Andrew Stokes OBE

England Director, VisitEngland

Since joining VisitEngland Andrew has led on the creation and running of the £40m government funded Discover England Fund. The Discover England Fund has supported over 60 projects from pilots to large-scale collaborative initiatives, bringing a step-change in English tourism product.

The Discover England Fund also highlighted the need for an open market place to enable SME tourism businesses from across England to gain wider distribution. This resulted in the creation of TXGB as a business-to-business platform connecting tourism suppliers to a diverse range of domestic and international distributors.

More recently Andrew has led VisitEngland in its response to The de Bois review, on the delivery and structure of DMO’s in the English Tourism Landscape. Since 2022, VisitEngland has been creating and implementing an accreditation scheme for DMO’s. This has resulted in the creation of forty high performing Local Visitor Economy Partnerships. These LVEP’s provide a necessary link between Government, VisitEngland, local tourism bodies and the many SME’s that make up our industry.

Andrew is responsible for a diverse program of support and upskilling for English tourism businesses including a comprehensive business advice hub and specific initiatives to help business recovery during and post the Covid-19 pandemic Much of this work focuses on technological initiatives to make our industry more productive and spread prosperity through all areas of the visitor economy.

Andrew was awarded the OBE for services to tourism, in King Charles’ first Birthday Honours list in
2023.