Madam,

Gwynedd County Council is meeting on 3 March to decide what services will be cut from their budget to make savings of £4,940,000. As chairman of the Barmouth Publicity Association, an organisation that represents and promotes many businesses across the tourism sector, I am deeply concerned about several of the services selected for closure.

As the proposal currently stands Gwynedd Council intends to completely close down all the county’s Tourist Information Centres, cease to produce the Snowdonia Mountains and Coast annual brochure and close 50 out of the county’s 73 public toilets. The BPA and its members believe the wider consequences have not been considered and are likely to be highly negative on many Gwynedd residents.

According to Gwynedd Council figures, in 2011, tourism was estimated to be worth £917m to the county’s economy, supporting almost 16,000 jobs, 80 per cent of which were direct employment in tourism. Over seven million people visit Gwynedd every year, with over 21 million tourist days, including almost 18 million overnight stays. Gwynedd is more reliant on tourism than any other area in Wales.

Tourism is a fragile industry. Standards and expectations have risen sharply in even the last few years and image is becoming ever more important. Visitors now expect everything about their experience of a destination to be of good quality. Even relatively minor negative changes can therefore have far-reaching consequences.

As such our members are deeply concerned that closing the TIC network sends an extremely negative signal to our potential visitors. Here in Barmouth our TIC was dealing with over 300 enquiries a day last year and the network as a whole accounts for a very large percentage of the overall distribution of information about attractions and destinations across Gwynedd. We are also very worried that closing two thirds of our public toilets will not only make life difficult for Gwynedd residents, particularly the elderly, but will make the overall experience in Gwynedd much less welcoming. It is appreciated that cutting the tourism infrastructure may seem like the easy choice. But we are concerned that by reducing the tourist experience, in particular by closing all TIC branches and closing two thirds of all public toilets, the overall attractiveness of Gwynedd will be reduced. Any ‘attack’ on tourism directly affects the livelihoods of everyone in Gwynedd who works in the tourism industry and has a knock-on effect on many others. Gwynedd’s wealth depends on a successful tourist industry and we should all be fighting not just to protect it but to enhance it. We believe that, far from saving Gwynedd money, such cuts to the tourism infrastructure as are proposed are likely to cost Gwynedd residents more in the medium to long-term in lost revenue and lost income than they will save. As such we would urge Gwynedd’s councillors to reject the proposals to cut the tourism infrastructure, for the sake of Gwynedd’s future and for the sake of its residents whom they represent.

Yours etc

David Brown

Chairman

Barmouth Publicity Association