As part of the Prime Minister’s visit to China, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Maria Miller announced the Roman Baths as one the top places to visit in Britain.
VisitBritain’s China Welcome campaign, launching in the Spring of 2014, will showcase, promote and develop how the UK travel industry caters to the needs of Chinese visitors.
Founding members who have committed to the initiative – including Virgin Atlantic, Marketing Manchester, Marketing Birmingham, Hilton Worldwide, Gretna Green, Celtic Manor in Wales, the John Lewis partnership, Bicester Village, Selfridges, Harrods and The Roman Baths in Bath – are already providing information in Mandarin, adapting their product offer and attracting a significant number of Chinese visitors as a result.
VisitBritain will work with businesses to build on this progress, sharing customer insights, raising cultural awareness and encouraging the training of qualified Mandarin-speaking guides – as well as translated websites and visitor literature – to ensure that Chinese visitors to Britain get as much out of their trip as possible.
VisitBritain has already endorsed UKInbound’s launch of the first Chinese Tour Guide Accreditation Scheme in the UK. Courses will start in London in February, with support from Capela Training, China Holidays and London & Partners.
The China Welcome announcement, taking place at an event on the Shanghai Bund, was also a call for more tourism businesses to sign up and get involved. Signatories will benefit from an increased competitive edge, better recognition from Chinese tourists and, subsequently, more business from China.
Tourism spend and visits from China have soared in the latest 2013 figures. The Chinese inbound market has grown faster in percentage terms than any other of VisitBritain’s twenty-two priority markets, with spend up by 132% (to £181m) and visits up by 21% in the first half of 2013 compared to the first half of 2012.¹ The combined effect of improved aviation capacity, streamlined visa processing, VisitBritain’s marketing efforts under the GREAT banner and the China Welcome programme aims to secure 650,000 Chinese visits a year by 2020, worth nearly £1.1 billion annually to the UK economy.
Maria Miller, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, said of the campaign: “Britain is very much open for business and this is just the beginning. We want businesses from up and down the country to get involved, sign up and be part of this new game-changing initiative.
“The new ‘China Welcome’ initiative shows how serious we are about making sure Britain is ahead of the competition when it comes to attracting Chinese businesses and tourists. We are determined to encourage more Chinese people come to our shores, enjoy our culture, heritage, food, sport, shopping, countryside and music and invest in our country.”
Councillor Ben Stevens (Lib-Dem, Widcombe), Cabinet Member for Sustainable Development, said: “We’re proud to sign the Roman Baths up to VisitBritain’s China Welcome Charter. More than seven years ago, the 2,000-year-old site became the first visitor attraction in the UK to extend its foreign language audio guide interpretation to include Mandarin.
“Since then, the Roman Baths has gone from strength to strength; with the number of Mandarin-speaking visitors increasing five-fold – from around 12,000 in 2005 to over 61,000 in the first 10 months of this year. This huge rise now accounts for almost a quarter (23%) of all the foreign language-speakers who visit the Roman Baths and they now outnumber visitors from France – our nearest neighbour!
“Last year Bath & North East Somerset Council rolled out the successful Mandarin audio guides to one of its other heritage attractions – the Fashion Museum – as a way of enticing Chinese visitors to enjoy their stay in Bath even longer. Mandarin immediately became one of the most frequently requested languages at the Fashion Museum as well. We believe that offering more incentives like this, to encourage more overseas visitors to come and stay in the area for longer, can only be good for the local economy.”
Earlier this month VisitBritain held its biggest China trade mission to date in Chengdu, with 43 UK suppliers meeting over 75 Chinese buyers. In September, British Airways launched a new direct route from Chengdu to Heathrow.
