Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she is taking to increase tourism between Wales and the West Midlands.

The Government promotes Great Britain as a holiday destination to tourists through the national tourist board, the British Tourist Authority (operating as VisitBritain/VisitEngland). As tourism is a devolved matter, Visit Wales, which sits within the Welsh Government, is responsible for promoting Wales as a tourist destination.

One of the key objectives of the Government’s Tourism Recovery Plan is to ensure that tourism benefits every nation and region of Great Britain. To drive the dispersal of visitors across every nation and region, the Government is investing in the visitor economy through funding for cultural and heritage organisations, investment in infrastructure, and boosting connectivity to make it easier for visitors to get around.

Schemes such as the £10 million National Lottery ‘Days Out’ campaign, and events such as the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest, UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK, and the Birmingham Commonwealth Games (which included a £24m Business and Tourism programme aimed at boosting tourism numbers and spend in the West Midlands) have helped to boost regional tourism across the UK.

To strengthen the structure and coherence of the regional tourism landscape, the Government is taking forward recommendations from the Nick de Bois Review of Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) with the aim of supporting regional areas to better attract and manage tourists. This includes accrediting the highest-performing DMOs throughout 2023 as Local Visitor Economy Partnerships (LVEPs), and the West Midlands have welcomed the news that their region is one of 15 new destinations given accreditation status in April 2023, to help boost tourism.