With the British Commonwealth Games kicking off in Birmingham today, we thought our conversation with VisitBritain Chair, Dame Judith MacGregor, who was in Toronto recently for the arrival of the Queen’s Baton Relay in the run-up to the Games, would be of appropriate. An interesting and inspiring woman who even prior to her role at Visit Britain, had promoted tourism via a distinguished diplomatic career, Dame Judith has also played a significant role in the increase of women to senior positions in Britain’s Diplomatic Service.

Her Foreign Office tenure included posts as Ambassador to Slovakia, Mexico and as British High Commissioner to South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland. She also held various diplomatic posts in the former Yugoslavia, Prague, Paris, Poland and Western Europe.

At the Toronto gala event hosted by Britain, Dame Judith welcomed Canadians back to Britain, noting that Canada is a very important inbound tourism market and suggested that with the (post-pandemic) pent-up demand for travel, the Games are, “a timely and valuable opportunity to highlight experiences that visitors can only have in Britain and to celebrate our friendship and connections.”

Promoting tourism

In a subsequent conversation, we wondered if having had the unique opportunity to see countries at close hand, she found any similarities in the way different countries approach their inbound tourism?

A country like Mexico for example, until quite recently, she said, was very laid back in their approach to tourism. The government didn’t seem to see any particular need to advertise its beaches or attractions because they thought it was self-evident.

“During the time I was in Mexico, 2009 to 2013 – (it was) getting away from – but still a little bit influenced – by the crash. Still, people had money and they were travelling and the economy was broadly okay.”

At this point she says, she believes Mexico recognized that they were onto something really very good, because at least some part of Mexico’s climate is fine all year round – there’s no real ‘season.’

“So, they suddenly realized that not only did they have beauty and diversity and variety, but they actually had a commodity, which was extremely unusual.”

Mexico is huge and it has a lot of people, and a lot of people who work in hospitality – in the informal sector hospitality.

The Mexican people she said, are naturally welcoming with genuine smiles and offers of help. “That isn’t always the case worldwide, sometimes you find people are a little bit wary of people coming in, or they feel it’s going to spoil their city or their town or whatever, but Mexicans didn’t feel like that at all.”

“They made everybody very welcome and I think they’re probably now on the road to being tourism superstars. They’ve really done a huge amount in part because they didn’t take such precautionary measures as other countries, and while their population paid a price, on the other hand their economy is in quite good shape, so it’s a curious trade off.”

Some countries she observed, see tourism as very much as an opportunity to portray their culture and their heritage and “their intrinsic themness.”

Other countries are more relaxed, they like the interaction and do not see it as a state opportunity at all, but just “a people to people opportunity.”

“And then I think there are countries which have over time grown accustomed to the fact that people come in and want to go to weird parts of their country.” She said.

“My early diplomatic career was slightly spotted with incidents of British travellers coming in and going off the beaten path and coming up against local police who wondered what the hell they were up to and arresting them, and then we needed to sort it out, saying, “No, so and so is a mushroom fanatic,” or, “He really did want to use his binoculars to take pictures of the local mountains, not your airbase which is just round there.”

“And countries that are more restrictive of course, in terms of where their citizens can go, are more restrictive about visitors coming in. I think it’s gone through waves of people being initially a bit, ‘well, what’s all this about?’ To, ‘this is really something that can grow our prosperity but give pleasure to everybody,’ to the now… I think a sense of, ‘well, hang on a minute, we can’t have everybody walking the Pennine Way at the same time, or queuing up at the top of Snowdonia to take your Instagram.’ It isn’t what it’s all about.”

Community involvement

While it’s not always discussed, she believes there is “a tremendous need to really get community engagement in what you’re doing, not least because it’s more fun for the visitor, but also because it really isn’t fun if local people feel rather hostile towards tourists because they feel that their place is being snuffed out of existence. I don’t think people in large countries necessarily feel that pressure in the same way as people in smaller countries do.”

You will occasionally see signs saying, Tourists Go Home, but you don’t see as much of that, said Dame Judith, adding that generally speaking, most people are “benign”, though some people are worried about sustainability and about the pollution of travelling.

“I think it is a wake-up call that everybody has to make a bit more of an effort to, A), find solutions to – such as you can, and, B), to pay attention to it and really prioritize it.”

So much on offer

We asked about interest in the Jubilee and the Commonwealth Games and whether tourists coming for events just stay in the larger cities or do they take the opportunity to explore the countryside.

Some tourists, like Europeans, she said, because they haven’t come from very far, and are familiar with the country, are quite likely to do a few things in London, and then go off and walk in Scotland or Wales, or go see York Minster, or Durham Cathedral, or the Turner Museum in Margate. (Ed. Note: This is now on my ‘must see’ list)

The Londons and New Yorks of this world, will revive after the pandemic, and be as attractive as ever, she says, so the trick is show people who are visiting the hubs the ease and convenience of visiting smaller cities and outlying areas and highlighting how much they have to offer, such as festivals and amazing art galleries. The Arts Council she notes, has made a big push over the last almost decade actually to really revive provincial theater, provincial opera, provincial ballet, dance, and galleries

Dame Judith lives in Southampton and she gives her city a boost saying, that while Southampton, “manages not to communicate its wares as well as it should do, we have undoubtedly the finest collection of modern and contemporary art, in Britain. Without a doubt.” (Ed note: Also add to ‘must see’ list.)

Southampton has now partnered with the National Gallery and it’s bidding to be the UK City of Culture 2025, and its proud citizen says, “and it’s absolutely up to its activity.”

Communication

On being asked, Dame Judith admits to speaking “badly” a large number of languages. However, she concedes she speaks French “reasonably”.

“I have learned a lot of languages. I kicked off with learning Serbo-Croat, my first posting to go to Yugoslavia, and that was such a weird language for me. I had never obviously had to learn a Slavonic language before. So, it’s my base Slav language really.”

There was a time, she says, when it was thought that language lessons were unnecessary and expensive ‘and everybody speaks English anyway, don’t they?’ “Then of course you realize, no, they don’t actually, at all, you need to speak the language. So, back we came up again to learning all the languages.”

Ambassadors, who perhaps in the past might have either learned the language as a cub diplomat, or didn’t bother because, “I’m the ambassador and I speak English,” actually realized that they do need it and that speaking the language as a diplomat has become a much more realistic recognition.”

The Foreign Office had a very good system of paying for language studies, she says, “We’d lobbied for it, but it had come about that spouses of ambassadors or heads of mission of senior staff needed to be able to speak the language in the country because they were the person who was likely to sit next to the President (of the country) at a dinner. The husband would be somewhere else talking to the wife of the President but you’d be next to the President because that’s how Commonwealth protocol works.”

“If you were tongue-tied and couldn’t talk to the person, it was a real missed opportunity.

“So, we actually learned languages to quite a high level, but I think it was slightly in one ear and out the other, once one had left the country, I use German and obviously I speak Spanish, (She was Ambassador to Mexico) but it’s hard with the other languages. I also learned Romanian when I was a student.”

Having read that people with a musical ability find languages easier, I asked Dame Judith whether she was musical, she admitted to, “a bit,” but said that is certainly the case with her husband who, “a diplomat by profession, but a musician by training, and he can speak languages extremely well, and my daughter is very musical and she speaks any number of languages extremely well. But the rest of us are much more normal, my boys don’t have that musical aptitude and they’re a bit like me, they learn it and forget it in equal measure.”

When it comes to language, tourism is interesting she said, suggesting that some English signage at places of interest in non-English countries would “enhance the quality and the footfall in their museums considerably, because English is much more of a lingua franca.” Admittedly she said, countries don’t always have the capacity to do that, but sometimes it just doesn’t occur to them that it would encourage tourism.

The UK has got around language issues by having headphones in different languages at museums and attractions but Anglophone countries could also do their bit. She exempts Canada saying, this country, “is a classic, by just having more stuff around in other languages, it just shows that you’re alive to the importance of interconnectivity.”

A different approach to tourism

All her travel, all her diplomacy, all the languages she speaks make her ideal for her position as Chair of Visit Britain, so we asked what unique aspects she brought to the job?

She does believe she brings a different approach to the various boards on which she works, “I am the person to chirp up with, ‘And have you thought about the perspective of the other partner that you’re dealing with?’ Because I see things always in that bifocal way. There was always a joke in the past that you never leave diplomats too long abroad because they become monofocal, they only see (their own) country’s point of view.” But Dame Judith does not believe that to be true.

“You continue to see both your own country’s approach and you see very clearly your host country’s approach, and I think you see the merits of both … there are many paths to Rome and I certainly am able to bring that perspective and to understand the importance of the Overseas Network, at a time when, there’s a certain myopia in the UK which has stemmed from the pandemic as much as anything.”

“So, yes, I can bring that international perspective – it’s in my DNA now – I look out and I try to read the world, it’s not always so easy. But I address myself to trying to understand the world so that I’m a bit more clued up on what’s happening in Continent X or Y.”

She’s not an expert, she says, but just someone who keeps a passing knowledge of current global events and that, she thinks, “does bring a bit of value to the board when we are looking at inbound tourism.”

“An international perspective is one thing, but there’s a lot about how domestic tourism is organized, it’s a very big political priority of just about every party in the UK. It’s called Leveling Up and it’s just to try and address the perceived and real inequalities in wealth between different parts of the country.”

Job creation

Tourism is a great facilitator of transferring prosperity because of the jobs it creates, because of the interactions. Here too because of her governmental background her experience is of considerable value.

Addressing the labour shortage, Dame Judith believes there is no single cause.

“In our case it isn’t just saying, “It’s because we left the European Union and they all went home.” Some did, others didn’t. There were plenty of young people around to fill those slots, if that was a factor.”

When the pandemic came she says, “people who were not able to work and who were above a certain age decided they would retire. Others decided they would take a change of lifestyle. And then companies of course were not averse to people leaving because they hadn’t got the funds to continue to employ them very readily. So, I think, all of that played a huge part. And then I think you come back afterwards with that changed approach and things start up slowly. I think people have just moved around quite a bit, and they haven’t moved into those, let’s face it, lower paid (jobs), and the pay has been a factor.”

“So, no one has yet fully researched why it is, but the fact is that there are shortages in hospitality, there are shortages obviously at the airports, that’s pretty obvious, they laid people off and now they haven’t got them back again quickly enough. It’s not necessarily the case I think in the airports and the borders that people won’t come back and levels can’t be brought up, but it takes ages to train people and vet people and bring them back in. So, it’s a complicated picture but it is adding up to, in different areas and in different ways, shortages.”

But, there’s another factor. When you actually look at the statistics in the UK, maybe it’s just there are quite a lot of vacancies so it’s not as if there’s job shortages, but during COVID, some companies decided that they would, if they had not already done so, invest in digital and automated procedures.

“So, those jobs aren’t going to come back.” Says the VisitBritain Chair, “And while that change is taking place, the full service may not be being given by Company X to Customer B, but everyone is thinking, well, it will do soon, meanwhile we’re just having a few disruptions.

“It will be fascinating when they do write about it with authority and have the evidence, because then there’s supply lines and there’s all this – and then there’s that – and every Tom, Dick, and Harry, and Mabel has an idea about why it is because they think anecdotally to their particular local problem.”

Dame Judith stresses that, “Meanwhile, the situation is complicated and having an impact on hotels who are having to think about whether or not to fully open all their rooms because of housekeeping shortages, while at the same time people are beginning to travel and the demand is rising.

“It’s certainly going to be interesting to watch what the future brings both in the short term and going forward.”

It certainly will be.

In the second part of our interview with Dame Judith MacGregor, next week, we will learn of her path to the Foreign Service and opportunities for women in the diplomatic services.