Yorkshire is seeing a boom in screen tourism but the Government could end up undermining it - Andrew Vine
Fingers crossed that the bank holiday weekend launched what will prove to be a successful year for tourism in Yorkshire. There’s a lot riding on that being the case, because tourism is worth £9bn a year to the regional economy and supports 225,000 jobs, making it one of our most valuable industries.
But, predictably enough, just when the government should be helping the tourism industry to grow and become even more successful, it is doing exactly the opposite by starving it of funding.
The budget for a major campaign by Visit Britain to attract overseas visitors has been slashed by 41 per cent, from £18.08m last year to £10.5m.
This is totally counter-productive, despite the need to trim government spending. Visit Britain has pointed out that its promotional work in 2023 added £210m in tourist income to the £58bn the country already makes every year.
For a government which insists its first priority is economic growth, this should be an open goal. Spend more on promoting Britain and the country will benefit.
But no. They’re cutting instead, and it could potentially have serious repercussions for Yorkshire because a key element of the campaign is to tempt visitors to the locations of hit films and television shows.
That couldn’t be a better fit for Yorkshire. We’ve become the go-to destination for film-makers in recent years, which is a tremendous regional success story, and their productions are bringing additional visitors to us who we are only too glad to welcome.
The hard work of Screen Yorkshire in promoting the county has paid off handsomely. It has opened the eyes of film-makers to the breadth and variety of locations to be found within our borders, including bustling cities, streets that evoke the 19th century, dramatic upland landscapes and craggy coastlines.
All of us who visit the cinema or watch prestige television dramas at home have become familiar with seeing plots unfold against backdrops we know and love.
It might be the Dales, where the brilliant and deservedly popular Channel 5 adaption of All Creatures Great and Small is set, with Grassington featuring prominently as the fictional Darrowby.
It could be Halifax, where Marvel’s sci-fi series Secret Invasion used the Piece Hall for a pivotal scene, or Hebden Bridge, setting for the BBC’s gritty Happy Valley, or Bradford’s Little Germany, which featured in Peaky Blinders.
Or we might recognise the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, where Tom Cruise filmed parts of Mission Impossible 7, and its station at Goathland served as Hogsmeade, destination of the Hogwarts Express, in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
All these places – and many more – are benefiting from their on-screen fame, as fans come to see for themselves where a favourite show or film has been made.
For proof of that, you only have to visit Grassington on any weekend to encounter devotees of James Herriot’s heartwarming stories about country vets in the 1930s and 40s exploring the streets they have seen on television.
And the thousands of businesses across Yorkshire that depend on tourism are delighted to see these visitors, whose spending is keeping people in work.
Visit Britain was already doing a pretty good job of selling Yorkshire as a destination at the national and international levels. Its website devotes a section to the county with a suggested five-day itinerary of highlights taking in Leeds, York, the Dales, the North Yorkshire Moors and the coast.
Now it has also done us a substantial favour in focussing on the country’s film and television trail, which is so rich in Yorkshire. The government would do well to rethink its cuts, because they can only sabotage an imaginative strategy that is bringing money into Britain.
That is an argument Visit Britain ought to be making with as much force as possible, especially because the government – like its Conservative predecessor – has been explicit about supporting the film and television industries.
Ministers should be thinking more broadly about what the country can derive from them. Attracting international productions to be made in Britain is only one part of the equation. If there is a tourism spin-off to be had as well, it makes perfect sense for the government to maximise that as part of the drive for growth.
Yorkshire knows and appreciates the economic importance of the people who come to visit us and are enchanted by what they find here.
The government needs to wake up and realise it would be a serious mistake to undermine a tourism success story by penny-pinching.