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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to help support the tourism industry in the South West.

DCMS works with the national tourism agency, VisitBritain, to champion visits to Britain to a worldwide audience. To drive more inbound visits across Britain, VisitBritain launched a global screen tourism campaign ‘’Starring Great Britain’’ in January 2025. The campaign uses the country's rich film and television history as a hook to inspire visitors to explore diverse and often rural destinations. The launch was supported by a wider advertising campaign across the UK’s largest and most valuable inbound visitor markets including Australia, the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries, France, Germany and the USA.

The Government also has part funded, through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, the South West Visitor Economy Hub, which is an online tool providing tourism and hospitality businesses in Devon and Somerset with real-time data and insights to help them make informed decisions. It tracks trends like visitor demographics, volume, and expenditure, as well as business performance and marketing impact. By offering this information, the Hub aims to support local businesses in growing their productivity and financial stability.