Visit Cornwall’s Covid-19 Position

The Coronavirus COVID-19 situation is a fast-moving crisis where  the situation changes day by and this is including the  impact on tourism businesses and their supply chains.

At this time along with many other countries,  the population is very much gripped by the “fear of the unknown”, not always helped by wall to wall news coverage, let alone rumours and internet/social media-based scare stories. This is despite the medical advice that the overwhelming majority of people will fully recover, and life will go on, but this is not ignoring the need to minimise the risk to the elderly in the vulnerable people.

In the coming weeks, as people know more and more friends, colleagues and relatives who have recovered this should hopefully ease over time as “fear of the unknown”  changes to “knowledge of the known”, never have the words stay calm and carry on seem pertinent but adapted to:

UPDATE NUMBER 2

I have just fed into the Covid 19 business impact report  from Cornwall to the Govt Dept BEIS. Stating that given yesterday’s  announcement combined with the total lack of clarity on the scale and nature of business support this has resulted in businesses  urgently planning mass lay-offs and redundancies going into the thousands in Cornwall in the next few days .

The only action that might stop these lay-offs, but more likely greatly reduce lay-offs, would be a clear unambiguous statement from the  UK Government along the same lines as France i.e. “we will not let businesses fail”  and then backed up with urgent funding to make it happen. – Malcolm Bell

STAY CALM – AID DELAY – STAY ALERT-  STAY WELL/GET BETTER AND CARRY ON

Visit Cornwall has been monitoring the situation over the last month and has been looking at the variety of scenarios for the future,  which have changed frequently, if not daily.

We have created a coronavirus task group, (first meeting on 13th March) comprising of members from across different sectors to help us in responding to the crisis and planning for the recovery as well as advising Cornwall Council (CC), Cornwall and Isles of Scilly  LEP (CIoSLEP), Visit England/Britain (VB) and the Government on the situation for businesses in Cornwall and feeding back our responses to the measures they may or are planning to make.

Visit Cornwall fully supports the Government’s science-based approach to responding to this virus and the recent move to the “delay phase”, but delay will have severe  implications for tourism business, as it will also extend the period impact on businesses in the sector and the associated supply chain

This page, the associated pages and fact sheets have been created and will be constantly updated so that we can ensure that we communicate information, advice and signposting to the support available, as quickly as possible and we will also be issuing Coronavirus Updates via our  industry newsletters and alerts using our industry Twitter account  @VC_B2B.(please follow up if you are not already)

At this time, Visit Cornwall’s strategy to the coronavirus crisis will be to parallel the Governments phases with appropriate actions and advice to our members and the industry.  

Our focus will be to assist our members to:- 

1. Respond and to maximise the financial protection of their business with information and signposting to support measures  
2. Cope with a fast-moving situation with up to date information and advice 
3. Recover business as and when the opportunities rise   

Visit Cornwall is adopting  a two-phase approach

Phase 1 – React, Respond and Communication Phase (the current phase) 

As this is very fast-moving situation and Visit Cornwall is committed to responding and reacting to threats and opportunities and giving the best possible information and support to its members and  these will include –

Communication

• Communicate with our members to 
• To gain feedback and data on the impact of coronavirus on the sector and our members
• To gain feedback on how the recently announced business support arrangements are, or are not working and suggest further actions/measures

Communicate with Local, Regional and VB the Government 

• To inform them of  the current and forward economic and related impacts on the sector
• To liaise and input into future support measures, public messaging actions and initiatives  etc

Information and Advice 

The Visit Cornwall website is being enhanced and will be continually updated with additional sections and pages to assist our members.

Inform and Advise our members with advice/content from experts, ideas, suggestions and best practice from our members.

Please see the links below for resources. 

Planning for the Future

• Work with local, regional and national partners  to scenario plan and draft recovery plan(s) so that we are in the strongest position and able to move first once the opportunity to recover arises.

Phase 2  Recovery Phase

At this time this may seem premature but is never too early to start planning for the recovery and partial recovery as we will not have to wait until 80% of the population have had this virus before we can start the recovery of tourism.

Recovery planning will start straight away but the plans will be modified as we learn and have a better idea of the timescale and the nature of the markets that will commence the recovery recover soonest etc