As the UK launches its National Meetings Week with a major event in Birmingham, Joss Croft of VisitBritain tells ABTN how important the MICE industry is to the country
Under the slogan "Keep Britain Talking", the UK is launching its National Meetings Week today (September 21) at Event UK in Birmingham. It has come at the right time as VisitBritain, the UK tourist body, announced last week that business travel to the country had fallen 25% in the first six months of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008.
The agency in its annual review said there were 3.26m business trips to the UK for the six months compared to 4.45m the year before. At the same time domestic business travel has dropped by 10%.
The figures do not unduly alarm Joss Croft, VisitBritain's regional director for Europe with responsibility for business visit and events. 80% of business trips to the country are by individual travellers.
While he acknowledges that Britain's hotels are dependent on such visits, he said VisitBritain "has very little influence on these corporate travellers." The most it can do, he said, is to persuade them to extend their stay to see something of the country.
Mr Croft points to a survey in America last year by Expedia, the online travel agency, which found that 40% of US business travellers had a "shopping list" of things they would like to do when travelling abroad on business.
This, he suggests, shows a good number of business visitors could be persuaded to stay on for a break.
But the real focus of VisitBritain, in terms of business travel, is on the other 20% who come to the country for conferences, meetings and trade fairs. The simple aim, he said, was to win more of these events for the country.
National Meetings Week and its call to "Keep Britain Talking" - a lift from an earlier US campaign to "Keep America Meeting" - is part of this strategy. While the number of meetings has "decreased slightly" in the recession, Mr Croft said companies were still holding incentive trips and corporate events and that delegate numbers were holding up very well.
The country attracted a major conference of 18,000 delegates in Birmingham in the summer and there is another, medical conference with 17,000 delegates in London later this year. But with London hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012, the focus of VisitBritain is increasingly on sporting and art events. The country has lined up what Mr Croft called a decade of sport starting with the Ryder Cup in Wales in 2010, the Olympic Games in 2012, the Commonwealth Games in 2014, the Rugby World Cup in 2015 and the Cricket World Cup in 2019. There is also a chance it will win the golden prize of the Football World Cup in 2018.
These events will not only attract hundreds of thousand of sports lovers but huge number of business people brought over to enjoy corporate hospitality with the resulting spin offs for hotels, caterers, venues and transport companies as well as airlines and trains.
The benefits of staging the Olympics could start as early as next year for London hotels. Mr Croft said sponsors were currently concentrating on the Winter Olympics due to be held next year in Vancouver.
Once this event was over in February, he expected them to turn their sights on Britain. There will also be delegates from countries planning to send teams to London arriving to look for suitable training facilities for the athletes and hotels for officials. This is likely to give the UK hotel industry a welcome boost in 2010 which could continue through to the Games themselves.
While London will be the main beneficiary, Mr Croft said other parts of the country also stood to benefit. For example, the US athletics team has already decided to base itself before the Games in Birmingham. Other countries are likely to follow this lead.
He also argued that as the UK is a small country, it is entirely possible for business people to hold a day meeting in Manchester and then travel up the two hours to London for an Olympic event.
These great sporting events were also an ideal opportunity for Britain to showcase itself as the eyes of the world will be on the country. Four billion people, for example, are expected to watch the Olympic Games.
"We are still seen as a heritage driven destination," he said. "The Olympics are an n opportunity to portray ourselves ad a youthful and dynamic destination, to portray ourselves in a different light."
Again he gives an example of how the NBC, the giant US television company which will cover the Olympics, is already in the country looking for suitable places from which to broadcast its regular news bulletins. News presenters seen in picture postcard locations could prove a major fillip for British tourism.
"It might be pretty challenging for business travel at the moment, but there are lights at the end of the tunnel", Mr Croft said.