Thursday dawned bright and breezy.  Friends departed for home as did two cottages and we had an early departure for the Pavilion Gardens in Buxton where the Visit Peak District and Derbyshire Tourism Conference was taking place.  We wanted to attend this year as there were a number of speakers from Visit Britain and Enjoy England as well as from our own tourist board and with many changes in the pipeline (and spending cuts) we wanted to hear what they had to say. We had a number of videos, including a draft promotional one for the area which should be ready for July and all being well we should be able to have a link to it on its release date.  Even Chris thought it was good.  Last year the area had a staggering 32.7 million day visits and 3.5 million overnight stays. This was worth £1.4 billion pound to the local economy and resulted in employment for 25000 people.  Enjoy England promote England within the UK and Visit Britain promotes the UK abroad.  England is the 6th most visited country in the world and Tourism is in 3rd place for income it brings in (behind Finance and Pharmaceuticals).  The Olympics next year may actually be a double edged sword as it will bring in a lot of visitors for the games but may put off some tourists who may think the country could be too busy because of the Olympics.  Also the Royal Wedding will help tourism this year.  Lunch was also included in the price we paid and this year an area was set aside for the Leaflet Swap to run along side the Conference.  I remembered to take plenty of bags!  The conference finished late afternoon and we had a quick walk around Buxton before returning to our peak district cottages.