About www.britishdestinations.co.uk and British Destinations

This website is produced and sponsored by Full Picture and is offered as a benefit to member destinations, tourist board and commercial associates of British Destinations. It is designed as a one stop shop giving the public, national press, trade partners, students and others, unbiased, factual detail on, and links to, a wealth of information regarding many of the UK's most popular built and rural inland and coastal destinations. A separate business to business site with a password-protected member’s administrative section is also maintained.

British Destinations was formed on 1 April 2011 from within the existing membership of the former British Resorts And Destinations Association (BRADA) and former Destination Performance UK (DP UK). The new larger and more effective, national body operates in the manner of a trade association for local authority sponsored tourism, tourism partnerships and for the various forms of public, private and public/private sector partnership-based destination management. It also encourages performance management and best practice at destination level. As a consequence, the membership now includes local government authorities of all types and sizes, public/private sector partnerships and regional and local tourist boards and commercial organisations. The common link between all destination members is an ingrained tradition of hosting visitors and, therefore, a greater recognition of the social and economic importance of the visitor, tourism and the tourism industry. Member destinations also share a commitment to continuous improvement. For facts and figures on the UK’s domestic tourism industry click here.

The work of British Destinations covers a wide range of activities including lobbying for and promoting the interests of the visitor, the tourism industry and that of the host community. We also act as an advisory body to other national organisations and, internally, to our membership. Members benefit from an annual research exercise ‘Destination Intelligence’ which captures data about resources and performance at a local level and enables members to benchmark this against their peers. The adoption of best practice is also encouraged through the periodic distribution of advice sheets on topical issues. British Destinations also offers a wide range of added value services. These vary from access to cost effective national joint advertising campaigns, through to reactive and proactive PR and press initiatives such as this website. A snapshot of the range of the Association's work can be found here.

A full-time secretariat is based in Southport, consisting of a Chief Executive, a National Co-ordinator and administrative staff. Sefton Council hosts the organisation and provides additional finance, human resource, legal and other administrative support. Although British Destinations operates in and along side the often highly politically charged environment of local and national government; it functions on a totally non-political basis. The range of senior political figures that have accepted the appointment of Vice President illustrates this. One of our Vice Presidents is also selected to act as President and head the organisation. For details of the President and Vice Presidents, click here.

Membership of British Destinations is open to all local authorities that actively manage destinations within the UK, Channel Isles and Isle of Man, to the public/private sector partnerships that they work with or through, to all UK based area and national "tourist boards" and to other bodies, agencies and commercial organisations whose aims and objectives match those of British Destinations. A modest annual subscription is levied which is calculated on the basis of the size of the authority or organisation, the scale and prominence of the destination or area and the scale of its tourism interests. Commercial subscriptions are based on the size of the company and the direct and indirect commercial benefit membership can bring. Current annual subscriptions start at £500. For more details of membership benefits click here.