UK revitalizes tourism amid pandemic
LONDON: Last weekend, 3.6 million people tuned in to watch dawn break over a cloudy Stonehenge for a virtual celebration of the summer solstice hosted by English Heritage. It meant visitors all around the world were able to watch the sunrise from home, not bothering with the long-distance journey to Britain during the coronavirus pandemic.
Bringing the event online was one of the many ways that the British tourism industry is attempting to reinvent itself and offer new experiences for its visitors.
Normally, around 20,000 people would attend the summer solstice event at Stonehenge — where the ropes would be cut to allow people into the circle to celebrate the beginning of the day.
“This year we couldn’t do that, so it was a virtual Summer Solstice,” Louise Dando, head of marketing at English Heritage, told Xinhua in an exclusive interview. Due to the coronavirus and physical distancing restrictions, many of those experiences have had to be taken online.
“We streamed it across the world. Which allowed our audiences, say from China, to go online to the English Heritage website and see the sunrise and experience
IT, FOR THE fiRST TIME, FROM THEIR LIVing rooms,” she said.
Dando believed it would be an opportunity “in a way,” although they had never organized such an event internationally to this extent before the coronavirus outbreak.
This year was the 80th anniversary of the evacuation of Dunkirk, an important historical event during World War II. English Heritage had planned a big event at Dover castle to allow people to tour the secret wartime tunnels there and see reenactments.
But then came the lockdown in Britain, and they made the decision to put the event all online. “So, we did a 10-day event online, which was very much enjoyed by thousands of people. We had to do it in a completely different way,” Dando said.
Alongside virtual events, the charity have also had to look at what changes would be brought by the pandemic after lockdown. Figureheads within the industry have been hosting meetings since lockdown began to see how best to safely reopen sites for visitors.
“I think the most obvious thing...is introducing capacity limitations. We won’t be having the volume of visitors you’d normally see,” said Dando, who has frequented the meetings.