Member Article

CEO of Heritage Great Britain on tourism, weather and Shaun the Sheep

Headquartered on Albert Dock in Liverpool, Heritage Great Britain is the brand behind some of the Great Britain’s most iconic destinations including the Land’s End in West Cornwall, John O’Groats in Scotland and the Needles landmark attraction on the Isle of Wight.

The company has invested £1.5m across its portfolio for the 2015 season and Allan Leech CEO at Heritage Great Britain spoke exclusively to Bdaily about the challenges the company faces, its future plans and Shaun the Sheep.

Allan said: “We are incredibly confident about this season, it will be good.

“The biggest challenge we face is the weather it can be a help or a hinderance, we’re combatting this by starting a new area of the businesses soon that is more undercover and so can be accessed all year round.

“We have to have a range in our portfolio with both indoor and outdoor attractions and this is what we are looking into.

How’s the Shaun the Sheep attraction at Lands End doing?

“Shaun the Sheep is going fantastically, we are incredibly lucky to work with Aardman as a business, they are incredibly nice people.

“The support they have given us is second to none.

“The customer feedback has been 100% satisfactory and children’s faces light up, it is a completely immersive experience”

What’s tourism like in the North West?

“North West tourism generally can be seen by looking at the success story of Liverpool, it’s been our home for 15 years, all our banks, lawyers and corporate partners come from liverpool.

“We understand Liverpool and there is an incredibly buoyant tourism market in the whole of the North West, we are looking to invest in the area, especially because of the potential at the Liverpool waterfront and in Manchester.

“Most importantly we make sure we support the local economy in everything that we do”

What’s the strangest thing about doing business?

“The strangest thing is that you never know what is going to turn up.

“Owning such iconic landmarks we get some strange events happening, a lot of people doing the end to end journey in strange, quirky and inspirational ways.

“It’s all part of the tapestry of what we do, afterall we are only the custodians of these places.”

What is the culture of the company?

“I think the culture we try to develop across our whole portfolio is that they belong to the British people and are part of the history of Great Britain.

“We are only the custodians, we enhance, look after and we own the sites on behalf of the British people.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sophia Taha .