As the MP for a seaside town that depends heavily on tourism, John has always taken a close interest in the sector. So he was delighted when, in May 2010, he became the new coalition Government’s Tourism & Heritage Minister. Over the next couple of years John became the longest serving Tourism Minister in recent memory, before stepping down when the Department for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (DCOMS – the Government Department responsible for Tourism) was reduced in size after the job of organising the highly-successful London Olympics was finished. During that time he delivered a series of much-needed reforms and improvements for the sector, including:

• Wrote and launched the Government’s new Tourism Policy, backed by support from both David Cameron and George Osborne. This includes more than £150 million in various marketing campaigns to promote Britain to foreign and domestic visitors, and measures to improve the industry’s productivity and commercial edge.
  
  
• Announced long-awaited funding and road layout changes for Stonehenge, to upgrade visitor facilities at one of our most-visited tourist attractions which is also a World Heritage site.
  
  
• Lobbied successfully for owners of holiday letting accommodation to get better tax treatment, which then featured in George Osborne’s first budget.
  
  
• Announced plans to get rid of much-hated bureaucracy which discourages people from organising concerts, plays and other live entertainment. The changes will mean more small gigs in pubs and clubs, which is where most new bands and talent get started, and fewer pitfalls facing local community groups and organisations which want to lay on amateur concerts, plays or sporting events as well. UK Music (the leading music industry umbrella body in this area) said it is “positive news for the industry, and especially for emerging talent."
  
  
• Identified more than 60 out of the 102 Government regulations affecting the hospitality sector of our tourism industry which will now be abolished, merged or simplified.
  
  
• Lobbied successfully for online applications for UK visas anywhere in the world, and for application guidance to be translated into foreign languages (they’d previously only been available in English), to make it simpler and more convenient for would-be tourists to visit Britain.
  
  
• Supported the creation of a new Hospitality Guild, to improve skills and productivity across Britain’s tourism industry.

John’s work with Tourism didn’t end there, of course. The sector is still one of the biggest and most important parts of Weston’s local economy, so John continues to work closely with tourism firms to drive the seaside town’s ongoing regeneration.

Updates

• «
•  Start 
•  Prev 
•  1 
•  2 
•  3 
•  4 
•  5 
•  6 
•  7 
•  8 
•  9 
•  10 
•  Next 
•  End 
• »