Arizona tourism office to forge closer links with UK travel trade
The US state of Arizona’s tourism office is to hire a new director of trade as it puts more emphasis on working with UK tour operators and travel agents.
The role has been carried out by Tony Alba, director of media relations, for the past six to seven years, but he said Arizona Tourism needed to have someone dedicated to ‘reaching out to trade partners’.
Speaking during a visit to the UK and Ireland this week, Alba said Arizona Tourism hoped to have someone in the job by the end of February. The new director will determine their own strategy for working with the trade, said Alba, but he said this could include more fam trips for agents.
"We will have more outreach to operators and agents and I think we will run missions to meet the trade in the UK," he said.
Visitor numbers from the UK to Arizona, whose most famous attraction is the Grand Canyon, have been flat at around 115,000 to 120,000 for the past few years, but Alba said this was expected to grow as the state increased its activity with the trade.
"The UK is hugely important, especially as the only non-stop flight from Europe to Phoenix is from London," he said. Alba admitted the state had not been very active with the trade since its budget was cut in 2007, but it is ‘jumping back in’.
"We have not had a tremendous [budget] increase but we have realised that we can’t rely just on media to build interest, we have to do that through the trade."
Arizona attended World Travel Market for the first time in years and it intends to come to London for the exhibition at least every other year in future.
A greater number of visitors are expected this year due to the 100th anniversary of the National Parks Service and the 90th anniversary of Route 66, which passes through Arizona.
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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