Don’t play Welsh tourism into the bunker
Bubble — By Mandy Davies on March 19, 2010 7:00 am
The Ryder Cup draws huge crowds - but how many of them will search beyond the Celtic Manor to see what Wales has to offer?
THE British Tourism Week was launched in Wales for the first time this week, to mark the hosting of the Ryder Cup later. It is the fourth annual Wales Tourism Week, and its main purpose is to raise awareness of the economic importance of tourism among politicians at every level of government, both across Wales and in Westminster. Politicians and policy makers have been invited to events at tourism destinations up and down Wales.
Despite generating revenues in excess of £3.5 billion each year, which constitutes more than 3.5% of the Welsh economy – a greater proportion than in England or Scotland – the tourism sector sometimes struggles to assert its place as an economic driver within the psyche of the Senedd. That is perhaps not always helped by its position within such a diverse portfolio. While heritage and culture are integral to the Wales tourism product, so too are transport, sustainability, skills, employment and the economy.
It is important to remember that tourism provides employment for around 100,000 people in every part of Wales and those are jobs that cannot be exported or relocated off-shore. What is more, in reaching out to visitors across the UK, Europe and North America, the tourism sector showcases Wales as not only as a holiday destination but also as a great place to live, work and invest.
This year’s Ryder Cup, being hosted at the Celtic Manor Resort in Newport, offers just such an opportunity. Since the announcement was made that the tournament was coming to Wales, people have been seeking to exploit the opportunity and asking what benefits it will bring to Wales to justify such huge government investment.
Seen widely as the biggest thing to happen in Wales since the Rugby World Cup in 1999, the impact of the Ryder Cup is for many an unknown quantity and for most a stretch of the imagination. The event will undoubtedly draw in huge crowds, with some 50,000 people expected each day. If the K-Club experience from 2006 is used as a benchmark, spectators will spend an average of £230 each per day – more if they are enjoying corporate events, or if they are American. But how much of that will spread beyond the venue to secondary spend at restaurants, attractions and retail? Most are there just to watch the golf.
The truth is that the tournament is not going to deliver customers and guests on a plate. Businesses looking to gain from the much lauded “Ryder Cup Effect” are going to have to work hard to convert latent interest into cash and repeat business. There will be some 900 broadcast staff covering the event, and all of them will have to fill vast amounts of airtime with packages covering everything from the species of grass used on the ninth tee (which, by the way, is Lolium perenne and Festuca rubra) to “What is Doctor Who all about?”. The Ryder Cup will undoubtedly raise awareness and interest in Wales, but that will not be enough to convert couch golfers into tourists. That task will fall to the tourism businesses themselves, the coal face of the industry.
“What of Visit Wales?” you may ask. Its emphasis, like that of Visit Britain, has changed in recent years. VB resources are now mainly focused on new and developing markets, while Visit Wales is more engaged with tapping into the vast home spend potential of UK visitors. There is support being provided to help businesses who will deal directly with spectators, especially in relation to customer service and delivering a welcome which spells out what makes Wales special. It is vital that the legacy of the Ryder Cup is a positive driver for return visits.
Beyond that, it’s up to tourism operators. There are real opportunities to develop the range and, importantly, the quality of the tourism product in Wales. Operators must work more closely to create deep and lasting partnerships capable of capitalising on increased visibility of a destination and awareness of what is on offer. It is no good if the millions of people around the world watching the Ryder Cup on television feel inspired to get online and check out what’s on offer to find that, beyond the Visit Wales marketing and website, they struggle to reconcile the image on the television with the reality.
And speaking of image and reality, the Welsh Government and local authorities have got to get to grips with the roadside litter problem in Wales. Any good work undertaken on creating tourism products, retail developments or investment opportunities will be undone in an instant by verges full of fast food packaging and dumped sofas. First impressions are lasting impressions.
This year’s Wales Tourism Week must serve as a wake up call for the sector. While we have some great examples of five star facilities and Michelin level dining, there is no reason to rest on our laurels. All levels of the industry need to strive to be the best, whether a small local attraction or an elegant luxury spa. The message is ‘must try harder, and then try a little bit more’. Despite visitor’s rating their experiences in Wales highly, with an average 8.5 out of 10, there is a lot to be done in raising the overall quality of the sector, for it is on quality that we must compete. When asked what could improve the experience, around 25% of visitors said “better weather”. When faced with such a quest, we must look to what we do well if we are to compete with the Costas.
Quality requires effort and investment. If we want to be treated as an economic force for Wales, then there needs to be a sea change from a grant or subsidy culture to one which also thinks in terms of investment, innovation and greater product development. Tourism is not only a good fit for Wales but a necessity, with the vast majority of operators falling into the SME sector with all the associated pitfalls of work/life balance, dismal cashflow and coping with the unforeseen.
Innovation and entrepreneurialism is what Wales does well. Tourism is big business for Wales, but often overlooked. It needs to be taken seriously and put on a par with other inward investment and employment growth opportunities if it is to thrive rather than merely survive.
Tags: Celtic Manor, Ryder Cup, sport, tourism, Visit Britain
Tweet This
Share on Facebook
Digg This
Bookmark
Stumble
7 Comments
Hard to disagree with any of this. Wales as a whole is staking a helluva lot on the Ryder Cup providing a positive outcome for tourism and for the country’s international visibility.
I will concede that the Welsh Government and the tourism industry had little option but to draw up plans to capitalise on this tournament, which is probably why it’s talked up so much, including within an uncritical media. However, what worries me is how we measure the return on investment. I’m not even sure there’s a mechanism for it. We’d have to start with an overall figure for what the Welsh Government and its agencies have invested in this event, including road infrastructure and other factors that have begun as a consequence of the Ryder Cup.
Of course, those benefits will still be here after the golfing crowds has gone home. But how much of an extravagance will they be viewed as in coming years, as budgets get tighter?
However, my real concern lies with the size of the window of opportunity in which we can recoup some of the public investment from visitors. For much of the three-day competition, we can assume that visitors will be lining the fairways. And after that? Well, if you were going to Augusta for the Masters, and you had a week or two off work for it, what would you do? Would you hang around in Georgia, or head south for Disneyworld, or north for New York and the other great cities of the East Coast?
As such, we’re up against London, Bath (given American enthusiasm for olde England), Oxford and perhaps Edinburgh, among others. Maybe even further afield, like Paris. It isn’t Wales’ fault. We just don’t have a Big Ben, or double decker buses, Buckingham Palace and bearskin-wearing guards. And while I’d far rather spend a break beach combing around south and west Wales, we have to accept that many foreign visitors just don’t distinguish between the two countries, and if they do, they don’t care. It’s all to do with proximity.
This all sounds terribly negative, and critical. It isn’t supposed to be. Rather, it’s an attempt to assess of the size of the task ahead, and highlight the pretty poor hand the country has been dealt. So don’t be surprised if, after the event, we all realise that the only real beneficiary of this event is the host venue, which is, of course, owned by Wales’ richest man.
The problem with an event such as this, is what it actually does to promote/benefit Wales in and of itself? Its not like hosting an Olympiad or such, when the host country and culture is paraded large. Its a golf course… Like any other golf course… And aside from “Celtic Manor Newport” on any TV coverage, what is going to be specifically Welsh about it?
As for the visitors, if any of them get further than Cardiff I will eat my hat. With fries.
Ah, the Ryder Cup. Being one of 100,000 living in the shadow of Mr Mitel’s plaything, the local issue is quite a simple one: the inability to sell us the benefit of intangibles.
When we spend money, we expect tangible benefits; results that we can see, touch or feel. When we – as individuals or as a community – spend money on food or roadworks, we can dine, or drive smoothly, on that which we paid for.
However, the Ryder Cup has offered us a transaction whereby we still pay tangible cash, but what we are being offered is an intangible product: specifically the enhanced awareness of (south?) Wales that raises potential of a leisure destination; more specifically, 100 worldwide broadcasters running Wales PLC’s five-minute promotional VT.
Now when we (and I mean the people of Newport) were first sold the Ryder Cup, we were told that it would be wonderful for the city. I guess most people assumed we would receive tangible wonder for our cash. When we were (gradually) told that it would actually be intangible, a lot of people felt hoodwinked.
Others are yet to be told, and are STILL preparing for the onslaught of cash-rich Yanks leaving the golf course and heading into Newport to buy something, anything.
No one has mentioned to them that the traditional American tourist gets up early, goes out in packs, gets back, has dinner and goes to bed.
No one has told them that the Ryder Cup machine will be defending these visitors with a vigour; and that visitors will be fiercely cosseted from the moment they leave their hotel to the moment they return. How far does this stretch? Well, if you consider my calls to M4 service stations as far away as Oxfordshire (I wanted to place some Welsh choirs en route) were all returned by an agent of Ryder Cup Ltd.
Unfortunately, the slick suits are still caught up in the intangibles, and have ignored completely the people’s complaints that they want (and have always wanted) tangible benefits for their money.
Which leads me nicely on to a bugbear of WalesHome: where is our voice? Who is listening to, and voicing, our concerns? Who is managing expectation of tangible and intangible benefits? Who is questioning the morality of millions spent on private roads for visiting rich suits, when 90-yr-olds in the same postcode are reading letters to say that the council can no longer afford to supply their daily hot meal?
In a bygone era, that was the role of the independent local media in the form of the South Wales Argus. Alas, when we read every Ryder Cup release, topped, tailed and dressed up as truth, a greater travesty is afoot: the SWA has seemingly resigned from its role as the defender (plus ears and voice) of the people, and taken on a more lucrative job on the sales desk of the Ryder Cup.
It has moved out from the terraces and into the clubhouse, and replaced its sword of truth with a nine-iron. It now quaffs from the golden chalice, tutting Borg-like at their former (and now unworthy) clients that resistance is futile, and an assimilation into their overlord’s mantra is a done-deal.
…but when the gatekeeper turns poacher, god help the animals.
(note to self: enough with the metaphors already!)
I forget to mention that the main arena for Ryder Cup discourse in Newport was the comments section under each of the Ryder Cup articles published on the Argus website.
Following the last tangible/intangible benefits debate – over a particularly sycophantic article from a golf playing member of the sports desk – the comments section was pulled on the ENTIRE news section.
Press pass anyone? The going rate is 30 pieces of silver.
Mandy, I agree there needs to be more done and there are problems.
1. Adequate hotels: Wales has two 4-5 star golf resorts, one 4-5 star hotel (in downtown Cardiff) and three mid-tier 3-4 star hotels hotels (Hilton, Marriott and Accor). That’s it! No corporate executive of the level that will come to this event will even bother to blink about staying in London, choppering to CWL or near the venue and taking a limo. The M4 Celtic Manor interchange is a long-running joke, don’t get me started on the woefully inadequate airport and ready or not, the world is coming to Wales.
2. NBC and Sky will use an enormous amount of local rooms just for their enormous crews. The global press corps will number in excess of 5,000. 30,000 visitors will be there each day and it will be televised to 550 million viewers in 175 countries. Getting to and from the venue will require the patience of Job. Be thankful no one will know of the infrastructure problems on the telecast.
3. The standard of service has got to rise dramatically above the “not being bothered”/”What do you want me to do about it?” level. The folks coming to this event are bankers and corporate execs (the ones not at all affected by the recession) and even if it’s bad they will just return home and never, ever return…
4. Folks at the senior executive level will not take more than a day or two on either side of the three-day event. My pal is a top banker with State Street. He’s entertaining clients at the event, they are staying London, will chopper over and will work the week before and the Monday and Tuesday after. The irony is the only way to get there will be for me to drive to London, chopper in and back to London? Did it for Ireland four years ago. Never thought I’d have to do it for an event 30 miles away. Most snicker when faced with the local choices and the rip-off prices.
And when these blow up, the Cardiff crowd can sit back and blame Newport for blowing it.
Priceless! For years I’ve been warning that Wales is becoming confused with Cardiff (and vice versa), now Denis Campbell provides yet more proof.
Talking of hotels Campbell asserts that ‘Wales’ has only one 4 – 5 star establishment and three 3 – 4 star hotels – all in Cardiff.
Haven’t been home to Swansea in a year or so but last time I was there Morgans was a 5 star hotel and I’m fairly certain that there were a few in the 3 – 4 star bracket. Was in Llandudno recently, where the St. Georges is a 4 star hotel with 3 star competion in the same town.
And it’s not just the towns. Four and three star hotels can be found in Wales way out in the sticks. Though obviously these may not be convenient for the golfists and others coming to Newport.
If you’re talking about Cardiff, or the south-east corner of the country, then please make that clear. Failure to do so makes it appear that you’re totally ignorant of Wales or dismissive of some 80 per cent of the country.
To be fair Roy, Denis probably meant Cardiff!