Following an action-packed weekend in sunny Playa Del Carmen, Mexico, VisitBritain — the national tourism agency associated with Great Britain, the island comprising England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — is celebrating the success of the 2025 edition of its annual event, Destination Britain Americas (DBA). Welcoming 125 attendees, travel advisors, buyers, destination reps, media members and more gathered to network and discover what this captivating destination and its bucket list-worthy regions have to offer.
No stranger to the silver screen, the landscapes and landmarks of Britain are often used as backdrops for uber-popular films and TV shows including titles like “Harry Potter,” “Mission Impossible,” “Peaky Blinders,” “Bridgerton” and more. As such, the underlying theme of this year’s four-day DBA event was “Starring GREAT Britain,” aligning with the DMO’s ongoing marketing campaign by the same name and capitalizing on the ongoing set-jetting travel trend that’s taken the industry by storm.
To help our readers learn more about this dreamy destination across the pond, The Compass on VAX sat down with Patricia Yates, CEO of VisitBritain, to talk about her favorite attractions, how the company helps support travel advisors, current trends and more.
Q: How does VisitBritain support travel advisors?
Patricia Yates: Our big focus is on encouraging more people to come to Britain and to explore more of the country, spend more money and stay longer. I'm sure our ambitions marry up with those of travel counsellors.
We've committed to a campaign on film tourism, ‘Starring Great Britain,’ and that has meant that destinations that are coming here (DBA) are building product around their film story, and tour operators are using those in their programs. So, we're building much more commissionable product that can then be sold by the travel trade.
… (Additionally) we’ve got some online education for travel agents that will tell them all about the things we're doing, and we run newsletters they can sign up for and they can always get in touch with our B2B team if they want some more bespoke conversations.
Q: On the topic of VisitBritain’s film tourism campaign, if you had to choose one of your favorite filming sites to send a visitor to, what would it be?
Patricia Yates: Can I choose two? Because they’re very different.
So, ‘Wuthering Heights’ has just started, it's sort of sizzle, hasn’t it? And it's Margo Robbie and Jacob Elordi, so, hugely hot. And it's one of those stories you read in school at 15, and I haven't read it since, and I loved it. It's set in Yorkshire, which is the most beautiful county. It’s got the Yorkshire Moors and Dales, and beautiful countryside, lovely country house hotels and then coastal towns as well — (including) Whitby, home of 'Dracula.' So, a wonderful experience.
I would also say I am mindful of ‘Peaky Blinders’ because, when I go around the world, people tell me about ‘Peaky Blinders’ and how much they enjoy it. And when I go around northern cities, every northern city, it seems, ‘Peaky Blinders’ has been shot on. The spiritual home (of ‘Peaky Blinders’), I would absolutely say, is Birmingham, and just outside of Birmingham is the Black Country Living Museum, where the new film of ‘Peaky Blinders’ has just been filmed. So, you can get in first and go see it before you see it on screen.
Q: The UK and Britain are enjoying a tourism boom right now. Can you talk about what's driving this demand among travelers and what trends you’re seeing?
Patricia Yates: Well, the American market is fascinating. It was the most valuable market pre-COVID and absolutely shot up post-COVID. And you don’t really expect that from your most valuable market. It was worth around four billion pounds pre-COVID, it's worth 7.2 billion pounds this year.
And what is driving that? … You know, it's seen as a safe destination. We speak the same language almost. We're actually a small country, so you can get very different experiences within a couple of hours of each other. And I think people nowadays are looking for more authenticity and a sense of place. And we've worked at Britian at giving that.
You can go to historic houses and the family that’s always lived there is there and can tell their stories. We’ve got wonderful pubs, of course, with the whole food scene and the local recipes. And someone was saying last night that, you go around Britain, and you can't believe a small country has so many accents. You really get a sense of place … you can have very different experiences whether you're a city slicker or you’re going out to relax in the countryside, and I think the variety of what we offer (is driving tourism growth).
Then we see intergenerational travel as being one of the things post-COVID. I think it's because we all realized we needed to hold our family close. So, grandparents taking their children back to the places they loved.
Q: Can you name two-to-three of your favorite under-the-radar experiences for visitors?
Patricia Yates: I think I'm gonna go for British food and drink across the piece.
We’ve got Scottish distilleries here. And Scottish distilleries you’ll find, if you go around, they’re very individual because it's all about water. And, you know, some of them, again, go on for generations, so you’re going to see many Scottish distilleries. On the other end of the country, because of the changing weather, you have English wine becoming real thing. …
And, of course, with Britain you really think ‘home of gin.’ And gin has had such a moment, you know, you can go to Bath and Bristol and see the gin distilleries, or in Oxford, so many opportunities to get under the skin of places. …
I don't know if it made it here, but ‘Wallace and Gromit,’ Wensleydale Cheese, you have to go and see that being made. That's up in Yorkshire, as well. It very much is a Yorkshire moment.
Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Patricia Yates: I see optimism. There's uncertainty in the world isn’t there? But there's optimism on both sides here. You know, people are hanging onto their travel. It is their escape, and it is being prioritized now probably more than anything. And travel, it’s a people business. You can see from the supplies here that we are so keen to invite more people to come to Britain and just give that warm welcome that they will find anywhere they travel around the nations or regions of Britain. So, I think just that sense of optimism that there is in a difficult world.
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