What's a tourist?

I realised this was happening when I met Nigel Smith, head of the Government agency Tourism South East, at a conference at Blenheim Palace. The problem arises because so many more of us are apparently taking “staycations” (instead of travelling away on vacations), but are nevertheless spending days out at local attractions, and sometimes even staying in nearby hotels too, or at least booking friends and family into them.

Mr Smith asked: “Are such people really tourists?”

The tourism manager at West Oxfordshire District Council, Hayley Beer, answered the question — to some extent at any rate. She said: “The word ‘tourist’ is being used less and less these days. We tend to talk about ‘visitors’ now.”

Certainly, such people need a different kind of marketing to tempt them to spend money, and the ramifications of such a change could be far reaching; suppose, for instance, Oxfordshire people spent their money here, and Devon people spent their money there — instead of both travelling to each other’s county — it could save on the nation’s energy bills, but what would it do to the hotel trade?

A spokesman for the Oxfordshire Hoteliers Association, Wendy Proctor, of the Four Pillars Hotel group, said: “Luckily, the tendency towards shorter breaks means that people choose Oxford as a definite destination, rather than just passing through.

“And of course the weak pound against the dollar and the euro means that the UK is attractive to people from the Eurozone and the USA.”

She added: “It’s been difficult this year but not nearly as hard as it might have been in other places.

“After all, Oxford is a bit of a honeypot — and not surprisingly either: sometimes I look around and tell myself what an absolutely beautiful place this is.”

So could one of the oldest problems for Oxford and Oxfordshire be coming to an end? For decades, the town and county have suffered from being on the wrong stage of the London-to-Stratford run: too soon on the jouney for tourists (travellers, visitors, call them what you will) to stay overnight.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released earlier this month suggest the answer to that question might be yes.

Oxford saw the number of overnight stays increase in 2008 to 2,999,000 from 2,814,000 the year before. It remained the eighth most visited town in the country, one place ahead of Cambridge — although visitors to Cambridge spent slightly more (£200m compared to Oxford’s £198m).

Now tourist bosses in the region are urging businesses to face up to the changing nature of the industry through establishing a ‘Destination Management Organisation’ — which is what the conference at Blenheim Palace was all about.

The idea is that private operators and public bodies, such as the city, county, and district councils, should form a private-public partnership to promote Oxfordshire as a destination — with all partners digging into their pockets to contribute to costs.

John Hoy, chief executive at Blenheim Palace, said; “We need to work together rather than take the present fragmented approach to marketing Oxfordshire. We have all got to buy into it to make it a success.”

And Blenheim, incidentally, has seen a surge in visitor numbers this year, thanks partly to the introduction of its annual pass (appealing to locals) which allows people to visit as often as they like for a year for the cost of one admission ticket — in the hope, presumably, that they will spend again and again on subsequent visits in the shop and cafe.

Mr Smith said: “To quote Sir Winston Churchill, we need a grand alliance. After all, toursim is one of the few businesses showing growth in this recession.

“Destination Management Organisations have worked well in other areas.”

However he added: “Public finances are being squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed again”.

So why, I wondered, would someone like Michael Crofton-Briggs, head of City Development at Oxford City Council, consider buying into such a scheme?

He told The Oxford Times: “It’s not new money we are considering paying into this proposal. It’s a reallocation of existing money. For instance, we might put our existing tourist information offices under this umbrella.

“But by the same token, we are not proposing that private operators contribute new money, just reallocate resources that are already being spent in a fragmented way.”

He added that he was negotiating with the county council about who would contribute what, and how much, but that all concerned were working towards June next year to have the new DMO up and running.

But how would Ms Proctor, for instance, convince the owner of, say, a medium-size hotel, that paying out to join the Grand Alliance would make sense.

She said:”We are discussing levels of membership, for instance bronze, silver and gold. And I would suggest which would suit him or her. Then I would point out obvious present problems, anything from complaints about be too much litter by the river or rude taxi drivers, to complicated questions of marketing strategy, and suggest that having an interest in such an organisation would give him or her more clout.”

But whether this initiative takes off or not, everyone must remember that tourists are evolving into two different animals — those who come from afar, and those who simply like to rediscover the sights on their doorstep.

West Oxfordshire, marketing the Oxfordshire Cotswolds as a defined destination, has met with success on both fronts. Now it is organising the West Oxfordshire Week (WOW) from Monday, September 21, to Sunday, September 27, when local residents will be offered discounted entry to many local attractions.

Hayley Beer said: “‘Been there, done that’. But have you been there recently?

“WOW is the perfect opportunity to revisit old favourites or to discover new ones.”