VisitBritain, the UK’s national tourist board, is to make around 10 per cent of its staff redundant.

It is believed that up to 30 employees of the 500-strong workforce will be given their marching orders. According to VisitBritain, 25 posts have been vacant during an 18-month job freeze.

According to the Tourism Alliance, the cuts are a result of the government’s failure to provide any increase in overseas marketing funding for more than 10 years.

Don Foster, shadow culture secretary for the Liberal Democrat Party, condemned the move, claiming that it would seriously harm the legacy of the Olympic Games 2012.

He said: “It is disastrous that the organisation responsible for marketing Britain to the rest of the world has been put in this position due to a lack of government support.

“If the government is serious about making money from the Olympics then they should be championing British tourism rather than undermining it through real term cuts.”

Tony Millns, chair of Tourism Alliance, said the downsizing would result in smaller tourism businesses suffering.

“These cuts will be felt by the grass-roots of the industry – the many thousands of small family-run tourism businesses that rely upon VisitBritain to market the country internationally.”