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An Update From VisitWiltshire
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Visitor Economy Guidance Update
In light of the new local restriction tiers coming into effect in England this week, the working safely during COVID-19 guidance has been updated with more detailed guidance for those working in the visitor economy. Wiltshire and Swindon have been placed in Tier 2.
View the updated guidance to find out the restrictions in place for your business.
It also highlights additional considerations for businesses as follows:
- It is law for staff and customers to wear face coverings in retail and hospitality venues and in private hire vehicles and taxis, except when eating or drinking (or because they are exempt). Businesses must remind people to wear face coverings where mandated.
- Staff who can work effectively from home should do so. Employers must not knowingly require or encourage someone who is being required to self-isolate to come to work.
- It is an offence for a relevant business to fail to take all reasonable measures to:
- require adherence to social contact restrictions (respecting all exceptions to this) when taking a booking; or allowing entry and once groups are within the premises failing to take steps to advise groups not to merge in ways that breach the rules
- ensure adequate distance between tables (2m or 1m+ with appropriate mitigation)
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Heritage Location Guidance Updated
The Primary guidance for Heritage Locations on Working Safely During Coronavirus has been updated in line with the new restrictions that have come into force;
In Tiers 1 & 2 indoor and outdoor heritage sites can open to the public, subject to the relevant social contact rules. As heritage buildings and landscapes can be used for a multitude of different activities, organisations must check if individual activities are permitted under the rules in their respective tier. This includes caps on attendance at large indoor and outdoor events, where applicable. You can see the full guidance here.
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Christmas Guidance
From 23 December to 27 December, people may choose to form a Christmas bubble. Christmas bubbles can gather in private homes - including second homes and caravans - and in private rented accommodation such as short term holiday lets.
To enable Christmas bubbles to meet between 23 and 27 December, hotels, hostels, B&Bs and boarding houses are permitted to take bookings for leisure travel in all tiers from 22 December to 28 December. Guests must check out on or before 28 December.
You can see the full Christmas Guidance here.
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Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS)
There are now monthly deadlines for CJRS claims, some of the dates mean employers may have to submit earlier than they were required to in earlier months.
Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme step by step guide for employers has also been updated to reflect recent changes to the scheme.
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Grants Available
There is still chance for those businesses who are eligible to apply for the following grants;
Local Restrictions Support Grant
This new scheme is aimed at those businesses required to close due to the national restrictions which started on 5 November 2020. One-off grants will be awarded to eligible businesses to support them during the four-week closure and help them with the ongoing challenges presented by coronavirus. This grant is available to businesses who pay business rates and the amount they get is determined by their rateable value. You can check your eligibility and apply with Wiltshire Council HERE
For our partners who fall under Swindon Borough Council you can check your eligibility and apply for both of the above grants HERE
Additional Restrictions Grant
This discretionary grant scheme will support those businesses required to close or have been severely affected by the national restrictions, but which do not pay business rates. You can check your eligibility and apply with Wiltshire Council HERE
For our partners who fall under Swindon Borough Council you can check your eligibility and apply for both of the above grants HERE
The online tool for finding out what support is available for your businesses has been updated to reflect recent changes and can be found HERE.
As always, VisitWiltshire is here to help. if you have any issues, or questions please don't hesitate to get in touch and we will endeavor to help to the best of our ability. If there is anything you would like us to pass on also let us know as we are regularly feeding back to VisitBritain, TIER and DCMS, as well as Wiltshire Council. You can keep up to date via our Partner Advice page and these regular newsletters.
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Christmas Grant for 'Wet-led Pubs'
The Prime Minister has announced a one-off £1,000 Christmas grant for December for ‘wet-led pubs’ in tiers 2 and 3. This grant will be on top of the furlough, VAT and business rates relief and existing grants for pubs that predominantly serve alcohol rather than provide food. You can read the announcement here
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Keep Us Up to Date
Please let Helen or Billy know any changes to your opening hours or product offerings as we move out of the second lockdown.
Tell us about your upcoming events! Especially if you have anything coming up for Christmas and New Year. Whether these events are digital or in person, you can add your upcoming events for free by filling out our simple website event form. We will also select events from here to promote in our monthly blogs and on social media.
As always, please let Helen know if you have any messaging you would like us to promote on the VisitWiltshire social media channels. This could be news, offers or just fresh imagery you want to share! We are also looking for your events and upcoming news for 2021, if you have anything suitable please send to Helen and Holly.
If you would like to feature in a VisitWiltshire blog or contribute a guest blog, please get in touch with Helen to discuss possible topics and themes.
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2021 Publications
Work has started on our 2021 digital Wiltshire publications. We will be including new digital content including virtual tours, videos and reassurance messaging for visitors, please contact Fiona if you have any relevant digital content that we can include. If you placed an advert last year Billy will be in touch with details for this year. If you didn’t place an advert last year but would like to place an advert this year, you can see the prices here and please contact Billy.
Calling all attraction and town partners - submit your 2021 events
2020 has been a challenging year for running any type of event. We are hopeful that this will change for 2021 and are looking to include an events section in our publications, if you are an attraction or town partner you are invited to submit up to 6 events (virtual or actual events) for possible inclusion within our 2021 digital publications. Ideally, we would like both the name of the event and the exact 2021 date(s) but failing that please send Billy the name of the event and the month in which it takes place.
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Creating Great Content – VisitEngland Webinar
With many businesses and organisations requiring new, updated imagery and content to portray their message in a ‘new normal’ world, what does great content look like and how do they ensure they can use it for the future? The course is running on Tuesday 8 December and you can register for free here.
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PR Update
We’re committed to help promote Wiltshire Council’s shop local campaign to local press and last week we secured an interview with BBC Points West for Bradford on Avon, featuring Cllr Dom Newton and two local business owners.
VisitWiltshire has also recently supported articles in Countryfile, and The Jewish Chronicle the latter was a Great West Way feature, in which Wiltshire featured.
View all press coverage achieved in November HERE
If you require any additional help or support with PR, please contact Holly who will be happy to help.
Latetst Press Release
VisitWiltshire Hosts First Virtual Familiarisation Event to Aid UK Recovery and Boost Wiltshire’s Visitor Economy
You can see all our press releases HERE.
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VisitWiltshire COVID Business Support Event
Thank you to everyone who joined the VisitWiltshire COVID Business Support Event on Thursday 26 November, and a big thank you to our panel of experts from Business West, Swindon & Wiltshire Growth Hub, Wiltshire Council and VisitEngland.
You can see the notes and presentations from the meeting here.
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‘Shop Local’ Directory
The Wiltshire Council ‘Shop Local’ Directory went live on Friday.
This ‘Directory of Directories’ is a place-based resource, highlighting businesses that are open, offering online and click & collect services, promoting a Christmas offer, bringing together groups of local artisans, small producers, independents and more by consolidating links to existing online platforms. The aim is to support those initiatives and to add ‘volume’ and extend reach where possible. if you have any offers or content that you would like to include in the directory please send through to Billy and he will pass it on to Wiltshire Council.
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Transmission Risk in the Hospitality Sector
The Government has published a short policy paper that seeks to explain why the Government considers hospitality businesses to be higher risk locations for the spread of coronavirus. The Government’s view is that;
- Higher risk contacts are those that are close, prolonged, indoors, face-to-face, in poorly ventilated and/or crowded spaces, or involve “loud” activities.
- The general picture in the UK (and overseas) is that it has only been possible to get the R number consistently below 1 in places where there have been substantial restrictions on hospitality
- An analysis of 3,184 cases in Japan identified 61 case-clusters that were observed in healthcare and other care facilities, restaurants and bars, workplaces, and music events. The largest clusters in Hong Kong were associated with transmission in bars and at a wedding dinner, both locations in which face masks were not worn. At least 246 cases of have been linked to nightclubs in Seoul.
- A report from the US CDC found that those infected without known close contact with a person with confirmed COVID-19, case-patients were 2.8x more likely to report dining at a restaurant or 3.9x more likely to report going to a bar/coffee shop than were control participants.
It’s not clear what mitigating measures (social distancing, cleaning, mask wearing etc) were in place when the infections incurred in these countries.
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Brexit Guidance for the Tourism Sector
DCMS have published End of Transition Period Guidance that specifically related to the operation of tourism businesses and activities from 1 January 2021. This includes guidance and policy papers on;
Visiting Europe
Visiting the UK
Settlement Scheme
Data Management
The eCommerce Directive
The Movement of Goods
Guidance for the arts, culture and heritage sectors can be found here.
Guidance for the creatives industries sector can be found here
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New Testing Strategy
Lately the Global Travel Taskforce has been working to develop a new regime for improving the management of international arrivals into England. The Government has now announced that new strategy along with much needed funding for airports. You can read more here.
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Industry Research
The latest Consumer Sentiment Tracker from VisitBritain is available
Here you can see the results of an Oliver Wyman survey of attitudes to travel across nine countries including the UK and many of its core overseas market. This provides a wealth of information about the perceived risk and willingness to travel when Covid restrictions are relaxed
Hotel Solutions have released their latest update 'From Survival to Recovery’ with information that they have picked up about how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the UK hotel and visitor accommodation sector.
Digital Visitor have produced a whitepaper on how they believe Travel and Tourism Businesses can thrive in 2021 and beyond. You can read the paper here.
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Free webinar: Driving your recovery with Tourism Exchange GB
TXGB is a digital B2B platform, developed in partnership with VisitEngland, to help tourism businesses connect to a wide range of sales channels - and to make it easy for distributors to feature England’s bookable product in their programmes.
You’re invited to this webinar, to find out how TXGB can help you reach more customers and grow your sales. With free connection, and commission payable only when a booking is made – find out how TXGB can help you connect to niche sales channels and destination websites, as well as driving bookability on your own website.
Join this free webinar on 16th December at 2pm to find out more
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International Travel Trade Distribution
Great West Way has recently been distributed by VisitBritain international offices to trade contacts in Australia. The travel trade newsletter was issued last week to 1,013 subscribers and includes a link to the new Great West Way Travel Magazine and new Trade Itineraries. You can see this here. This current trade activity is aimed at Tour Operators who are now in their planning stages for 2021/22 and beyond.
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There is a COVID-19 advice page on the VisitWiltshire website for businesses. The page details the latest government guidance, information from travel authorities and some useful resources. We are regularly updating this page with the latest information.
VisitWiltshire Advice Page
The page also includes the latest research carried out by VisitEngland/VisitBritain and the details of the various grants, loans and support for businesses being provided by the government. You can also follow us on our @VisitWiltsBiz account for more updates.
If you are still unclear on what support you are entitled to, please don’t hesitate to contact Billy and he will ensure it reaches the relevant channels.
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