Why Wales has a problem attracting visitors
Wales has everything that the tourism industry loves to sell us – the great outdoors, photogenic landscapes, sandy beaches, a proud indigenous language and history, great food and a handful of cracking cities – including one, Wrexham, that has its own Disney+ TV series thanks to some famous Hollywood football fans.
Yet, according to International Passenger Survey (IPS) data released by Visit Britain, there were 33 per cent fewer inbound visitors to Wales in 2022 than 2019. The amount international visitors spent also dropped by 24 per cent, from £515 million in 2019 to £391 million in 2022.
Tourism statistics are notoriously unreliable. Wales has no passport control on its border with England. Does the IPS capture Wales-bound arrivals using Bristol airport? Are students and short-term workers separated out? But 33 per cent, give or take, is, indisputably, a huge drop in a country that relies on tourism for more than 150,000 jobs.
As recently as 2021, Wales was being lauded in travel media and guidebook rankings as a must-visit destination. The Welsh government’s Trade and Invest department wrote gleefully of “How Wales became a worldwide tourism hit”, claiming overall tourist spending of £14 million a day – amounting to £5.1 billion a year. This impressive sum has been contradicted by the UK government.
So how did Wales’ fall from worldwide fame and financial health come to pass? Is it a blip or a downward trend?
Some factors are obvious. The cost of living crisis and the long tail of the pandemic have impacted tourism in all countries. Wales is probably a secondary or discretionary option for many travellers. If you live in England (or, for that matter, Swansea or Dusseldorf) and have a budget for one annual holiday, are you going to go to the South of France or Spain, or would you prefer a week in Barmouth?
“The cost-of-living crisis has had an impact on people taking holidays,” says William McNamara, chief executive of Bluestone National Park Resort in Pembrokeshire. “People are having to think very carefully about where to spend their money, what added value they can get, and what is actually included within the price.”
Wet and (a bit) wild
Welsh weather is a perennial potential drawback. Cardiff routinely scoops the title of wettest UK city and Wales has a similar climate to the west of Scotland when it comes to rainfall averages.
But inclement weather needn’t be a black cloud for marketing teams. Scotland manages to turn its gales and mizzle into a sort-of positive. Visitors associate the Highlands with romance, spirituality and natural thrills, according to a Scottish government survey , which also found that tourists, when asked to share their word associations for Scotland, most frequently came up with “fascinating”, “exciting” and “relaxing”.
What does Wales make most people think of? I can’t find official research, but I expect most people imagine “dank”, “dark” and “sheep-farmed” rather than wilderness or soaring summits. Wales is close to Herefordshire and Shropshire, on the map and in how much of it looks; neither of those counties are exactly Patagonias of the collective imagination.
Even Snowdonia is better known for its toy train and Summit café than its challenging trails. Is Wales trying to hide its wilder side?
Myths vs realities
Scotland, and Ireland too, draw thousands of American and Australasian – as well as European – visitors by artfully flogging their mythic-historical assets, as well as offering to fulfil ancestry-fantasies and golfing and fishing requirements. They can also throw Edinburgh and Dublin into the mix. Wales doesn’t have quite the same allure; and its smaller diaspora – largely found in, as it happens, Patagonia – hasn’t got the dollars but already has the landscapes and salmon rivers.
There have been some Welsh coups in recent times. The opening of the 870-mile Wales Coast Path in 2012 generated heaps of newsprint and TV coverage and established the country as a top choice for hikers. The fact that the roll-out of England’s long-promised coast path has turned into a never-ending Sisyphean trudge has been further good press for Wales.
But walkers up to the challenge of taking on the epic circuit are few and far between, and backpackers in general are not big spenders. Ten years is a long time in tourism, too. Ireland has launched its Wild Atlantic Way and its community-focused Gathering, Scotland the NC500 road trip. What’s Wales’ newest big offering?
Mi casa isn’t su casa
Wales’ 2020 ban on English visitors during the bleakest days of the pandemic garnered negative headlines some travellers will not have forgotten. Current policies and schemes might be seen to be further tarnishing the international brand in the long term. The Welsh government plans to give councils powers to impose a levy on visitors in order, it claims, to “encourage a more sustainable approach” to tourism. But talk of a “tourist tax” troubles hoteliers, holiday letting agencies and other business owners, as well as Welsh families who fear family friends will be penalised for crossing Offa’s Dyke.
Wales introduced punitive council tax and business rates aimed at curbing the number of holiday homes and Airbnb properties in July 2022. A public consultation on a statutory licensing scheme on overnight lets is also underway. While these are widely regarded within Wales as necessary measures – more than 10 per cent of Gwynedd’s housing stock is holiday homes – they inevitably contribute to the general impression of an unwelcoming or at least tourism-unfriendly country.
It’s more than a decade since Visit Wales sought to challenge the age-old impression of Welsh people as “rude” and “unfriendly”. Gavin and Stacey helped turn that stereotype around, as have media-savvy figures like Charlotte Church, Cerys Matthews and Bryn Terfel. But the new policies, combined with first Minister Mark Drakeford’s professorial-cum-chapel-preacher manner, could undo years of slow-build promotional donkey-work.
Business concerns
The Federation of Small Businesses has said: “At a time of rising costs and stalled economic recovery, discussions on more tax are unhelpful.” Most holiday-lets operators agree. Geoff Haden, who owns a cluster of holiday homes overlooking Swansea Bay as well as the childhood home of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, told The Telegraph that the tourist tax will be “worse than the tolls on the Severn Bridge and we know what a deterrent that was to visitor numbers”.
Some pundits, including in this newspaper, have suggested Anglophobia as a cause for concern. As the Rugby World Cup will amply demonstrate, the trans-border rivalry is as fierce as ever. But can we really construe levies on holidaymakers or the renaming of the Brecon Beacons National Park as Bannau Brycheiniog as meaningfully anti-English?
The main mistake on the part of the Welsh government, according to Conwy-born Sean Taylor, founder of the acclaimed Zip World attractions, which employ 850 people across seven sites, is how the changes are being communicated.
“We need to get away from all this negativity,” he says. “If we’re going to have a tourist tax, that’s fine, but tell people how it will be spent and administered. It has to go on public amenities that are always open and clean, good footpaths which will create a cleaner environment which people won’t mind paying for.”
He believes Wales can become a world-class tourist destination if it plays to its strengths. “Wales needs to have a clearer sense of its own brand. We’re 15 years behind the Lake District and Scotland when it comes to hotels and food, but 15 years ahead when it comes to adventure tourism. We can offer visitors memorable experiences in iconic landscapes, celebrating the distinctive qualities of our national parks.”
The dragon will rise again
There are good reasons for Welsh tourism to be hopeful. The downturn may already have passed. Bluestone is seeing “a surge of last-minute bookings” as the weather has improved, and William McNamara remains optimistic about the coming year.
A couple of other IPS statistics suggest a way forward. UK overall inbound tourists for 2022 was 24 per cent down on 2019, but income was only down seven per cent. Scotland, meanwhile, saw visitor numbers drop only 7 per cent but visitor spending increase 24 per cent. While all those campervans clogging the high roads might be an eyesore and a drag for locals, it appears foreign visitors are spending with gusto.
Maybe what Wales needs is neither more tourists nor more taxes. It might just have to upgrade its offering, sell its active tourism and high-end accommodation better, and charge those who do come a bit more. But, if the country wants to sell itself as the green alternative, then it wants above all non-flying visitors – Brits and Irish, basically – so it might be wise to wind down the politicking when devising and disseminating its eco and community-friendly policy-making.
