How do I get involved in the Enjoy England Tourism Recovery Campaign?
For further information on how to get involved, please visit our dedicated pages.
I have some questions about the campaign....
There are a range of your questions answered in our Tourism Recovery 'Frequently Asked Questions' feature, which you can view here.
What is EnglandNet?
EnglandNet is a national distribution platform for marketing Britain’s tourism providers and their products – accommodation, attractions and events. It provides tourism product information to our websites www.visitbritain.com and www.enjoyengland.com. It is not a consumer facing website in itself.
It is open to all of Britain’s tourism providers and consolidators (both public and private sector) who offer quality assessed product. It is an open marketplace – think of it as being like a High Street with various shops for customers to visit.
- The primary element of the EnglandNet platform is the National Tourism Product Database - the UK’s biggest database of tourism products, already holding information on over 27,000 quality-assessed accommodation establishments, 7,000 attractions and thousands of events throughout Britain.
- This is supported by the ‘polling service’, which integrates with partners’ systems to check the pricing and availability of product from tourism businesses. The service then transfers the user to a partner’s website, allowing the user to complete the booking transaction there.
Why was EnglandNet developed?
EnglandNet was developed to create a ‘one-stop-shop’ for the marketing of tourism product in England:
- in response to consumers who increasingly want to search and book online;
- to provide the industry’s smaller businesses in particular, with easy and cost effective access to international markets;
- to ensure that Britain can match what is offered by our overseas competitor destinations.
What does EnglandNet do?
EnglandNet improves the quality of information available to potential customers, making it far easier for consumers to find and book Britain’s rich variety of tourism products. Nearly 20 million consumers will visit the www.visitbritain.com and www.enjoyengland.com websites this year.
It provides a low cost, high quality marketing and sales platform - particularly valuable to SMEs with a limited marketing budget.
It provides an additional distribution channel to product consolidators, agencies and national tourism providers e.g. Hilton hotels
What does EnglandNet not do?
EnglandNet does not take bookings. When customers want to book on www.visitbritain.com or www.enjoyengland.com they are clearly transferred to a partner’s branded site where they then make their booking. Their contract is with that organisation - this might be a regional tourist organisation or a private sector company.
Why does EnglandNet not take bookings?
We feel that the best way to meet the significant consumer demand for the online search and booking of product - whilst adding greatest value to the industry - is by referring consumers to one of the many organisations who already provide such online booking services. This ensures that EnglandNet is a non-competitive channel that is open to all industry players.
How was the development of EnglandNet funded?
EnglandNet is a ‘not-for-profit’ operation. It now meets its costs through contributions from VisitBritain’s grant-in-aid funding, from Regional Development Agencies and from contributions made by the many commercial consolidators using EnglandNet services.
Between April 2001 and March 2005, public investment in EnglandNet totalled Ł6.9 million and focussed on development of the service, and in particular, the necessary ‘animation’ of the regions –i.e. encouraging and helping tourism product owners around the country to get their businesses online.
As the national tourism agency, VisitBritain took responsibility for supporting this requirement - developing EnglandNet to link its marketing websites with consolidators’ systems and ultimately individual tourism products - in order to ensure the accurate and regular distribution of product data from the key sources in the industry:
- national, regional and local tourism organisations
- national product owners
- other organisations who can supply additional, quality-assured information, e.g. 24 Hour Museum for cultural attractions and events.
Why is VisitBritain only promoting quality assured accommodation?
VisitBritain is committed to raising the quality of Britain’s tourism product – and to make quality assessed tourism product easy for customers to find and book. Since 1st January 2006, VisitBritain only promotes quality-assessed accommodation through its full range of marketing activities. This policy has the full backing of DCMS, and is already applied by many of the English regions, sub-regional tourism organisations and local authorities, as well as Visit Wales and VisitScotland. Our aim is to encourage at least 80% of tourism providers to join one of the industry's many quality accreditation schemes by 2010 and to build Britain’s position as a quality brand in the run up to London 2012.
Do I have to be quality assessed by VisitBritain?
No, accommodation businesses can belong to a Quality Assurance Scheme, run by either VisitBritain, Visit Wales, VisitScotland, the AA or RAC (the RAC are pulling out of the quality assessment schemes from December 2006). Each of these organisations have agreed to assess properties to the same standards
Do I have to take online bookings?
No, you can still have an entry in the National Tourism Product Database and be marketed on VisitBritain’s websites through the listing you receive as being part of a Quality Assurance Scheme.
