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Will the coronation bring a UK tourism bonanza – or
drive people away?
As soon as the date of the coronation was announced
last October, Kathryn Mooney booked a flight to London. “I jumped on it right
away,” says Mooney, 54, an executive assistant from Toronto. “All I thought was,
I’d better get a property, I’d better get a flight, because I knew there would
be huge demand.”
Why did she want to come? “I know it sounds really hokey, but I want to go and
send them some support and love from the sidelines. And honour the queen.”
Although she admits she does not quite have the same esteem for King Charles III
as she had for his mother, she says the royals still “represent the palaces,
they represent the pageantry – and that’s something that I want to experience. I
want to see this. I want to feel it. Because in North America we don’t have
anything even close.”
There are people like Mooney, mostly from North America and explicitly royal
fans, who want to spend a week visiting Windsor Castle and Kensington Palace and
having etiquette lessons on the correct way to partake of afternoon tea. Even
for specialist operators such as Tours International, however, this market is
comparatively tiny, says Bennett. “Oh yes, it’s not huge. It’s a coachload.”
So how significant will the event be on a broader scale? Visit Britain, the
national tourist authority, points to an estimated £1.2bn economic boost from
the jubilee weekend, though Patricia Yates, the organisation’s CEO, says most of
that came from domestic visitors. (For comparison, government modelling would
estimate the cost to the economy of an extra day’s bank holiday at £1.36bn, it
was reported last year.)
But it is not only about the weekend itself, argues Yates. “We know that our
history and heritage is a real draw for visitors from overseas, and it will look
amazing on television – we just know that, don’t we? So the drive for us is
using that as almost a showpiece in international markets, to encourage people
to come this summer.”
She is right that Britain’s heritage and history is a
key factor in its huge £131bn tourist industry, and is spoken of around the
globe as the aspect most associated with the UK. But heritage is not the same as
royalty, and when pressed for figures for the value of the royals, Yates
sidesteps.
“We are really careful not to put a number on the value of having a royal
family,” she says. “But … does having a living monarchy make a difference? Well,
of course it does, in that you have the ceremonials and the constant pattern of
family life, with weddings and christenings and death and celebrations.”
Visit Britain has attached a number before. A previous head of the organisation
claimed that the queen generated “well over £500m a year directly and indirectly
from overseas tourists”, arguing before the wedding of Prince William to Kate
Middleton that the event would boost the sum further.
The problem is that neither of those assertions stands up to scrutiny. Numerical
claims about the value of the monarchy frequently rely on creative
interpretation of visitor numbers to sites with any royal connection, however
tangential, says Graham Smith, of Republic, which campaigns to abolish the
monarchy.
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/21/will-the-coronation-bring-a-tourism-bonanza-or-drive-them-all-away