Yorkshire needs to join forces with neighbours on tourism - Clegg

The Deputy Prime Minister has today promised £10 million to fund a new tourism strategy that sells the North as a single destination.

He wants to bring together the 29 organisations currently trying to attract visitors to the North West, North East and Yorkshire so they work together rather than compete.

The call for a joined-up approach to tourism emerged from Mr Clegg’s Northern Futures initiative which aims to generate ideas on how the North can compete on the global economic stage.

He said: “It’s absurd that our great North is missing out on visitors when it boasts such stunning countryside, history and culture.

“Through the Northern Futures project, I asked people what our Northern cities needed in order to compete globally, and to grow.

‘Your resounding call is clear – a strong Northern future relies on putting the North back on the map: a top tourist destination.

“From next year, I’m putting funding in place for there to be a clear strategy for tourism in the North, bringing harmony to the current offer from 29 individual tourism boards into one great offer.”

Despite the region’s reputation as a tourism hotspot, Government figures suggest London currently attracts more than four times as many international visitors as the whole of the North while Yorkshire has half the number of tourists compared to Scotland.

Mr Clegg, the MP for Sheffield Hallam, believes that the current way the North is promoted to tourists is putting off international visitors.

As an example he argued a US visitor wanting to see Hadrian’s Wall, York and Chester would need to visit three separate websites.

He also pointed to the fact that one publisher of tourism guides offers nine guidebooks on different parts of Italy but only two for the UK, focused on London and Scotland.

The new funding will be given to the national tourist agency VisitEngland to work with local organisations to draw up the new joined-up strategy.

Gary Verity, chief executive of Welcome to Yorkshire, said: “We have said for several years now that central government funding should be restored to Welcome to Yorkshire – and other official regional tourism agencies – so that we can promote the destination that we know best to grow the visitor economy and create jobs.

“We have a track record of doing just that, having added over £1.1 billion to the Yorkshire tourism economy and creating 4,000 jobs since Welcome to Yorkshire was established.

“It’s great news that the Government has ring-fenced £10 million for the north of England to grow the visitor economy and we look forward to hearing the detail of how this will work.”

More of the ideas from the Northern Futures initiative are due to be discussed at a summit in Leeds tomorrow, hosted by Mr Clegg.

Last month, he launched a new agency, TechNorth, to promote links between digital business in the North’s major cities and promote the area internationally to try and attract global businesses to invest.