UK tourist bodies promote London Olympics to China

18 August 2008 by
UK tourist bodies promote London Olympics to China

The Beijing Olympic Games is being used as a platform to raise awareness about attractions, destinations and experiences in the UK.

On Friday, national tourism agency VisitBritain and London's tourist board Visit London held a reception to present London and UK as host city and host nation of the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games to the Chinese travel trade and media.

The event saw VisitBritain unveil its ‘Britain for Sport' film promoting the UK's sporting heritage. As well as the film, the tourism agency is creating a dedicated, sport and Olympic Games-related section on all 46 versions of its international websites.

Visit London's chief executive James Bidwell said: "Our ambition is to capture the spirit that is bringing millions of Chinese domestic visitors to Beijing and make London the next obvious choice as a visitor destination. We expect visits to London from China to grow by over 300% by 2012, outpacing the growth rates in many of our traditional markets."

Meanwhile, VisitBritain has announced a number of new appointments, the latest stage in its restructure which saw 55 redundancies.

Keith Beecham, currently acting regional director for Europe, will return to the UK at the end of 2008 to be overseas network director.

The appointments follow the announcement earlier this month of the move by Laurence Bresh - currently general manager for England marketing - to the role of regional director for Europe.

Tourism Alliance hits out at Olympic trip after cutting VisitBritain job cuts >>

UK tourism dismayed by cuts at VisitBritain >>

VisitBritain begins staff redundancy talks >>

Government's tourism strategy criticised by MPs >>

By Helen Gilbert

E-mail your comments to Chris Druce here.

The Caterer Breakfast Briefing Email

Start the working day with The Caterer’s free breakfast briefing email

Sign Up and manage your preferences below

Check mark icon
Thank you

You have successfully signed up for the Caterer Breakfast Briefing Email and will hear from us soon!

Jacobs Media is honoured to be the recipient of the 2020 Queen's Award for Enterprise.

The highest official awards for UK businesses since being established by royal warrant in 1965. Read more.

close

Ad Blocker detected

We have noticed you are using an adblocker and – although we support freedom of choice – we would like to ask you to enable ads on our site. They are an important revenue source which supports free access of our website's content, especially during the COVID-19 crisis.

trade tracker pixel tracking