Kathryn Davis discusses Visit West’s formation, regional tourism growth, post-COVID trends, digital platform success, and the need to reframe tourism careers to attract more talent.
In today’s episode I chat with Kathryn Davis, Director of Tourism, Visit West and non-Exec Board member of Gloucestershire County Cricket Club and UKInbound.
In 2018 Kathryn was given an award for her outstanding contribution to tourism in the region. Kathryn is the font of all knowledge when it comes to tourism, leisure and hospitality in the West.
Kathryn talks about how the Destination Marketing Organisations, Bath Tourism Plus and Destination Bristol were amalgamated to form VisitWest and how it works today.
She talks about some of the benefits of bringing the two cities together along with North and North East Somerset, and how the work they are doing is proving so popular that they are seeing a record intake of businesses joining their membership.
We talk about how COVID has created a culture of last minute bookings in the conference, meetings and events business and how we need to reframe the way in which we talk about careers in the tourism and hospitality industry.
We talk about the digital platforms that promote the region with VisitBristol seeing around 3.7 million visitors to the site each year – an increase of almost double since 2014.
