Welcome to Yorkshire looks to fill future funding gap
TOURISM organisation Welcome to Yorkshire is investigating alternative funding routes as it looks to secure its long term future in light of the Government’s austerity measures.
And it has defended its record of return on investment amid criticism from some sections of the hospitality and leisure industries who have claimed it has wasted cash on initiatives.
Welcome to Yorkshire was pledged £30m of funding from regional development agency Yorkshire Forward for three years in April 2009.
The Government announced in its recent White Paper “Local Growth: realising every place’s potential” that tourism in the future will be led nationally by VisitEngland working with “Destination Management Organisations” (DMOs) established in local areas when RDAs disappear. Yorkshire Forward is currently winding down and will disappear by March 2012.
DMOs would be membership and partnership bodies and are expected to be formed through existing tourism support bodies, councils, local business networks and local enterprise partnerships, the bodies set up to replace RDAs.
Welcome to Yorkshire’s head of communications Dee Marshall told TheBusinessDesk.com that Welcome to Yorkshire was, like other tourism organisations, unclear about its immediate future when its funding runs out, but it was hoped its work would continue and that its brand would be maintained.
However, Mrs Marshall said the organisation, based in Leeds, had started to investigate alternative funding methods, including bidding for money from the Government’s £1.4bn Regional Growth Fund.
Mrs Marshall said: “We’re putting mechanisms in place to look at other (funding) options. One thing we can look to influence is the tourism strategy and funding for tourism. We’ve been in talks about a need for a clear funding strategy for tourism in the UK.
“We believe the strategy for promoting Yorkshire, which is working really well, should continue.”
She said Welcome to Yorkshire’s chief executive, Gary Verity, had met with tourism minister John Penrose to discuss the body’s future and argue its case for future Government funding.
“For us it’s business as usual,” she said. “The brand will continue but the questions we’re asking are where we’ll get the funding from and how we get that.”
As well as bidding for money from the Regional Growth Fund, Welcome to Yorkshire is looking to raise revenues by growing its membership base – which currently stands at 2,407 – and pulling in more private sector sponsorship.
Welcome to Yorkshire, which is presently holding a number of annual general meetings across the region, is aiming to hold its flagship Y11 event next year.
Mrs Marshall defended the validity of a recent report, which revealed that almost £7bn had been brought into Yorkshire’s economy, aided by overnight holiday visitor spend, since the launch of Welcome to Yorkshire in 2008.
The report, which Mrs Marshall said had been compliled independently from Welcome to Yorkshire, found that the economic impact of tourism to the county has risen from £5.9bn almost two years ago.
She said Welcome to Yorkshire’s high-profile marketing and PR campaigns, including TV adverts, had been valuable and had led to direct investment into the county.
She also maintained that the five tourism partnerships in the region, which operate across the region and are aided by funding from Yorkshire Forward, had been a success and would continue to operate, with directors from each body reporting into Welcome to Yorkshire.
A Yorkshire Forward spokeswoman said: “The activities supported through the three-year agreement between Yorkshire Forward and Welcome to Yorkshire are expected to deliver a 5% growth in the value of visitor spend in the Yorkshire and Humber region, and attract match-funding from the tourism sector of £1:1.
“Welcome to Yorkshire is delivering extremely encouraging results and are on course to achieve or exceed these targets.”
