TravTalk India Online Magazine
The VisitBritain England Expert e-learn platform, in partnership with TRAVTALK, was launched in the first week of October. Shuja Bin Mehdi, B2B Manager – India, VisitBritain, explains how the initiative would educate, familiarise and equip the travel trade about new aspects of England.
Nisha Verma
Please tell us briefly about the VisitBritain England Expert e-learn platform and the launch?
The objective is to educate, familiarise and equip our industry partners with destinations across England, priority focus being on the West Midlands region and London.
Why do you think it’s the right time to launch it for the Indian travel trade?
2022 has been a great year for tourism in terms of recovery from India re-visits to the UK. Basis the airline connectivity going up, the momentum seems to continue into 2023. Hence, this is an opportune time to work with partners on increasing destination and product awareness and equip them with new itineraries to be product-ready next year.
What is different about this programme?
This programme has only six modules and takes a short time to be completed. It incentivises the trade by generating a personalised England Expert certificate post completion. With this programme, we are addressing product development for England and showcasing gateway cities to drive regional dispersal.
What approach you have adopted to make sure that the programme is effective for the trade to sell VisitBritain product in this market?
We have gathered feedback from our previous online training program and made sure that we showcase each region with saleable products with an appeal to the Indian ‘experience-seeking’ family audience. We have given priority to curate products and attractions with a strong appeal to Indian visitors – keeping in line with our themes of food & drink, shopping, nightlife, countryside & heritage.
What would be the focus of the programme in terms of the destinations being covered?
We have focused on destinations that can be promoted as gateway cities and combined with London, to create open-jaw itineraries for the Indian market. We believe that this will help the trade translate the huge interest in London to other parts of England and drive conversion to the rest of the UK.
How would assess Year 2022?
2022 was a very positive year, especially from the growth markets’ perspective. Globally, India, GCC and some other markets have shown huge amount of recovery for us, and we have seen good number of visits. We have worked with multiple trade partners across India and done record number of roadshows. We have spoken to around 2,000 travel agents directly face-to-face. We have done so much of account management first time in all these years, to make sure that 2023 will exceed our expectations just like 2022.
We started our roadshows in February from Delhi, where we spoke to around 50 trade partners on how to sell West Midlands, and did six more across India, receiving great support and love from the travel trade. We are also participating in Global Panorama Showcase and reaching out to agents in Tier II and Tier III cities. We hope we have done a fair job in educating the trade about UK and we will continue with the momentum into 2023 also.
