Over 40 years in tourism

 Barbro McAusland, Swedish born in Gothenburg, has lived in London since she was 23.

Starting as a trainee for the Swedish Chamber of Commerce she joined the Swedish Travel & Tourist Association as a consumer information officer and was appointed Director of the Swedish Tourist Board for the UK in 1976. Barbro has been responsible for developing the UK market for Sweden almost from scratch: developing package deals, organising large partner-sponsored marketing campaigns, and creating a large press awareness of Swedish travel and tourism products.

During the early 1990s, the Swedish Government partly privatised the Tourist Board, closing down the old organisation and setting up a new one owned 50% by Government and 50% by the tourism industry.

It was in this period that winter traffic to Sweden was developed:

• The IceHotel® became a destination unique in the world and an exotic icon for Swedish
   Lappland enabling the establishment of more products and destinations in Swedish Lappland.

• Downhill skiing in Åre was popularised and featured by major UK operators making possible
  the development of UK business for other Swedish winter resorts.

West Sweden was promoted for its local food products: fresh fish, shellfish, game and dairy goods. This became the basis for bringing in new tour operators to various locations, setting up seafood safaris and getting smaller restaurants to cooperate with the famous star-studded restaurants in Gothenburg.

The Irish market was added to Barbro’s UK office responsibilities in 1998 followed in 2000 by the USA.

Sweden’s traffic from the UK, for so long handicapped by high cost air transport, was transformed by the hugely successful introduction of low-cost, no-frills airlines. This was a development in which Barbro played a vital part.

In 2003 Barbro was offered the opportunity to take over as Director of VisitSweden’s Central European Region, running the German speaking and Dutch markets out of offices in Hamburg and Amsterdam. She made significant changes to the location, structure and management and within a year new sectors of the German market were successfully developed. In her last year as Director, traffic from Germany was increased by 16% and from the Netherlands by 29%.

...and beyond tourism

• During her time as Director of Swedish Tourism in the UK, Barbro McAusland was for 10 years also Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Swedish School in London. She led a team which re-organised management, staff, marketing and funding and turned the school round from near closure to a sound economic base and in the process increased the number of pupils from 65 to 240.

• Barbro was the Chairman of ANTOR (Association of National Tourist Office Representatives in the UK) in the mid 1980s for two years, having been a member of the Board of ANTOR for 6 years.

• During her earlier years in London she was also a Board member of the Swedish YMCA hostel in London, and founded long distance university studies for London Swedes at the University of Lund.

• More recently, Barbro has been Chairman of Midscan Travel, an incoming tour operator in Sweden. She has also been a member of the Female Advisory Board of New Wave Group – one of Sweden’ s largest companies in sports & leisurewear, gifts and home interiors including the famous Glassworks, Orrefors, Kosta and Boda.

• She was for several years a board member of the Kingdom of Glass , a marketing organisation promoting 16 different glass companies in Småland, southern Sweden.

• In 2003 Barbro was the first person in the travel and tourism industry to be given the King's Medal for Services to Tourism and Sweden by HM Carl XVI Gustav, King of Sweden in Stockholm's Royal Castle.