I Love NY’s Gavin Landry Takes Helm At VisitBritain For The Americas

VisitBritain announced Wednesday the appointment of Gavin Landry as its executive vice president for the Americas where his focus will be to convert inspiration into bookings to Britain from the Americas’ key markets including Brazil, Canada and the U.S., the second most valuable outbound market in the world.

Landry will oversee BritAgent, VisitBritain’s travel agent training program. Additionally, he plans to work with tourism industry partners to develop regional and seasonal products that showcase more of regional Britain.

Within the framework of the travel trade industry, he will work towards closely targeting and matching the right products with the right clients at the right time.

Landry joins VisitBritain from New York State where he was Executive Director of Tourism, having led the iconic I LOVE NEW YORK (NY) program where he and his team increased visitation to New York State by 40 million and set a record of economic impact of $100 billion.

VisitBritain Chief Executive Sally Balcombe said, “Gavin brings a wealth of market knowledge, industry contacts and public diplomacy experience to the role. We are delighted to have such an experienced industry professional … as we continue to inspire more visitors from the Americas to put Britain top of their list as the must-go-now destination.”

The announcement of Landry’s appointment comes in the wake of data released just last week from the UK’s Office for National Statistics showing that reported North America visits to the UK were up by 35% in June, 2017 compared to the same month in 2016.

That figure brings the overall number of visits from North America to the UK for January to June this year to 2.2 million visits, up 25% on the same period last year.The US is Britain’s most valuable inbound visitor market, last year worth £3.4 billion to the UK economy.

Landry said “Tourism is a fiercely competitive global industry and while latest statistics shows strong growth from the Americas, we need to be out there promoting the message of welcome, working with partners to make it easier to travel and showcasing the amazing experiences that you can only get in Britain.”