Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/English Tourist Board

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep (withdrawn, page moved). Patstuart^talk|edits 21:31, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] English Tourist Board

English Tourist Board (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Not possible to verify the existence of such a body. The article appears to be a front for a commercial website. Mais oui! 06:09, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Apparently the organisation was renamed in 1999 to "English Tourism Council", which has itself been defunct since 2003. As it hasn't been around for 8 years it does not Google! Support a page move, as proposed below. Withdraw nomination. Sorry for any inconvenience. --Mais oui! 07:13, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

• Very Strong Keep. Major UK quango - difficult to imagine anything more notable in the UK tourist industry. Possible bad-faith nom? Tevildo 06:20, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment What may seem obvious to you or someone else is not obvious to people from other backgrounds. I would not suggest bad faith here. GassyGuy 06:30, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
    • A glance at Mais oui!'s userpage might possibly suggest that they are not entirely unfamiliar with the UK tourism industry. But this is not the place for such accusations - it's merely an issue that should be borne in mind for this AfD. Tevildo 06:38, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
• Err... hold on just a minute with the "bad faith" accusations!!! There most certainly does exist an organisation called VisitBritain, but I can find no evidence whatsoever of the existence of an "English Tourist Board" (sic). Just try to find a verifiable external source please. --Mais oui! 06:41, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
  • My sincerest apologies. I think this may just be a confusion over official and colloquial nomenclature. The site http://www.enjoyengland.com , linked to from the article, is also linked as the official site for England on the VisitBritain index page ([1]). It's also the first site that comes up on a Google search for "English Tourist Board", and was the historical name of the organization until 1999 (See this BBC article). I would support a Move to EnjoyEngland, with a redirect from this page, if it's just the name that's the issue. Tevildo 06:59, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Apology accepted. This whole area is very confusing due to devolution and mergers of bodies. The VisitBritain article says that it was a merger of the BTA and something called the "English Tourism Council", but that BBC article clarifies that. In view of the links you provide I would be happy with a page move, leaving this as a redirect. I really did not think that the enjoyengland website looked like anything other than a commercial enterprise, certainly not very "official" looking, but there you go... --Mais oui! 07:09, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

• I would merge/redirect to VisitBritain as that is the successor organization. EnjoyEngland is the "domestic marketing arm" of VisitBritain, a not overwhelmingly extensive article in which a note of this could be accomodated. --Dhartung | Talk 09:55, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
  • We'd probably need to merge VisitScotland and Visit Wales as well, if we did that. VisitBritain is the sucessor to the old BTA, responsible for all of Britain (not Northern Ireland - that's still controlled by the NITB) - EnjoyEngland is the arm of it specifically responsible for England. And this really should be on the article talk page, as it's now (at best) a merge proposal. Tevildo 11:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Do you have a source for NI being excluded from VisitBritain? Tourism is a devolved matter, and VisitScotland is the responsibility of the Scottish Executive; snap with Visit Wales and the WAG. --Mais oui! 11:50, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

It's mainly a matter of negative evidence. :) Unlike the English, Scottish, and Welsh sites, the Northern Ireland site ( http://www.nitb.com/ ) does _not_ contain any reference to VisitBritain, and the VisitBritian page giving details of its management ([2]), contains the statement "As chairman of the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, Tom McGrath attends VisitBritain Board meetings as an observer", strongly implying (but not, I agree, stating explicitly) that the NITB isn't in any way a subsidiary of VB. Tevildo 12:29, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

See Talk:VisitBritain for further discussion. Tevildo 12:54, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

• Merge/Redirect to Successor. Notable quango of its time - plenty of references in the news, etc. WMMartin 19:12, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.