Britain’s tourism chief warned ministers today against a creating “giant self-inflicted wound” by making cuts that he claims would throw away the Olympic legacy.
Visit Britain chairman Christopher Rodrigues criticised a plan which could slash his agency’s spending just as official statistics show tourism visits to the UK starting to tail off.
Mr Rodrigues compared the cuts to taking Olympic star Jessica Ennis’s javelin away in the middle of the heptathlon. He said: “It’s like saying to Jessica in the middle of the Games that you can’t afford a javelin any more and she’ll just have to do the event without one.”
He added: “The whole point is to take the impact of the Games and generate tourism, but with this we will lose momentum.” Tourism visits to the UK dropped one per cent in April compared with the previous year.
The Treasury has agreed an eight per cent budget decrease with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, though cuts to arts and museums would be capped at five per cent, leaving tourism to take a bigger hit. A DCMS spokesman would not speculate on the outcome of the spending review before its confirmation on June 26.
Read More
MORE ABOUT