Question: What effect has the foot and mouth disease had on the British tourism industry?

David Quarmby: Speaking from the overseas point of view, there is no doubt that foot and mouth has really damaged Britain's image abroad as a tourism destination. People abroad have seen the same pictures on their TV and in their newspapers as we have here, of burning carcasses and pictures of farm gates and footpaths with closed notices across them, but of course they don't understand the context. We who live here have got the context and they don't. For example, when I was in the States, not long ago, it was late February, I was at a conference in Washington the BTA was sponsoring, and I picked out USA Today from under my bedroom door as you do, and USA Today of course, is a States wide newspaper, and slap bang on the front page was one of these pictures of a closed farm gate and burning pyres and the caption was 'Britain closed'. Now that is the image problem that we have to counter.

Question: How many tourist businesses could be shut down as a consequence of foot and mouth?

David Quarmby: Well, it is difficult to be precise about that. There are over 120,000 businesses in tourism, in this country. And tourism is very much a small business industry, and many of them are quite fragile in financial terms, and of course with a late start to the season and possibly the business just not coming in, it is almost the worst time of the year for businesses who have probably done a lot of investment over the winter, they haven't had the business and they really need the Easter and the Spring and the Summer business for cash flow reasons. And so there are an awful lot of businesses that are struggling at the moment.

Question: And any calculation on the effect on jobs?

David Quarmby: I think if you look at it in a very raw sense, if as we predict, we could be losing up to £2.5 billion worth of inbound tourism to Britain this year, and on the domestic market, there could be at least another £2-3 billion of lost tourism, you could be looking at £5 billion worth that is not going into tourism and the rural economy. And on a very simple calculation, that could be worth up to 300,000 jobs affected by the crisis in tourism. It is an industry of course that employs nearly two million people, a lot of them in part-time jobs and we are looking at up to 20% loss, 25% in some areas, perhaps even more.

Question: And does this have a huge knock-on effect on the wider economy as well?

David Quarmby: I think that what people have realised, which those of us in the business have known all along, is that tourism is not just about hotels and visitor attractions. That both in cities, but particularly in the countryside and in the known tourist areas like the West Country, the Lake District, the Welsh Marches, the South Coast and so on, tourism pervades the economy in a way that people perhaps had not appreciated. Shops, pubs, bus services, taxis, post offices, they all depend on the visitor pound. And I think that had never previously been appreciated.

Question: The government has pledged rate relief and loan schemes to small businesses hit by the foot and mouth crisis, how else would you like to see tourist businesses compensated for this?

David Quarmby: Well, compensation is really a matter that the English Tourism Council is looking at because they have a supply side responsibility for tourism, where the BTA is mainly concerned with the overseas marketing. But what I would say is this: the government's approach is designed to help businesses of all kinds who are particularly affected by the disease in the known areas. But what the government is also saying, and I definitely support this, is that the most useful thing that we can do is to bring the visitors back into these areas to spend their money. And that is why the government has given an initial extra grant to the BTA and to the English Tourism Council, and in Scotland and Wales, the Executive and the Assembly have done the same, really to beef up the promotion of the countryside and the promotion of Britain as a place to come. And longer term, we are expecting some additional government grant in order that we can go into a major re-marketing of Britain when the disease is over, which in a sense is when our job really starts.

Question: Well first of all you have got this initial extra funding. So what exactly are you doing to tackle this crisis?

David Quarmby: Since the crisis started about eight weeks ago, we have done a huge amount to provide public information in all our overseas offices. We have gone through a very detailed exercise in finding out right across the country what is open, what is closed, what has got a restricted access, whether it is events and festivals, visitor attractions, bed and breakfast, hotels, and so have added all this information to our web site, which is being advertised by the government: www.visitbritain.com. But that is just the start. We have been countering the media stories where we can through our overseas offices, and we have in fact, just last week, appointed a global PR agency to help us counter the bad images and the misunderstandings, the myths and the hysteria. A very important channel of communication is through the travel trade and we have mailed out to 41,000 travel agents throughout the United States and 400 tour operators to tell them that pretty well all of Britain is still open for business. Sure, there are a few things you can't do, but all the things that people come here for, that they enjoy and really appreciate, nearly all of those are still open for business. And in order to ram this message home last week we ran the World Travel Leaders Summit, involving 40 heads of the travel industry, from 10 countries. From Canada, the United States and Japan, and from seven European countries, all doing a whistle stop tour over three days of Britain, taking in Scotland, the Lake District, North Wales and Devon and finishing in London, to see for themselves that Britain is still open for business. We are not trying to gloss over the problems. They travelled through areas where some of the footpaths were closed and the farm gates said closed on them, but in spite of this, they could see there is still a huge amount that you can see and do and enjoy in Britain. These travel industry leaders are going back to their countries, to their industries, talking to the travel media and saying, look guys, I have seen this, It is OK, it's our job to get people back to Britain again, let's tell them how it really is.

Question: You need to put across a message that Britain is open for business, but some people argue that this message could be premature, as the countryside isn't fully open, and it is better to wait until foot and mouth is totally under control, and the countryside has fully opened. What would you say to them?

David Quarmby: We have to do both. We have to provide immediate reassurance for people who want to come, but aren't quite sure. And we need to say it is not as you see it in your press in New York, or Chicago or Paris, but it is actually like this, that pretty well most things you want to do, you can still do, and that is our immediate priority and why we have appointed this world-wide PR agency.

There is a medium and a long-term job to do when the disease is over, then we have to go back into the marketplace and re-market Britain. Re-present Britain as a destination, that has all the wonderful things that people know about but need reassurance and re-presentation. The culture, the heritage, the history, the city life, the gardens, the countryside, the landscape, the mountains, the coastline, sport, all these things that people know about, but we need to remotivate them. So it is short-term reassurance and long term re-marketing.

Question: We have talked about the short term. Looking to the long term now, how many years do you think it will take for the tourist industry to come back from this?

David Quarmby: Well it depends partly on the size and the scale of the marketing effort that we can put into place with our commercial partners. And we are looking, we have sought from government, a total programme of £22.5 million additional funding, of which the first few million have been given to us by government for the immediate reassurance activity. But we are looking for between £15 and £20 million for a major marketing campaign. Now, if I go back to the Gulf War in 1991. Although the Gulf War was no where near Western Europe it took three or four years for us to rebuild Americans' confidence in Britain as a destination. Our fear is that without adequate activity it could take at least as long to rebuild confidence after foot and mouth.

Question: And this major re-marketing, it is not any different messages, it is really just more money for a greater advertising spend, a greater marketing spend?

David Quarmby: We do have to re-present Britain. We have got to go out there with some new big ideas. The product will still be the same, and the experiences will still be the same, but what we need to do is to re-present them freshly, newly and in a way that will grab people's attention and say, oh yes I want to visit Britain.

Question: Any indication of what those new, big ideas will be?

David Quarmby: We are working on these at the moment, and we are expecting to start them with the industry within the next few weeks.

Question: Now, one thing you must be concerned about with a possible general election coming, you wouldn't like the whole issue of tourism to become a political issue, would you?

David Quarmby: So far, it has not become a party political issue, it is certainly a political issue in the sense that the government appreciate how important tourism is to the economy. I hugely appreciate the recognition the government and indeed the Prime Minister himself has accorded to this, and the support that we have been getting in BTA for our efforts to get the message to overseas markets. So in that sense I have no problem with it getting the government attention that it has. I don't really see there is any mileage in it becoming a party political issue, as long as the government provides the support that we are looking for, then I think everybody is going to gather behind that effort.

Question: Cabinet ministers have set the example, and spent their Easter break in Britain, would you like to see them extend this to spending their summer holidays in Britain too?

David Quarmby: Well of course it's not for us to say how Cabinet Ministers should spend their holidays. What I do know is that all our ministers have got places that they particularly like and enjoy, in this country, and I know that they will show their support over the Spring and Summer by going there, spending time there and I hope spending their money there too. But if one of them wants to nip off to Tuscany or the Costa Brava for a week at some point, I am not going to object to that. What I really need to know is that their hearts and their support is really behind what we the tourism industry are trying to do for this country.

Question: And is there anything else that celebrities or public figures could be doing to promote Britain. I mean would you like to see the likes of David Beckham, or Catherine Zeta Jones helping out?

David Quarmby: There is certainly considerable scope, perhaps not immediately, but as we get our re-marketing campaign going later in the year, to bring in the support of celebrities in film, in sport, in culture, all sorts of things, because we know that certain figures are liked and welcomed and believed in different countries round the world, and we hope to be working with some of them to get positive messages about Britain around the world.

Question: Any ideas on who those figures would be at the moment?

David Quarmby: No it would be wrong of me to give any names at this stage, but we are beginning to approach some of them now.