Re-Building Confidence and Demand in the Visitor Economy

The COVID-19 pandemic has heavily impacted the visitor economy, with a huge dropped forecast compared to 2019. Therefore, targeted support is needed to help businesses survive the winter, protect jobs and support a sustained recovery. This requires support over and above business as usual as the market will be competitive with destinations from across the country targeting the same pool of visitors to aid recovery in their areas. The emerging economic recovery plans across the SELEP region all identify the visitor economy as a sector mostly badly effected by COVID-19. To address this, partners from Kent, Essex and East Sussex are proposing a significant programme to aid the recovery of the SELEP visitor economy.

The project seeks to address key opportunities and challenges, including:

• Raising destination awareness and supporting sustainable tourism management through visitor dispersal.
• Support consumer confidence in travelling by public transport.
• Using key themes to showcase the diverse and high-quality tourism offer to key domestic markets and increase length of stay.
• Protect businesses and safeguard jobs by extending the season.
• Product development and business support to address seasonality.
• Build positive engagement and confidence among SELEP residents.

Sector Support Fund

The Sector Support Fund (SSF) was established to support one-off, discrete pieces of work of a pan-LEP nature with a sector focus that bring demonstrable benefit and which have support across the LEP area.

The SSF used Growing Places Fund (GPF) Revenue grant to fund a programme of works which supported the sector focussed activities being undertaken on a pan-LEP basis and which were predominantly led by the SELEP working groups.