12 October 2009

New e-commerce and retail head for VisitBritain

VisitBritain has named Vickie Birnage as its new head of e-commerce and retail.

She rejoins the organisation from Penguin and takes charge of 18 online VisitBritainDirect.com shops, specialist overseas trade shops and offline retail activities.

The growing e-commerce and retail activities augment VisitBritain’s overseas presence, enabling consumers to buy value-led products and services before they travel, in local currency and language.

As well as looking to extend the current range of products and services offered to consumers on the shops - including Oyster Card tube passes; BritRail travel products; and discount passes such as the Great British Heritage Pass and London Pass - her role includes the development of further distribution partnerships such as those currently undertaken with P&O, BMI and easyJet.

Birnage’s experience includes online and digital roles with publisher Penguin and Marks & Spencer, as well as managing international relationships with Amazon.

She reports to director of distribution services Kenny Boyle, who said: "With her tremendous e-commerce experience and significant time spent at major organisations in the retail sector, Vickie is an invaluable addition to VisitBritain senior team.

"Her role is to ensure that we add real value to visitors, while providing industry partners with additional customer benefits and routes to market.

"Having worked with VisitBritain before, she is extremely knowledgeable about the tourism environment and will be a welcome and familiar face to many in the industry."

With public spending under ever tighter scrutiny, VisitBritain said a new four-point strategy gives greater emphasis to developing further Britain-wide tourism platforms and share new media strategies.

It aims to deliver efficiencies for all the national tourism organisations through the co-ordination of information and transactional platforms.

by Phil Davies