Talk:VisitBritain

Work needed

This article really needs a lot of work! I have commented out most of the article until someone can look at it properly. « Keith » 22:13, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Removed hidden text

Here is the splurge of marketing blurb which an editor had chosen to leave in, but hide, in the article itself. It is probably best to simply remove it, and salvage anything useful from it:

VisitBritain's mission is to build the value of Britain's tourism economy by generating additional revenue throughout Britain, throughout the year, by creating world-class destination brands and marketing campaigns. VisitBritain also builds partnerships with, and provides insights to other organisations that have a stake in Britain's tourism.

Tourism in Britain is a successful growth industry and worth £74 billion to the UK economy. In 2005 Britain received 30 million overseas visitors, spending £14 billion. UK citizens took 70.5 million holidays in England in 2005, spending £13.7 billion

Key facts and figures:

• VisitBritain is funded by the UK Government Department for Culture, Media and Sport
• The grant-in-aid to promote Britain overseas during 2005-2006 was £35.2million
• the grant-in-aid to promote Engalnd domestically during 2005-2006 was £12.4million
• The grant-in-aid to promote England internationally during 2005-2006 was £1million
• In addition VisitBritain generated £19.5million of non-government funding in 2005-06

Source: www.visitbritain.com/corporate/annualreport0506 ([1])

The Chairman is Christopher Rodrigues CBE, who succeeded Lord Marshall of Knightsbridge on the 1st of January 2007. The Chairman and Board members of VisitBritain are appointed by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport following open, public recruitment.

The Board:

Penelope, Viscountess Cobham (Deputy Chairman); Alan Parker; Hugh Taylor; Keith Brooks; Janis Kong OBE; Peter Lederer CBE (Chairman of VisitScotland); Moir Lockhead OBE; Kumar Muthalagappan; Tamara Ingram (Observer, Chairman of VisitLondon); Sir Digby Jones (Observer, formerly Director-General of the CBI); Tom McGrath OBE (Observer, Chairman of the Northern Ireland Tourist Board)and Juliet Williams (Observer, Chairman of the South West Regional Development Agency).

The Senior Management Team:

Tom Wright, Chief Executive; Julian Aviss, People and Performance Director; Michael Bedingfield, England Marketing Director; Kenny Boyle, Commercial and Marketing Services Director; Richard Britton, Head of Technology; Torvald de Coverly Veale, Britain International Director; Sandie Dawe, Strategy and Communications Director; David Philip, Corporate Services Director.

VisitBritain operates in 36 markets around the world and has offices in 23. In 2005 it dealt with 10 million overseas enquiries and its international database contains over 6 million customers interested in visiting Britain. It also has over 1 million British names on its EnjoyEngland database.

All of VisitBritain's marketing activities, including PR, are thoroughly evaluated and subject to scrutiny by the UK Government's independent National Audit Office. In 2005 VisitBritain's activities generated, on average, in excess of £47 of visitor expenditure for every £1 of public money invested. In 2005 VisitBritain's PR activities generated over £600 million in equivalent advertising exposure in core markets around the world.

--Mais oui! 06:02, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

"English Tourist Board"?

While doing a quick search of Wikipedia I found an article on the "English Tourist Board", and therefore added the link here. However, I have not been able to verify the existence of such a body and have therefore nominated that article for deletion. Please see:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/English Tourist Board

Unless and until the existence of such a body is verified as per WP:CITE I am removing the reference to it from this article. --Mais oui! 06:44, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Summary

My best efforts at collating and interpreting information from the VisitBritain website:

1. VisitBritain has overall responsibility for Great Britain, except London.
2. VisitBritain has direct responsibility for England (except London) through EnjoyEngland.
3. VisitScotland and VisitWales are semi-autonomous, but their chairpersons are both ex-officio committee members of VisitBritain, and presumably have voting rights and responsibility to the organization.
4. The NITB and VisitLondon are entirely autonomous, but have observer status on the VisitBritian committee.
5. A fifth organization, the "England Marketing Advisory Board", also has ex-officio committe status on VisitBritian. It's probably run by the reptilians. Tevildo 12:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

My thoughts are mainly that I don't see a point to a wholly separate "Enjoy England" page, which is what was suggested as a move target for the English Tourist Board article in its AFD. Basically it's two faces of the same organization, one for international and the other for domestic consumption. Whereas at least the other bits of the older structure like VisitWales and VisitScotland have (I gather) devolved and are somewhat separate. I recently did a merge for VisitWales from the Welsh Tourist Board (incorrectly named) article, and had to do some of this digging then. --Dhartung | Talk 18:49, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to try and dig out the statute that created the organization to see if that contains any definite resolution of the issues. Tevildo 01:30, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

What is the relationship between.....

the one of

• http://www.visitbritain.org/

and that of

• http://www.visitbritain.com/en/EN/

I asked this question is due to the fact that the first one was introduced by the hypertext in the second one. If they are the same organization, then the second domain name should also be listed for the topic --124.78.215.128 (talk) 02:50, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

visitbritain.org is described as the "Visitbritain's Corporate Website", whereas visitbritain.com is aimed more at individual visitors. Both sites are official, and both represent different facets of the same organisation. Hope that helps. regards, Lynbarn (talk) 15:31, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Well to me, one has got a trademark and another not. Why is that.....??? --222.64.24.88 (talk) 18:15, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

You'd have to ask someone at the organisation why one site shows the logo with a trademark symbol, and the other doesn't, but if they have registered the logo, then it is trademarked, regardless of whether or not they use the symbol. Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 19:43, 17 August 2010 (UTC)