{"id":613,"date":"2013-03-04T20:04:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-04T20:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jacothenorth.net\/blog\/?p=613"},"modified":"2014-01-22T20:43:23","modified_gmt":"2014-01-22T20:43:23","slug":"tourism-in-wales-not-of-wales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jacothenorth.net\/blog\/tourism-in-wales-not-of-wales\/","title":{"rendered":"Tourism: In Wales, Not Of Wales"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Welsh Government has just received \u20182020\u2019<\/a>, a new report on the future of tourism compiled by the Tourism Sector Panel<\/a>. I\u2019ve been taking an interest in tourism for quite a few years and I\u2019ve read a lot of such reports; this one, I\u2019m afraid, was just another off the same production line. Summed up by what is grandly called \u201cA new vision and ambition\u201d Which says . . .<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Like I say, I\u2019ve read a lot of such documents over the years and this one is just another mish-mash of platitudinous bollocks and pious hopes. What does the \u2018vision\u2019 say? In essence: \u2018In the next decade tourism in Wales will carry on much as it has for the past century. It will serve England\u2019s needs and to hell with the lack of economic benefits accruing to the Welsh and the social and cultural damage incurred.\u2019<\/p>\n

For that\u2019s always been the bottom line of \u2018Welsh\u2019 tourism \u2013 it was always English tourism taking place in a scenically more attractive, adjoining country that happened to be called \u2018Wales\u2019. Because it takes place in our country we Welsh are then expected to be proud of the fact that so many people \u2013 the vast majority of them English \u2013 want to come here. With the added joy that many more wish to move here permanently, for tourism is the main driving force\u00a0 behind English colonisation.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t deny that in the early days of tourism, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Welsh people did benefit, but those days are long gone. What we have now is tourism run by strangers for strangers. You know how bad things are when there are English mountain guides in Wales! (Can you imagine going climbing in the Alps and learning that your guide is Jeremy from Reading! Sorry, I\u2019d want somebody who\u2019d been born and bred there; could read the weather . . . and the names of the streams and other features.)<\/p>\n

Perhaps worse, our treacherous and incompetent politicos, devoid of ideas and energy, take advantage of tourism and present it as an \u2018industry\u2019, the \u2018economic salvation\u2019 of rural Wales, no less. These politicos pretend they put a lot of work and money into making tourism what it is today. Rubbish! Tourism in Wales would carry on even if the Welsh Government ignored it. Day-trippers would still infest the resorts of the north coast. Brummies would still flock to their mobile homes along Cardigan Bay. Walkers and climbers would still come here because we have the scenery and the topography. Nothing would change because we have no real control over it. It is, I repeat, English tourism that just happens to take place in Wales.<\/p>\n

It needn\u2019t be this way. It\u2019s done differently in Scotland. If the political will was there we too could have a tourism industry that served us, without the destruction of our identity and despoliation of our homeland.<\/p>\n

Before making direct comparisons, let\u2019s familiarise ourselves with the figures for Scotland in 2010. For a start we see that Scotland earns only slightly less from English visitors than from Scots holidaying at home, \u00a31,471m against \u00a31,002m. In 2010 the \u2018domestic markets\u2019 provided 84% of Scotland\u2019s tourists but only 65% of her income. A fuller breakdown of Scotland\u2019s \u00a0markets and spends can be found below. Curiously, Wales is half way up the table in numbers of visitors, but nowhere to be seen in the \u2018spend per head\u2019 column. (Surely there can\u2019t be that many Cardis going to Scotland on holiday!)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Where Scotland scores heavily, and what shows up the real difference between the two countries\u2019 (see table below), is in income from overseas visitors. Wales\u2019 figure of 879,000 overseas tourists is dwarfed by Scotland\u2019s total of 2,341,000, almost three times what Wales sees. Translated into hard cash, Scotland earned, in 2010, \u00a31,444m against Wales\u2019 \u00a3328m a year later. With the spend per head figure for overseas tourists in Scotland \u00a3616 to Wales\u2019 \u00a3373. Not good, is it? And remember, most businesses in Scotland catering for tourists are owned and staffed by Scots. Another unfavourable comparison.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>From whichever angle one looks at it, it soon becomes clear that Wales is simply being used by England to provide cheap holidays and breaks. The slogan might as well be: \u2018Come to Wales, you won\u2019t be expected to spend much\u2019<\/i>. Because this is so we have to encourage more and more low spending English tourists just to stand still . . . with all the attendant cultural and social damage already referred to plus the sheer numbers at certain times of the year slowing traffic and in other ways damaging the wider economy; bringing added expense to local authorities and similar agencies; plus adding strain to already stretched \u00a0health services.<\/p>\n

Let us be honest. If Wales was starting out today to develop a tourism industry to benefit Wales and Welsh people it would be a lot different to what we are now suffering. You don\u2019t need to be an economist, or even a nationalist, to realise that Wales should be targeting overseas tourists for all sorts of reasons. Here are just a few:<\/p>\n