Why hospitality needs more japanese tourists

Japanese tourists have a lot of advantages, but two of them are of particular benefit to the hospitality industry: they are big spenders and they don't complain.

They also like the UK's wonderful heritage, which is one reason why National Heritage Secretary Virginia Bottomley chose Japan as the destination for the first tourism trade mission to be headed by a cabinet minister.

During the mission, Mrs Bottomley revealed that she wanted to see one million Japanese a year visiting the UK by 2000.

That represents a 50% rise on current levels and will not be an easy target to achieve. It certainly won't be reached off the back of one single visit, but will require a lot of effort in product marketing and development.

New BTA chairman

Presumably that is where the new chairman of the British Tourist Authority (BTA) will come in. David Quarmby is a controversial appointment in that he has no previous experience of the tourist industry.

What he does have, however, is plenty of commercial experience, particularly in his recent role as joint managing director of multiple retailer Sainsbury's. During his 12 years there, the company was one of the most successful businesses in the world.

Such a track record and wealth of experience should be of huge benefit to the BTA and the wider hospitality industry. Mr Quarmby is also fortunate in having the good work carried out by former BTA chairman Adele Biss to build on.

Of course, there is still a lot of work to do. At the top of the list of short-term problems is the urgent need to sort out the Crown classification scheme. It is hard to understand why the review of the scheme has been so slow when the solution is so obvious.

Lack of finance

But the biggest difficulty of all will be for him to attempt to work wonders without much financial support from the Government. Perhaps there are still some efficiencies to be found by further rationalising the relationship between the BTA, the English Tourist Board (of which he is also chairman) and regional tourist boards.

More importantly, he will need to persuade more private companies within the hospitality industry to work with the public sector to fund the development of tourism.

A lot of hard work still needs to be done to upgrade the British holiday package and persuade tourists, whether from Japan or elsewhere, to spend more money in the UK and complain less about what they get. Mr Quarmby could be just the man for the job.

Gary Crossley

Editor

Caterer & Hotelkeeper