ጋቪን ላንድሪ፡-
Other Edinburgh will be four hours, but by rail. Um, but you can be in Cardiff in two hours, you can be on in East England and two hours. And within that radius, you’re talking about Brighton, which is a great beach area, or the charming villages of the Cotswolds, where you can go, go to bath and see the Roman baths, um, Ken, which is known as the garden of England is a beautiful region to the South of London. Again, a day trip, if you like, or part of an itinerary. And that includes the white cliffs of Dover. It also includes England’s wine region. And so people would be surprised to know that, um, the South of England actually sits on the same access as champagne, France, and because of climate change, uh, making champagnes in champagne, France has become more and more difficult. So many French vendors have taken up positions in South of England and are making these high-quality champions, which can be called champions, of course, because that’s part of the prominence, but these are world beating kind of champions and beat, and actually, uh, champagnes, uh, from, from that part of France in blind tastings.
ጋቪን ላንድሪ፡-
Um, so you’re seeing a whole English wine country experience come on, Tangier. As an example, I taken up a big position in the South, the South of England. So that’s a few of the few of the things we have coming online. And I think it’s, it’s pretty exciting. I can’t wait to get back. Of course
ጁርገን ስታይንሜትዝ
I can, I can, I can hear your excitement and I’m getting excited just to think about all these opportunities and yes, we all want to travel again. We all want to travel. It’s safe again. And, uh, the UK is such a fantastic place and it’s such a safe place also to get this started. We have,
ዶክተር ፒተር ታሮው፡-
England is just a great place to visit. The weather should get better. It should be warmer. Um, you guys should be really pro climate change.
ጋቪን ላንድሪ፡-
Wait, wait, we certainly are. Well, no pro climate. We are certainly pro sustainability and net neutrality. That’s for sure. Um, but there’s, you know, there is, I mean, a hundred, there are 112 Michelin star restaurants throughout the whole of Britain, 112. I mean, people think of bangers and mash and fish and chips. And you’ve mentioned that theater, which I love, I love fish and chips too, with the mushy mushy peas, but, you know, 112 Michelin star restaurants that the food scene and the drink scene when it comes to scotch at Gen-Z is just exploded all over. So, you know, it’s not your mom and dad’s British vacation that’s for sure. Yeah. I was just in Northern Ireland. And if you want to sample whiskey, it’s the place to be. Yeah. Yeah. I know Northern Island is great. Um, you know, they got all the game of Thrones attractions there and, uh, the Titanic hotel, uh, so it’s yeah, Northern Island is a great place. We actually promote Northern Ireland to our business events, our meeting and event planners across the, across the country as well. That’s not leisure tourism, so I’m not talking about that today, but, um, there are a great partner of ours.
ጁርገን ስታይንሜትዝ
Oh yeah. Food is definitely a big factor in, in Britain. It is not all efficient chips. Absolutely. I mean, there’s so many different cultures and so many different cuisines. One of my favorite personal favorite in the, when I go to London is Pakistani food. Oh yeah, absolutely fantastic. And I have my [inaudible]
ጋቪን ላንድሪ፡-
Oh man, the curries in Indian food are so good. Birmingham has a whole Curry row, which is just, I mean, it’s every Curry from every part of the world that you can imagine. It’s, it’s just fantastic. You just don’t get these curries anywhere else. Except if you’re obviously in those places where they
ጁርገን ስታይንሜትዝ
Yeah. And I’ve seen my friend, Johnny he’s a too good tour guide in Pakistan has been on many of our shows. He probably likes to hear that comments. And I’ll get you a few questions here in the chat room. Again, if you want it to raise your hand, we give you the microphone. Otherwise we’re going to go through the room. There’s Paula Schrader. She’s asking what vaccines be required for us citizens to travel to the UK.
ጋቪን ላንድሪ፡-
That is still unknown at the moment. We just have to watch the guidelines as it goes and refer back to the things I said earlier on that. Um, so I, unfortunately I don’t have a firm answer on that for you, but it don’t be airlines required. I mean, some do and some don’t, uh, is the, you know, and again, it gets complicated as Juergen said, in terms of, you know, the, the arguments that are made around discrimination or religious reasons why folks wouldn’t wouldn’t have vaccines. I think that there’s, uh, a combination of efforts that are trying to prove that you are, um, that you’re healthy. So, you know, it could be the PCR test. Um, and you know, things like this that are proving that you’re healthy enough to travel. And so there may be broader regimes for those that don’t have proof of vaccination. Again, this is all being formed. So we don’t know,
ጁርገን ስታይንሜትዝ
But now we have our friend Diana McEntire from Jamaica and Diana, we know very well because she’s one of our tourism hero. Uh, for those that don’t know a word tourism network has a network of tourism heroes. They’re 18 right now in different countries. And actually Peter Jenkins is one of them. Um, according to this diamond, uh, Diana, uh, McEntire from Jamaica is another one for her effort in community tourism. And she had a question. So I’m just going to put you on the spot. Um, Diana, I’m not going to read your question, so I’ll let you and let you, if I find you, um, uh, just ask you a question, maybe introduce yourself.
Dianna McIntyre:
Yes, I’m that a MacIntyre pike. I’m from Jamaica, but I’ve worked with the whole Caribbean and I’m very excited about the European UK business because they tend to stay Longo. And the experience we have had is that they don’t really get to enjoy or culture and heritage. And so we have a very dynamic program called villages as businesses, where people are able to come and visit the communities, our website, I posted it there, um, it’s is doing well so far. And what I feel good about is not the all inclusive, the traditional law includes axon does. And so on. They like it very much because conscious style has public liability were able to take responsibility for the experience. Uh, they’re able to enjoy it because we do training before entrepreneurship training and so on. And the people get a chance to, uh, buy things directly in the community, ride it out in a profit and joy, their food, et cetera. So I wanted to find out whether you’d be interested in working with Australia, packaged up just for Jamaica, went for the Caribbean, um, that rehab put together now.
ጋቪን ላንድሪ፡-
Sure. We’re, we’re open all of that. I mean, my goodness, you may know someone who is a former colleague of my Markley, Wilson, who was one of the people instrumental in starting the CTO, the Caribbean travel organization. He still works for Iowa in New York. Um, and, um, he, he is a great champion of international travel, so, and certainly of the Caribbean. So yes, we would like to explore every opportunity. Please do get in touch. And if I’m not the right person on the team to explore it with you, then certainly I will get you to the right person on the team that could work on that front
Dianna McIntyre:
Stays, you know, like one week in all inclusive, one weekend, a homestay that, that sort of thing. Yeah. Thank you.
ጁርገን ስታይንሜትዝ
And Kevin, of course, community tourism is, this is also I think, a big issue in the UK it’s it’s offered, right. It’s not only with Airbnb, there’s community tourism in the UK, right?
ጋቪን ላንድሪ፡-
Oh yeah, yeah. There are there, and more and more of those experiences are coming online. So yes, you’re absolutely correct. Um, lots of experience. I can’t think of it off the top of my head. My colleague, Julia or Alison will know where there are experiences where you can actually go into someone’s home and they cook for you and they cook authentic food and it’s, you know, somewhere in the countryside or something, it’s just, there’s so many of these things that are coming online now. Uh, it’s fantastic. And the way that you can experience these things is really terrific.
ጁርገን ስታይንሜትዝ
And, uh, we have, jollier raising his centrally. Um, I know who you are because you have been on a lot of our events, part of our tourist tourist guide group. And I think Julia, you’re a tourist guide in Pakistan. And you had a question.
ጋቪን ላንድሪ፡-
Yes. Uh, uh, hello, uh, hello from Pakistan. My name is Jayda the tour guide. So my question is that, uh, uh, as we all know, that Britain has got very important regarding tourism and in Europe. And my question is regarding that, how much time will it take for Britain to open its bottle for international tourists? Well, we spoke to that a little bit before, but the hope is that there will be, um, there’s a big day coming up, which is May 17th, and that’s where the government will decide whether it will allow the outbound and international travel to restart. And so that is, uh, that is a big moment in time for us. We have every indication based on an April 12th submission of the global tourism task force that May 17th will likely hold with some sort of a stoplight system. Again, this is all conjecture at the moment because things could change.
ጋቪን ላንድሪ፡-
Um, but every indication at the moment is that May 17th will be that, that time period. And then certainly we’ll all have to just adjust as it goes along relative to restrictions requirements. Uh, and, and the like, so we’re very hopeful, very hopeful that, um, you know, later this summer we’ll have the ability for at least some of our main markets to come back into play. Uh, I’m going to just be very implied per second up. I have to leave you all. I’m the police chaplain for coach station and we just had a death in police duty. It’s not that I don’t want to be with you, but unfortunately when you are in police, you do what you have to do. Sorry to hear that, Peter. Yes. I had no idea. I’m told it’s an 18 year old who just died. Um, so I apologize for leaving. Bye bye. Take care.
ጁርገን ስታይንሜትዝ
Um, we had at Corleen raised their hand and I just wanted to give credit in, in such a nice face, uh, the opportunity to say something, jeez. She said she’s with the PBS family, um, of national geographic and to dinner, wonderful session, um, on the UK. Maybe you can tell us more about it. Welcome Colleen.
ጋቪን ላንድሪ፡-
Yeah. You work on the food and wine. Did you work on the food and wine, the food and wine piece within national geographic? Was that part of your effort?
Colleen Kelly:
No, I mean, that sounds lovely, but that wasn’t part of mine. I’ve worked with national geographic. So I’m the host of PBS is family travel. Um, I see Kevin McCarthy here too. Uh, um, and his wife, lovely wife. Um, anyway, so I’m the post of PBS is family travel, which is a nationwide in the United States. And I did an episode in Wales and Scotland years ago, and honestly it was amazing. The weather was fantastic. And I just talking about this now just makes me just want to go back. But as far as national geographic, I work with them as a digital contributor. I take over their YouTube channel. Uh, I do Facebook lives with them, and then I work with travel and leisure, speaking of food and wine, um, I take over their Instagrams, which is like that. So, yeah, so I mean, I mean, obviously you’re, you know, visit Britain and Scotland and Wales has all those things, the food, the wine I do love, I know they’ve got the Michelin restaurants, which I have I’ve been to, um, but a good fish and chips. I mean,
ጋቪን ላንድሪ፡-
I can’t be, you can’t beat it and everybody has a different location. Actually. We’d love to work with you Colleen. And one of the things that’s really driving us forward, given these, these changes, technologically is this idea of content, which in the past, you know, when you think of content, it was always kind of canned content and you were struggling to have content that would keep up with real life. Right. But what we’re thinking about now is more, how do we make in real life content that we can share with a broader audience? So an example might be to have someone like you on the ground at Stonehenge with a GoPro or whatever, connected it to a wider global consumer audience. And have you give a behind the science scenes kind of a tour of Stonehenge as an example, or the Roman bass, or, you know, attend some event like you’re in Glastonbury or, or, you know, the fringe or what have you so that it would be content that is non traditional, I suppose, because it’s not in the can, it’s going to be happening in real time so that people can experience it.
Galvin Landry:
And we’re trying to find more ways to do things like that. So we would love to work with you, Kelly and our team.
Colleen Kelly:
Thanks, Kevin. Well, I’d love to work with you all again. And, um, speaking of like that in terms of why that’s, what I, my specialty is, is live. Um, and I think right now, like you just kind of mentioned after this year, the pandemic things have changed. You know, these, these live on streaming, you know, for people to kind of just jump in and see Stonehenge is really important. And I think it’s, uh, definitely an engaging feel. It’s also very natural, very, very real,
ጋቪን ላንድሪ፡-
And people are willing to do it more now. I mean, frankly, we’ve been locked in the basement for a year with our computers. And so we had to figure out a way to connect. And now, you know, when you talk about doing this, it might be a kind of thing where not so much, but folks are actually concluding this as part of their consideration process that they might like to get a tow inexperience and have that behind the scenes and see the crown jewels and then actually go and see them in person. And so it heightens the anticipation, it heightens the inspiration. It’s all good at my, in my point of view,
Colleen Kelly:
I have a thought for you, Gavin and everybody. So I was in speaking of wearing a GoPro on your head, I had thrown my hat in Snowdonia Wales, and now we should have wide. We should have livestreamed that, but that was a few years ago. We weren’t doing that then, but yeah, go pro and I, I was terrified, but I did the edit, done this the longest sip line in Europe based first, uh, I like to call it not Superman style, but super women’s style. It was terrifying, terrifying, but of a lifetime. So yeah, that would have been good livestream right there. Absolutely. Well, let’s
ጋቪን ላንድሪ፡-
Do it sometime soon. Yeah. That’s awesome. Thank you for holding this too. This has just been a great afternoon for me. It’s a pleasure. No, thank you. Fantastic. We have Johnny and Johnny. Maybe you can let us know where you’re calling from and you had a question I believe. Hi Johnny. You need to unmute yourself. No, there we go.
ድምጽ ማጉያ 6
Uh, okay. Thank you for holding. This is really amazing. I really love this. The PSAT and Albany non-profit organization fall basic vividness, maybe peaceful people with disabilities and the old demo and [inaudible] so that isn’t statistics would just put down by disagreeing in a visit within a organization, you’d say, is that, uh, people with disabilities, um, who live in the UK basically spend about 15 borrowing three Indian crowns. So I wanted to learn and all that you have had so much time to think about all this and lots of people are completely reinventing themselves. Still have more access. What has been done to make, uh, travel for people with disabilities, more attractive, easier.
ጋቪን ላንድሪ፡-
Yeah, no, thank you for bringing that up, Johnny. And actually one of our top priorities. I mean, if I were to list out some of our top priorities this year, um, that are sort of pandemic, um, agnostic, the, the, the real priorities we have and we’ll continue to have around sustainability. So we have cop 26 coming to Glasgow in November, um, which has, you know, as a follow on from the Paris, um, you know, um, meeting and so many important things are decided there and talked about relative to climate and sustainability. So we are locking arms with the UK government on net neutrality and adaptive capabilities and certainly mitigation, uh, on those lines. And then when it comes to the other major thing, we’re working on it’s accessibility because, you know, frankly Britain is quite accessible in a lot of ways. And then there are other ways that we need to really improve that.
ጋቪን ላንድሪ፡-
And we do value it both from a moral standpoint, but also from an economic standpoint, it’s really, it makes good business sense for us to really, you know, feature, um, accessibility and how accessible Britain is vis-a-vis or versus maybe rest of Europe, even. Um, and so we really are focusing on that. You’ll notice on our websites that we have outfitted all of our websites to be accessible. It’s part of an initial step we took. Um, but we’re looking at it in the round because it is such an important, crucial, critical topic for us to, to, to think about for us to, to work on. And I think visit Britain has a unique role that it can play in that space. So thank you for bringing it up because it is absolutely one of our kind of pandemic agnostic priorities.
ጁርገን ስታይንሜትዝ
Go ahead and visit Britain of course has a very good name and as, um, stepped up who, um, for people who are traveling, um, uh, with disabilities, stepped up to, uh, people to put the LGBTQ market in many other markets in the world. And, uh, Britain always has been a leader. We have, uh, Laurie Heifetz, I don’t know where you’re calling from, but you said you had a question, let us know who you are first and on your, thank you.
