Sadiq Khan proposes £10m London tourism cash pot to lure back visitors
London mayor Sadiq Khan has proposed a £10m tourism investment pot, to be used to lure people back to the capital.
Some £3m will be pumped into Khan’s £6m ‘Let’s Do London’ campaign, which City Hall claims has pulled £70m back into the city along with 280,000 visitors.
Another £7m will then be used for an international tourism campaign which will kick off in spring.
It follows the UK stripping all Covid-19 travel restrictions for vaccinated travellers coming into the country last week.
““London’s amazing hospitality, retail, and cultural sectors have faced an existential threat from the impacts of the Covid-19 – but now that restrictions for travellers coming to the UK have been eased, London is fully open once more and ready to retake its place as one of the most visited cities in the world,” said Khan.
“There is no doubt that the return of international tourism will be central to London’s economic recovery.”
Prior to the pandemic, London held the title of being the third most visited city on the planet.
However, the impacts of the pandemic saw the number of overnight stays halve last year, pulling in around £3.8bn as opposed to the £18.8bn recorded in 2019.
Khan added that the investment will help make London a “more prosperous city” but explained that “Unless the government fully invests in the capital, there is no doubt that I will need to cut vital services, which will in turn hamper our recovery and that of the entire country”.
The London Assembly has today made a last-ditch effort to secure a long-term funding deal for the capital’s transport network.
Pleading with the Department for Transport (DfT) on Transport for London’s (TfL) behalf, chair of the assembly’s transport committee Caroline Pidgeon said that without a long-term financial deal the public body would be paralysed, as funding is set to expire on Friday.
“Due to the continued short-term funding agreements, TfL cannot plan ahead to efficiently and effectively procure necessary services and investment” she said argued this morning in a letter to transport secretary Grant Shapps. “There is an inherent inefficiency to this way of working.”