Windermere Lake Cruises is reinstating trade missions to China and India for the first time since the pandemic to encourage more international travellers to visit the Lake District and Cumbria.
It has been four years since representatives from the attraction visited China to target the valuable visitor market there – and over three years since they last visited India.
The trips come at the end of a busy year for the company which has already staged trade trips targeting the USA and Canada and various locations in Europe.
Jennifer Cormack, sales and marketing director for the Bowness-on-Windermere based company, heads out to both countries later this month.
She said: “The pandemic drastically reduced the number of overseas travellers coming to Cumbria and while there has been a steady increase in international travel since then – we need to build on that momentum.
“Before the pandemic, China was the second most valuable inbound market for the UK. That market, along with India’s travel trade, are increasingly important to Cumbria and the Lake District’s visitor economy.”
Jennifer will go to Shanghai as part of VisitBritain’s Destination Britain China event and a similar event in the Indian city of Delhi later this month.
The hope is to enhance existing relationships built up before the pandemic, develop new contacts and unlock potential future trade opportunities. Jennifer will also attend the World Travel Market event in London from Monday to help showcase Cumbria globally.
Before the Covid pandemic, the Chinese outbound market was booming. Visits abroad almost tripled in 10 years: from 28 million overnight stays in 2009, to well over 100 million in 2019.
Jennifer added: “China has fully reopened its border since January 2023 and international travel restrictions have been lifted. This is a key moment to develop our relationships with tourism trade representatives there.”
Visits from China to the UK are forecast to recover to 2019 levels by 2026 so they could be highly significant to the visitor economy in Cumbria.
Meanwhile, over 500,000 tourists from India visited the UK in 2022 reaching 75% of 2019 levels. That market accounted for £764 million in visitor spend which was a record.
In September, Jennifer took the Come to Cumbria message to the United States and Canada. She joined other key Cumbrian businesses, including Cumbria Tourism, at the Destination Britain North America 2023 travel trade event in San Francisco to promote the county to that important international market. She has also staged trade missions this year in Berlin, London and Ireland.
