Discover England Fund

Discover England Fund 

The three-year £40million Discover England Fund, announced by Government in 2015, will ensure that England stays competitive in the rapidly growing global tourism industry, by offering world-class English tourism products to the right customers at the right time.  

The fund supports the growth of one of England’s most successful export industries, inbound tourism. Tourism is an industry that delivers jobs and economic growth across the English regions - generating £106 billion a year and employing over two million people, with a strong domestic market. England has seen record tourism spend in the past year from both domestic and international visitors. 

Destination Management Organisations were invited to come together to apply to develop innovative and exciting projects to achieve the following:

• Develop world-class English tourism products that respond to international customer demand and have the ability to be bookable and distributed through new and existing channels
• Join-up the product offering across large geographies or nationwide through a thematic approach for the benefit of the customer
• Drive a collaborative and partnership approach to delivery across Destination Organisations and LEP boundaries for the longer term

The Discover England Fund is staged over the three years as follows:

• Year 1 (2016/17): £6.5 million
• Year 2 (2017/18):  £11.5 million
• Year 3 (2018/19):  £22.0 million

A large proportion of this investment is distributed through grant awards to projects as follows:

Year 1 – for small-scale pilot projects delivered by March 2017.

Year 2 – for small-scale pilot project to be delivered by March 2018. 

Year 2 & 3 – for large-scale collaborative projects to be delivered over the two year period 2017-2019. It aims to develop world-class bookable English tourism products that will create a step-change in bookable English tourism product for international consumers.

Year 3 – Focused small-scale projects to be delivered by March 2019.