Royal caravan on trail of the tourist hotspots

[FetchingHag]

[AbsolutelyWilliam] Royal caravan on trail of the tourist hotspots



THE Queen is to do her bit to boost Britain's storm-tossed tourist
industry: she will visit Buckingham Palace next month. Not the real
thing, which she knows only too well, but the Lego version in a theme
park near her other home at Windsor.
It will be her first visit ? her children grew out of toy building
bricks long before Legoland arrived in her backyard ? and it will
afford her the opportunity to look down from a height of 5ft 4in on
Big Ben and the London Eye.

Eight members of the Royal Family have been lined up to fan out
across the country and spend June 10 raising the profile of British
tourism, which has suffered the cumulative slings and arrows of
September 11, the foot-and-mouth epidemic, war in Iraq and the Sars
virus, losing some ?3 billion in revenue as a result.

While the Queen visits Legoland and the Docklands museum in London,
her relatives will be at the provincial coalface of visitor
attraction, highlighting the diversity of Britain, which extracted
?11.9 billion from 23.9 million overseas visitors last year.

The Prince of Wales will promote the Royal Mile in Edinburgh,
including a whisky heritage centre. The Princess Royal has drawn a
Sussex zoo and a naval museum in Gosport, the Duke of York a pub in
Ambleside, the Countess of Wessex an open-air theatre in Cornwall,
the Duke of Gloucester the National Space Centre and a Leicester
tearoom, and the Duke of Kent Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire.

The Earl of Wessex has been allocated Wales, whose attractions
include a caravan park in Brecon.

Palace sources played down any suggestion of jockeying for the best
awaydays, with Prince Edward drawing the short straw. "The Queen has
to be near London as she is hosting a reception that evening. The
Prince of Wales will be in Scotland anyway. Where possible, the
others were allocated regions to which they had not made many recent
visits," an official said.

The Palace is well aware of the importance of Britain's tourism
industry and after the foot-and-mouth epidemic officials realised
that the Royal Family ? a major draw in themselves ? might be able to
help. "The Queen has had `theme days', including London theatreland
and the City," a Palace source said. "It became clear that tourism
was a prime candidate after the setbacks it had suffered. We couldn't
do it last year because the Queen's diary was filled with Jubilee
engagements."

Choosing the 30 venues for the day proved difficult and planners
eventually decided to pick those which had not had royal visits in
recent years.

That rather ruled out the real Buckingham Palace. But it has not been
entirely ignored; the Queen will host a reception in the evening for
industry representatives in her London home (open Aug 1 to Sept 28;
?12 per head and concessions. Book now).