Latest news with #MylorSailingSchool
The Independent
4 days ago
- Business
- The Independent
Tourism minister: Britain must boost visitors from home and away
'I've been cleaning toilets and changing beds, pulling pints, making a very bad cup of cappuccino and cutting up onions badly.' Should Sir Chris Bryant ever wish to switch career and move into the hospitality industry, he might want to work on his CV. Yet the tourism minister gets an A for effort. On Wednesday afternoon, I caught up with him at Mylor Sailing School in Cornwall. He had just completed a stint of work experience that had included a hotel in Falmouth and a watersports enterprise just north on Mylor Creek. 'First of all, I'm trying to champion British tourism,' Sir Chris told me. 'As you know, the number of domestic visitors to UK tourism venues has fallen and has not reached pre-Covid levels yet. 'Secondly, I want to listen to the industry about the challenges they face.' That is a brave invitation to businesses who feel bruised by employers' national insurance rises, angry at what they see as unfair competition from short-term lets on platforms such as Airbnb and who are unimpressed by the level of support the tourism industry gets from the government. More than one business leader has complained to me about Sir Chris's job title. He is minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism, and therefore has plenty on his professional plate besides the crucial business of persuading more British holidaymakers to stay at home – and luring more foreign visitors to the UK. Oh, and he also serves as MP for Rhondda and Ogmore. But on Wednesday, the focus of the multitasking minister was strictly tourism. 'I was in a hotel room here today in Falmouth,' Sir Chris told me. 'It could have been a room in an Airbnb – exactly the same. But the Airbnb wouldn't have paid any tax. They wouldn't have to abide by any of the legislation that a hotel would have to abide by. And that's simply unfair. So we need to level that up. And I want to make sure that in areas that have a lot of short-term lets, the local authority has an idea of exactly what's going on locally. So that should be in place by next April. 'We've got to get much better at enabling people not just to visit London. It's a depressing fact: something like 60 per cent of international visitors only come to London. So we need to do better with that.' A reminder that inbound tourism is the closest a community, county or country can get to free money. International visitors spend at local enterprises, creating jobs and helping to fund amenities that the citizens could not sustain on their own. They also pay a fortune in taxes and fees: starting with £16 for an Electronic Travel Authorisation, continuing with 20 per cent VAT on practically everything they spend and finishing with air passenger duty at anything from £13 (returning home to Europe in economy class) to £224 (heading back to Singapore or Sydney in business class). A nation whose public finances are in worse shape than a minister's chopped onion needs foreign tourists desperately. Sir Chris understands this. He has set an ambitious target of attracting 50 million international arrivals by 2030, which will require a compound increase of four per cent each year until the end of the decade. I put it to him that a really easy way to get a huge tourism win is simply to reverse the petulant post- Brexit decision to exclude all Europeans with national ID cards but without passports. I calculate that this is the status of 300 million citizens, who can go to dozens of countries – including some outside the EU – with their identity cards. But the UK wants to keep them out, unless they sort out a passport. Given the huge strides in improving the security of ID cards, this seems a good time to unlock a tourism dividend. The tourism minister does not agree. He says: 'I think there's a strong argument for, in particular, school trips. Obviously we've sorted that out with the French and I think there's an agreement coming with the Germans as well to be able to do that. 'But I don't think we want to completely abandon the requirements to have proper passport controls. Not least because ID cards in different European countries perform different functions, and are therefore constructed in different ways and have different security arrangements around them. 'I think we would want to make sure that everyone coming here is coming here validly.' As you will realise, I am contractually required when speaking to any tourism minister at the start of the summer where they will be holidaying. 'Thus far this year I've had a bit of a holiday in Loch Lomond at the Cameron House Hotel. Very beautiful, very cold on the water. And we went to a place in the Cotswolds for a weekend a few weeks ago. 'I'm going to Chepstow with my mother-in-law and my husband in a few weeks' time. I've got a week in the south of France when I'm probably going to burn to a crisp.' After a hyperactive Wednesday, he deserves to be on the guest side of the hospitality industry.
ITV News
5 days ago
- Business
- ITV News
Holiday let registration scheme to go live in April, tourism minister confirms
A registration scheme for holiday lets in England will go live by April next year, the tourism minister has confirmed, as the government attempts to redress the balance between housing for local people and holidaymakers. In an interview with ITV West Country, Sir Chris Bryant said the register will initially be voluntary, and will become mandatory for hosts of short-term holiday lets at a later date. "We need to make sure that we know how many short-term lets we've got in a particular area, because the local authorities have got to take account of that when they're planning," he said. "You also don't want villages to be over-populated for three months of the year and completely abandoned for the rest of the year," he added. "And you need to make sure there is a level playing field between hotels, which have to face all the health and safety requirements, and short-term lets. "So that's why we want to introduce, first of all, a voluntary register and then a mandatory register." Bryant, who leads the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, unveiled the timeline on a visit to Mylor Sailing School, where he was trying to promote the benefits of a career in the tourism industry. The idea for a mandatory national register was first introduced by the former Conservative government, in a bid to tackle the issue of short-term lets leaving fewer places for local people to live. According to figures obtained through a Freedom of Information Request, there were 14,412 second homes registered in Cornwall as of May this year, while more than 20,000 people in the county are on a waiting list for social housing. Under the Conservative government, plans were also announced to require landlords of long-term rental properties to obtain planning permission before converting them into short-term lets. Labour hasn't committed to implementing it, but North Cornwall's Liberal Democrat MP Ben Maguire has tabled a so-called 'Airbnb Bill' to try and reintroduce it. A spokesperson from AirBnb said the company welcomes the national registration system, and even "led calls" for one, but "overly restrictive local proposals and rising taxes for hosts risk the £222 million and 3,500 jobs that travel on Airbnb brings to the Cornish economy." The Government says it is committed to fixing the housing crisis and is aware that "excessive concentrations of second homes and short-term lets in areas like Cornwall can price out local people and damage public services."
