One On One: Christopher Rodrigues, Chairman, VisitBritain

“Our challenge is to reenergize the image of Britain,” said Rodriques.

Last month VisitBritain held its annual ExploreGB in Liverpool, where British travel suppliers connect with travel buyers (tour operators and travel agents). The event also coincided with the release of some very good tourism numbers for Britain.

British tourism set a new record in 2015, with 35.8 million visits for an overall 4% increase year-over-year, the sixth consecutive year of growth. The number of visitors from the United States and Canada in 2015 rose 8%, to 3.9 million.

TMR sat down with Christopher Rodriques, chairman of VisitBritain, to talk about what Britain is focusing on in terms of tourism promotion. Since Rodriquez is retiring after 10 years in his post, we also asked him for his perspective on the changes that have occurred over the last decade in U.S. travel to Britain.

You just had some very encouraging visitor numbers and visitor spend is way up. What does that say about the future for U.S. travel to Britain?
I think we’re back on a roll, but the U.S. market is quite a challenging one for us. In 2000, we had four million visitors, and then we dropped down into the upper two millions, before finally going back up to three million. In the one sense, we lost 25% of our volume. America itself is more multicultural that in the past—there is a greater interest in Mexico, Latin America, and South America.

What are some of the factors affecting U.S. travel to Britain?
There’s certainly a generational change. There was a period when dad took the kids to Europe to see where he’d gone to war, and then it was to see where grandpa went to war. Now we’re in a generation where people don’t know there was a Second World War. So some of the natural benefits we had in the sense of the two countries being comrades in arms has just eroded over time.

What challenges do you face at VisitBritain?
Our challenge is to reenergize the image of Britain—and that is not uniquely done by national tourism agency, but by all government agencies. There’s quite a joint desire to reenergize, to build business and educational connections. The 3 million visitors coming from the U.S. market are about 65% percent repeat visitors. This tells me two things. First, we have to continue to fight the battle to get people to come to Britain for the first time. There are a lot of other exciting places for young people to go, so Britain first may not happen. Second, we need to recognize the big opportunity we have in the U.S. market to really work on the repeat traveler, because we do have some people that are definitely Anglophile. Of the 3 million visitors, 2.1 million to 2.2 million are repeaters. That’s a very valuable asset.

We also need to get more Americans comfortable using rail in Britain. Britain is a tiny little country; the distances between destinations are small, and the trains are fast. We have to get Americans to understand that they really ought to buy a BritRail pass in advance.

You have some major campaign themes this year for Visit Britain. Which ones do you think will resonate in the United States?
I think there is really only one big campaign, but it has a social-media component, #omgb. Our main focus is that Britain is home of Amazing Moments. And #omgb is the way that manifests itself in the social media. Of course, it’s not just a social media campaign, because Millennials use social media very differently from their parents. This campaign also is not just going to be for one year, because what we are trying to do is not just sell specific trips, but convince travelers that when they think about Britain, they should think about unforgettable vacation experiences. If you are a first-time traveler, Come to London is all you need to say, and then go on social media and tweet about your experience. For repeat visitors, however, it’s all about returning to the U.K. because they just love going to that Lords of the Manor hotel in the Cotswolds or going to that restaurant in Belgravia, for example. What we’re trying to say is, since you love it, come back and do it again. Finally, I think the most important message this year is the dollar is strong and the pound is weak, so come now! Show me an American who turns down a good value story. That’s something we have to say loud and clear, particularly for the FIT customer.

You are retiring from your post as Visit Britain chairman at the end of this year. From your perspective over the past 10 years, how has the British tourism market evolved in the way it attracts U.S. travelers?
I became chairman at the beginning of 2007, by which time we had pretty much gone down from 4 million to 3 million U.S. visitors, but it had gone largely unnoticed. I sat in Washington with our ambassador and he had no awareness of that number. We realized we could not take this single biggest tourism market for granted. But that dawning realization hit at the same time as the global financial crisis and the weakening dollar. We had a perfect storm in the wrong direction. So I think the first point was really understanding we had a challenge here.

To be frank the second challenge was coming to terms with what we had to do in the digital space. Frequent-flyer miles and hotel points largely drive the U.S. market. For most airlines and hotel companies, those points are a liability on the balance sheet. They need to get rid of them. Where a national tourism organization and an airline or hotel company come together is when we say we have the content and the inspiration to help you fill those empty seats and hotel rooms during the shoulder seasons. Nobody needs any help in the middle of Wimbledon week. The planes are full and the hotel rooms are full. You get to the shoulder season, however, and there’s a real opportunity. And this is a digital marketing challenge. I’m just about to get my million miles on American and they send me stuff about prices, but not about where I want to go. They put the flight on the sales docket but they don’t put the inspiration or the destination on the sales docket. We are only just beginning as an industry to learn how you can tag people in the digital space and bring them together with the things that move them. The people who crack that are going to do pretty well. But that’s my successor’s job.