VISIT CORNWALL

Out of the frying pan into the fire…

Welcome from Visit Cornwall’s Malcolm Bell.

After two of the most challenging years for tourism and hospitality in Cornwall, with lockdowns, the dreaded tiers system, further lockdowns, staff shortages and the summer of pingdemic, interspersed with periods of manically busy times and frustrations of lost potential income, we moved into 2022 with the hope of a good year with less dramas and crises.

However, this is not how it turned out to be, with continuing staffing challenges combined with variable and for many patchy booking patterns combined with a growth in late cancellations resulting in lost revenues.

Although we may be most of the way through the Covid pandemic (fingers crossed), it has been replaced with a cost-of-living crisis and the unjustified invasion and war in Ukraine. This has shaken the confidence of the consumers who are now very worried about price rises, household energy bills, food and petrol/diesel at around £2 per litre. Even more worrying is the talk and media exposure regarding inflation at 10% or more, with further massive rises in domestic energy costs. The one thing I’ve always said for tourism and hospitality to do well, is for people to have free time or disposable income, but the most important factor is that people have confidence that their financial security and position is either going to remain the same, if not hopefully get better. Therefore, all the talk in the media about cost of living and price rises is really starting to have a significant impact. Recent research has shown that customers are planning to change how and where they spend their money, by either looking to shorten their stay, trade down on accommodation, reduce the amount they spend on eating out and attendance at paid attractions. They are desperately looking for good value propositions, which does not necessarily mean discounting or cut price, but the customer does look to have confidence that what they are going to spend represents value for money for them. Equally they are looking for many things to do free or at lower costs. This gives us all new but for some not unfamiliar challenges. The change is massive. Within 12 months we have gone from a scenario where many customers were not at all price sensitive and it was more about being able to book the accommodation, attractions tickets or table at the restaurant, to one where customers are far more cautious, doing more research and looking for the best deal and even considering not taking a holiday or break at all!

On a positive note, from recent research from Visit England, Cornwall is still right at the top of the list of desirable and popular holiday destinations. That said, the challenge will be, not only for Visit Cornwall but also for our members and the wider industry, to communicate, promote and market the compelling reason why people should still holiday and particularly in Cornwall and that the extra miles are still well worth it.

As previously said, this does not mean heavy discounting, but it might mean looking for added value in areas, which would be highly appreciated by our customers, but would not cost your business too much and then to communicate that to potential customers. We at Visit Cornwall will be using our media contacts, pr and more to maximise interest in the memorymaking holidays in our wonderful region. So, it is time to be creative and innovative to up marketing, promotion, and sales to prove that we have a value for quality propositions for our visitor, not only the summer, but also in the autumn winter and spring, This brings me onto an update on the Visit Cornwall website redevelopment. We are currently finalising the content and navigation of the new website. The website will launch in early September and will be far more flexible and enable us to adapt instantly if market conditions change and to meet changing circumstances, be that the weather to domestic, and even international factors. It will be very flexible in presenting Cornwall as a place for a break in any season of the year, as we believe that one of our core priorities is to not only promote our members businesses in the more popular 20 weeks but be very focused on delivering business in the other 32 weeks.

We will be hosting some webinars/workshops on the new website as we go forward and look to deliver far more value for our members, not only in marketing activities but also in supporting our members with greater market intelligence and advice and guidance, working with many partners, especially in the quieter times of years so that we can help you on how you might develop your business and improve its competitiveness and profitability. There will be the industry newsletter and emails from Visit Cornwall about the new website and the associated marketing and promotion in the coming weeks, so please keep a watch out for those weekly enewsletters. Finally, I know for many of you it is another challenging year, especially with regard to securing customers, but please have faith in Cornwall as an attractor, our customers will just need more persuading and we will all have to be creative and effective at communicating with existing and potential customers.

Cornwall is still right at the top of the list of desirable and popular holiday destinations