Rail, while vital to commuters and business travellers, has been overlooked in the delivery of the tourism agenda, argues Neil Stokell, chief executive of the sector skills council, GoSkills.
passenger transport sector to the overall tourist experience. Transport operators have long appreciated the central role our sector plays in shaping visitors’ first impressions and delivering tourists to destinations UK-wide.
N
The provision of safe and high-quality services is vital in enabling and encouraging tourists, and other passengers, to make journeys to leisure and tourist destinations and attractions. Yet historically, the sector has not been properly recognised as contributing to the delivery of the tourism agenda and is often overlooked in tourism and government strategies.
But times are changing and it’s interesting to now see that a major plank of the UK’s new Government Tourism Policy,1 published in March 2011, is its desire to see improved transport infrastructure. Each devolved administration in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has its own tourism strategy and sees tourism as an important contributor to the economy, so there’s never been a more fitting time for our sector to understand where it best adds value. Our research shows that passenger transport is also finally getting credit for being an intrinsic component of tourism’s success from the tourism industry itself.
According to VisitBritain’s Tourism Trends Quarterly (Issue 8, February 2011), during 2010 29.6 million visitors from abroad spent £16.67bn during their time in the UK. It is estimated that over two million jobs depend on tourism.
The picture around the UK shows that:
• In 2009, 67% of UK’s overseas visitors travelled by air, with some 18% travelling by sea and 14% travelling via the Channel Tunnel;2
• In 2009, 20% of domestic tourism in England was by public transport or coach, and 13% by rail;
• 31% of holiday trips to Scotland from the UK are by public transport;
• Overseas tourists are more reliant on 224 | rail technology magazine Apr/May 11
For large stadia, which often rely on visitors travelling long distances, rail provides a more practical travel solution. It’s no surprise then that attraction managers believe their sites would benefit from a comprehensive strategy for visitor travel and from collaboration with transport operators on factors such as scheduling, ticketing and promotion.
Indeed those attractions positioned along
ew research from GoSkills underlines the vital contribution of the whole
public transport than those from the UK, almost half (47%) of European visitors used a scheduled bus during their visit;
• 21% of tourists used buses and 18% of tourists used trains whilst in Scotland;
• 56% of Wales’ overseas visitors entered the UK by air, with some 40% coming by sea and the balance via the Channel Tunnel;
• Rail travel is important for city centre attractions e.g. Cardiff and Belfast;
• Nearly 9 million holiday trips were made to Wales from other parts of the UK, and around 11% of these were by passenger transport;3
• Most visitors to Northern Ireland from overseas either flew into a Northern Ireland airport (44%), or sailed into a Northern Ireland seaport (34%);
• Nearly a quarter (23%) of visitors to NI came via the Republic of Ireland.
Rail’s contribution to the success of
international tourism is most obvious through the impact of the channel tunnel and by getting tourists to and from ports and airports around the UK. But it has a much wider role to play in supporting tourists, as well as local people, to access visitor attractions and tourist destinations.
We commissioned independent research company, Turquoise Thinking Ltd, to get first-hand views on the relationship between passenger transport and tourism from tourist attraction managers around the UK. Their responses painted an interesting picture for rail services. Managers of city- centre destinations, attractions and events were quick to acknowledge the important role of rail operators in encouraging rail journeys that free up city roads.
rail arteries, such as in Oxford or Stratford- upon-Avon, described the benefits of picking up extra visitors, perhaps en-route to other places.
Certainly a key driver for GoSkills’
research was to understand the intricacy of the relationships across transport and attraction providers to enable the two sectors to take a more joined-up approach to enhancing the tourist experience.
Surveys of visitors to the UK have shown an overall customer satisfaction of around 70%,4
compared with other destinations5
but this rating is only ‘mid-table’ and the
‘Quality of Welcome’ at airports, ports, and on railways is rated below average.6
Whilst this is cause for concern, we hope our reports will help the transport and tourism sectors to identify areas for skills and service improvement.
A stronger culture of customer service will be key to tourism’s future and is already high on the agenda for passenger transport operators. Where skills gaps exist in the current workforce up-skilling or re-skilling will help address the issue.
Aside from addressing skills gaps, opportunities clearly exist to enhance and develop innovative ways of providing information to tourists about rail services, availability, options, costs, time, and facilities, including through different media and languages.
And it seems that across the board there is now commitment to a more integrated approach to enabling visitors from home and across the globe to reach the UK’s best attractions with ease.
FOOTNOTES
1
tinyurl.com/5vvj763 2 International Passenger Survey 2009
3 UK Tourism Survey 2009 4
www.ukcsi.com/Results. aspx 5 VisitBritain 2008 6 TNS Survey, 2008
Visit
www.goskills.org/tourismresearch11 Neil Stokell
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