As the members of BVEP know, there are many factors that contribute to the United Kingdom's popularity as a destination for business visits and events. We offer easy access to world leading business expertise, organisations and facilities, as well as unparalleled cultural, historic and artistic opportunities and experiences for visitors.
With all of these advantages, it can be easy to overlook the fact that, in order to stage successful visits and events, people still have to get here to enjoy what we have to offer. In a lot of cases, this will be by air travel, and this is one area where the UK just cannot compete.
The Air Passenger Duty for passengers departing from UK airports is the highest in the world. This means that the cost of transporting large groups to the UK for an event or conference is much higher than to other potential hosting nations, putting the business visit and event industry at a competitive disadvantage to attract people here.
There has been a lot of interest in this topic in the media recently with news last week that the Scottish Government has committed to drastically reducing APD in Scotland by 2018. While this is great for Scotland, it will put added pressure on the business visit and event industry in England and Wales, who will now have to compete on an unlevel playing field not just with other countries, but with part of the UK as well. This has led to aviation, business, and tourist bodies calling for urgent action to be taken to ensure APD stays at the same level UK wide, and that planning is put in place to bring it down into line with European and world standards.
With all this at stake, now is the right time to familiarise yourself with the Air Passenger Duty, and what is involved, and with this is mind Sainsbury's Bank has produced a new guide to answer any questions you may have about the APD, which you can find here:
https://www.sainsburysbank.co.uk/library/default/pdf/guide-to-air-passenger-duty.pdf
Air Passenger Duty is putting the business visits and events industry in the UK at a major disadvantage, it's time we started to take notice.
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