.
Not yet though, too early to be encouraging tourists here. Will be a disaster, what’s wrong with these people and Bob Seely for allowing it? Money before lives that’s what.
This is just a bunch of leeches conjuring up ways of ensuring that they justify the bid levy that businesses are expected to pay, despite the fact the place is closed.
Businesses are quite capable of doing their own advertising and do not need to be paying these leeches a penny.
For gods sake NO, why is it that tourism has to rule the Island, people do live here you know…… we don’t want to catch this virus from reckless and greedy holidaymakers. KEEP AWAY.
Why don`t you read the article properly? “Nobody is saying lockdown should be lifted” – “When the time is right for visitors”- nobody is talking about RIGHT NOW! Look at Venice, groaning over too many tourists last year. Now, although borders are opening again in the EU, nobody is coming and many people who rely on tourist money are not earning anything. I have bought accommodation on the Island and have spent quite some money there, but I am waiting until GOV gives the ok. To be honest, I would be much too scared to visit you now! I am contemplating on selling and KEEPING AWAY for ever!
If London escapes a second wave after what has happened on public transport there this week, I’m sure the green light will come for movement such as tourism. So waiting game at the moment.
When we see packed tube trains, trains and buses, it just flies in the face of other prevention measures being taken.
Btw, if tourists coming here are not using the new tracing app, it will create a missing link in the data tracing. Maybe Visit Isle of Wight should focus on addressing that first to give people more confidence.
Way too soon, we still have brakeouts here any more and more people are contracting the virus the Last thing we need is for someone from the mainland to make matters worse than it is ,Lives are more pressures than Any amount of money at this time.
Suddenly its all about the money now, they don’t care about anyone’s health. They lie to us. Fat cats need their money. Shame on them
While we are on the subject, why is there at least one pub seemingly open. I same seemingly, because there appears to be a few people in and out, lights blazing inside and outside, lights outside are not safe, even to the point that they are placed near the road not on a pavement or actually on their premises, but near a bus stop. There is no outside safety electrical box and the wires just trail around the place where people need to walk to the bus stop….. Wreckless. Is there anyway to post pictures here of this, as someone is going to get injured either by tripping over the lights or wires, health & safety will be informed at the Isle of Wight Council.
Report it then if somewhere is open
Mind your own business
Moron is right name for you.
Mark the elf and safety nanny.
It’s much to early to welcome tourist to our Island what’s wrong with people morons we are still getting people testing positive and dying
the virus isn’t going anywhere for a long time – so we might as well get out and face it – get back to work and get holidays underway. No point hiding indoors – any vaccine will be a fair wait yet and may never come.
We dont want visitors at the moment the ferry companies shouldnt let any over
Being the owner of a large tourism business it’s in my interest probably not to open this year. My operating costs would be around 20k a month. I would be obliged to bring all of my staff back. We’ve missed Easter, 2 bank holidays and all of June, and it’s still guess work whether our industry is going to be open for mid July. If I am open in July I can only see a handful of people starting to trickle over to the Island for the later part of the summer. I rely like many other businesses over here basically Easter Holidays bank holidays and 6 weeks that the kids have off in the summer. The economics would not stack up for me.
I do feel for business like yourself, I hope you can continue, because if these businesses die, the island will be a waste land. All the best