The Folkestone Triennial launches this week and I’m sure it will be a great success a bring thousands of visitors to the town over the next three months, including the Arts Minister Ed Vaizey who will be joining us for the opening on Friday. The Triennial is once again curated by Andrea Schlieker and features [...]

The British nuclear industry received a vote of confidence last week in the report published by Michael Weightman, the Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations. The Weightman Report was commissioned by the Government following the earthquake and tsunami In Japan and the subsequent damage to the nuclear power station at Fukushima. None of the nuclear reactors [...]

This week is British Tourism Week and a new report published by Visit Kent shows just how important this industry is to our local economy, and why it should have a bright future. The report shows that in 2009 tourism contributed £3.2 billion to the Kent economy, a 10% increase over the previous three years. [...]

This Friday parliament is considering daylight hours; some might say an appropriate issue to debate as we are wrapped in winter gloom. It is a subject that a number of people have written to me about and as we live in the most south easternly corner of the country, where England first sees the sun [...]

Tourism is the second biggest employer in this country and our third biggest export industry. It can sometimes be easy to forget just how important it is to our economy to encourage more visitors. David Cameron has used a recent speech to highlight the work of the British tourist industry, before starting his own family [...]

I have been invited to join a new group to advise Visit Kent on attracting new visitors to the county and promoting tourism. This new group includes the Chief Executive of Visit Kent, Sandra Matthews-Marsh and Mike Bedingfield the Chief Executive of Tourism South East. I was delighted to be invited to join and I [...]

Last month I invited Shadow Tourism Minister Tobias Ellwood to come to Folkestone to meet with leading figures in the local tourism industry. Tourism is the fourth largest industry in the UK and is particuarly important to the eocnomy in Folkestone and across Shepway. We are both an area that attracts tourists and vistors, as [...]