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

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are planning to increase the level of support for the tourism and hospitality industries.

The Tourism Action Plan sets out Government’s commitment to the tourism and hospitality industries. The £40m Discover England Fund (DEF) is designed to develop innovative and collaborative tourism products to offer to both the domestic and international traveller. There has been tremendous uptake on this project, with very high quality bids being received and, consequently, there are now excellent products being developed throughout England.

There are several DEF projects around the Manchester area; one of these is Growing Manchester as an International Gateway, which encourages visitors to fly in to Manchester and provide leisure excursions and city sightseeing to develop Manchester as an international gateway for the North of England. Another example is the Brilliant Science project which is designed to extend the stays of science conference delegates by offering a range of regional science tours covering themes such as engineering and life sciences.

The DEF programme is managed by VisitEngland who provide product development expertise with one to one advice and will evaluate the effectiveness of the projects once they have officially gone ‘live’.