VisitBritain is deploying Polycom’s group video conferencing solutions in a bid to maintain direct contact between its offices worldwide and to promote the UK, home of the 2012 Olympics, to tourists. The video conferencing solution was installed and is managed by Polycom channel partner, Audio Visual Machines Ltd.

VisitBritain is funded by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to promote Britain overseas as a tourist destination and to lead and co-ordinate the domestic marketing of England. It has over 500 employees worldwide and has offices and representatives in 36 countries around the world.

“Video provides us with the ability to quickly and easily bring together the right people at the right time, helping to speed decision making and improve efficiency and productivity within the organisation, while reducing travel budgets,” said Tim Weston, Procurement Manager for VisitBritain. “Video is becoming an important business communications tool for us as we work to promote tourist opportunities around the 2012 London Olympics.”

VisitBritain’s overseas managers need to communicate regularly with each other and with the central marketing and operational groups in the London headquarters. In order to improve communication, VisitBritain has installed group video conferencing systems in its Amsterdam, Berlin, Chicago, Dubai, Dublin, Johannesburg, London, New York, Paris, Singapore, Stockholm, Sydney, Tokyo and Toronto regional hub offices.

“While some degree of business travel is inevitable, video conferencing now enables regular scheduled meetings to take place without any of the participants having to travel and, perhaps more importantly, enables ad hoc meetings to take place across the regional hubs and with the London HQ just as if the managers and their teams were in the same location,” explained Weston.

“As many of the video conferencing users within VisitBritain are non-technical it was imperative that we provided a solution that is easy to use and reliable. The intuitive and simple user interface of the Polycom video conferencing systems has enabled us to configure the systems in all of the regional hub offices so that a video call can be initiated with just one click of a button,” said Ed Cook, Managing Director, Audio Visual Machines Ltd.

“Our video conferencing strategy has delivered in terms of both cost savings and improved productivity. We are currently planning to deploy another video conferencing system in our Spanish office,” concluded Weston.
VisitBritain were voted World’s Leading Tourism Authority Site at the World Travel Awards 2005 and have been nominated this year in the same category.
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