An Open Message To Tourism Professionals In Wales
Introduction
For four and a half years, Wales Outdoors, a business delivering a handful of guided walks and tours in Wales, was denied a listing on the Welsh Government’s tourism portal, Visit Wales. Only when the owner, Andrew Lamb, sold it to another did Visit Wales allow Wales Outdoors a listing. Shocking stuff, right?
More shocking is that the reason given for the block on Wales Outdoors being listed on the Visit Wales platform whilst under the ownership of Andrew Lamb was not applied to all providers, but only to some. Further, requests for clarification of the Visit Wales onboarding rules were never responded to and to this day, despite reams of communication between Andrew Lamb and Visit Wales staff and management no onboarding rules have been forthcoming from Visit Wales or the Welsh Government ministers that have been contacted.
What follows is our attempt at detailing the efforts that Andrew Lamb made to have Wales Outdoors listed on the Visit Wales platform and for that platform to begin to do what it should always have been doing, that is, working with tourism providers and effectively promoting the best of Wales.
Wales Adventure Tourism Organisation
‘WATO is a national forum established to link existing outdoor sector organisations in Wales’ three National Parks, with the aim of sharing best practice across the outdoor sector in Wales.’
WATO is responsible for advising Visit Wales to go far beyond UK legislation and be the only tourism portal in all of the UK to demand an expensive and intrusive inspection scheme of mountain professionals and tourist guides.
They demand that anyone working in Wales who delivers walks in the countryside that involves travelling for more than 30 minutes from the guide’s vehicle to be inspected by a Visit Wales inspector. This is a blanket rule and has no bearing on the age of the participant, the nature of the walk or the difficulty of the terrain. This also takes no account of expensive and hard earned professional qualifications such as Mountain Leader or Green or Blue Badge Tourist Guide.
When Andy asked the chairman of WATO, Paul Donovan, why WATO had given this advice to Visit Wales Paul replied with ‘because that is what we discussed’. A shocking response I hope you agree.
Wales Outdoors - V - Visit Wales
Wales Outdoors was removed from the Visit Wales website in March of 2020. Since then Andrew Lamb has been seeking fair play, a level playing field if you like. To date this has not been achieved. Andrew was removed from the platform as herefused to pay for the unnecessary inspection, being a qualified mountain leader with thirty years of tourism provision in Wales and regarding the inspection as not fit for purpose.
The information coming from Visit Wales has changed over time. Initially, it was mountain walking that they said was the provision that required an inspection. By 2023 this had changed to all walks of more than 30 minutes from the guide’s vehicle, no matter the location.
Andrew was of the opinion that as Wales Outdoors was removed then Visit Wales should not be listing any business that offered activities or walking that was not accredited through the Visit Wales inspection scheme and over the course of the four and half years since March 2020 was in regular communication with Visit Wales management, providing them with details of businesses that ought not be listed by them but that they had allowed onto the platform.
This course of action won no friends. Andrew says that this course of action was not designed to damage other businesses but to highlight the double standards and sloppy onboarding practices at Visit Wales with the hope that many businesses would be removed, and that those businesses would rightly be angry about it and that they would complain also. However, Visit Wales did not act decisively and did not remove many. There was a stand off, with many unaccredited businesses remaining whilst Wales Outdoors continued to be discriminated against in the tourism marketplace at the hands of the Welsh Government.
By 2024 Andrew decided to name and shame staff members at Visit Wales. Visit Wales were given good warning of this action and all that was required was engagement and remedy. Visit Wales did what they do best. They ignored the warning and so several posts on this blog detailing the actions of Visit Wales staff remain live.
Wales Outdoors Gets Listed On Visit Wales
But the naming and shaming of Visit Wales staff had little effect, so Andrew, through LinkedIn posts, detailed thirty businesses that should not have a listing on Visit Wales, as they, like Wales Outdoors, were not accredited by a Visit Wales inspection and they offered, amongst other things, hiking and wlaking. Again, no friends won here. But this naming of other businesses did result in a change of policy, not written but ‘made up on the hoof’. Visit Wales was now stating, in opposition to four years of assertions, that an agency could offer walking and hiking or indeed ANY adventure activity without having to be inspected by them.
‘What!’ do I hear you say? Yes, you heard correctly, an agent, someone perhaps in Germany, who books activities or hikes for their clients, yes, they can have a Visit Wales listing but a qualified professional living in Wales cannot. And you’d be right in thinking that the sloppy management at Visit Wales demands no guarantee that agents can only use accredited providers. The agent can employ anyone, qualified or unqualified, to engage with their clients.
The bottom line here is that a business, either in the UK or even on the other side of the world, with no tourism expertise or qualifications, can employ someone in the UK who has no qualifications to deliver activities for their clients. Fine. Their choice and risk. But what is not fine is that they are free to advertise on the Visit Wales platform without the need for accreditation whilst qualified professionals living and working in Wales have to pay Visit Wales for an inspection for the same courtesy. This utterly diminishes professional qualifications to the point of ‘not required’.
So, Andrew sold Wales Outdoors to a project manager, his wife in fact, and within a few days, Wales Outdoors was live on the Visit Wales platform. Andrew still delivers the activities. Nothing much has changed apart from the name of the person owning the business.
It’s important to note, however, that Visit Wales panicked. Andrew’s LinkedIn posts were causing a stir and business owners were contacting Visit Wales management. The evidence section below details the panicked decision which is not in compliance with Visit Wales own onboarding rules. You see, Visit Wales clearly demands of agents the same accreditation BUT if they applied this to the agents they would need to remove almost all of them!
Wales By Trails
2023 and 2024 were the Visit Wales ‘Wales By Trails’ campaign years. Visit Wales over the course of these two years, at Andrew’s insistence, removed all walking festivals and all festivals that had walking as a part of their overall experience and all guides in Wales who Visit Wales did not accredit. This left, in the whole of Wales, no providers able to deliver guided walks to individuals and just a couple who could offer guided walks in Wales to groups…
Well done Visit Wales! With about 40% of visitors coming to Wales for hiking Visit Wales platformed nothing of use to the visitor and actively worked to damage professionally delivered guided walks businesses. This of course affects guides but it has further economic impact. Extra bed nights are lost, great days out are not taken part in and so re-bookings and recommendations are missed… All involved in tourism in Wales ought to be screaming about this appalling disregard for the economic growth of the Welsh tourism sector.
Review Of The Accreditation Scheme
At a meeting on November 6th 2023 Visit Wales management told Andrew Lamb that, finally, they would undertake a full review of the VisitWales activity accreditation scheme. This Andrew had been requesting for two years. Most definitely a step in the right direction, this review began towards the latter part of 2023 with stakeholders being contacted from January 2024.
We are still waiting to have details of the outcomes with no news on the review being made known to anyone outside of Visit Wales. This is now three years of waiting…
The Welsh Government
Andrew Lamb has met with Mark Drakeford as FM and Vaughan Gething when he was the minister with overall responsibility for the economy, and, therefore tourism. Andrew Lamb has had communication with every one of the ministers that subsequently, amid the chaos of Vaughan Gething’s fall from grace, have had responsibility for tourism. These are Dawn Bowden, Hannah Blythyn, Sarah Murphy, Jack Sargeant and Rebecca Evans.
Despite Mark Drakeford being understanding and offering his support in resolving the matters Andrew Lamb raised he has not progressed his investigations and now a year has passed since representation was first made and there is silence from Mark's office. All ministers responded without reading the details of Andrew’s complaint but by passing on the complaint to Visit Wales management who routinely responded with ‘Andrew can pay for accreditation and then we will list Wales Outdoors’, therefore, also without any engagement or clarification regarding the issues Andrew had been raising, that of the far from level playing field that the Welsh Government is still presiding over.
Denial Of FOI’s
Andrew put in a few FOI requests. The first was for his own data and this was received with thanks, after a three month wait, and it contained some interesting comments from Welsh Government staff, especially from Jon Munro, Andrew's contact at Visit Wales in 2022 and 2023. Further FOI’s were denied. These were designed to force Visit Wales to supply their protocols for onboarding businesses. There truly is no such thing as openness in government.
And why FOI’s. Well, Visit Wales staff refuse to answer simple questions, such as how is ‘this business’ without accreditation listed when it offers the same activities as Wales Outdoors?
Mountain Training
Mountain Training is the professional body for hillwalking and mountaineering. Andrew Lamb is a mountain leader of thirty years. Andrew contacted Mountain Training to ask them to apply pressure on Visit Wales, to have them see sense and work within the legislation as laid down by the UK government, citing the discrimination against qualified mountain professionals who Visit Wales were demanding another level of accreditation of whilst allowing unqualified providers access to the Visit Wales platform.
Mountain Training were sympathetic but decided that there was nothing that they could do to help resolve this matter. It appears that Mountain Training accepts that their Mountain Leader qualification, despite costing thousands of pounds to gain and involving at least a year of training then assessment, is not a valuable enough professional endorsement to fight for, on behalf of its members, at least, not in Wales…
The Evidence
The evidence is supplied in the hyperlinks in this post. However, bringing this matter up to date, there is the following that clearly shows the discrimination against ALL professional guides in Wales and the breaking of Visit Wales onboarding rules by Visit Wales staff, in order to avoid the decimation of the Visit Wales platform. For if Visit Wales applied their onbaording rules fairly and in line with their published protocols then most agents and many accommodation providers would need to be removed from the Visit Wales platform.
For two years Jon Munro asserted that ALL businesses with listings on the Visit Wales platform were required to have a Visit Wales activity accreditation if they offered adventure activity or guided walks in the mountains. Heledd Owen agreed with this at a meeting in September 2022. Steffan Roberts agreed with this at a meeting in November 2023.
Following Andrew Lamb’s campaign to list the providers that ought not to be platformed, under the current not fit for purpose onboarding rules, rules that discriminated against Wales Outdoors, Andrew was informed by a business that Visit Wales told them that they were exempt from requiring accreditation. It transpires that Visit Wales decided that tour operators and resellers, you know, those that do not provide anything physical, can list adventure activities and hiking etc. without the requirement for accreditation.
But wait. That is not the case. Visit Wales is allowing, against their own published rules, tour operators to have a listing. And that is when Andrew Lamb sold Wales Outdoors and the new owner, as an operator, not a provider, gained a listing on the Visit Wales platform by ticking the N/A box (see image below).
This is what Visit Wales said:
‘I understand that Wales Outdoors has now been sold and the status of the business has changed which has allowed it to be listed on the Visit Wales website.
The Visit Wales position remains committed to delivering safe and effective adventure industry practice and we expect all tour operators to carry out their own due diligence before sub-contracting.’
This is a screenshot of the question asked of ALL operators and accommodation providers when applying for their listing on the Visit Wales platform:
Do you see the glaring discrepancy? Anyone can set themselves up as an operator and all that is required is an expectation of ‘due diligence’ and even that expectation is outside of the published onboarding rules. Anyone cannot be a professional, that requires training, assessment and a qualification!
For four and a half years Wales Outdoors was discriminated against in the tourism marketplace. Wales Outdoors, despite having a listing, will still not show up in search results for guided hikes as Wales Outdoors is still not allowed to list hikes as part of its provision. This is despite multiple new and old listings on the Visit Wales website that have accommodation, operators and guides being listed as offering hiking.
Support From Tourism Professionals
Andrew was not alone in his struggle with Visit Wales. Andrew received many words of encouragement from senior tourism leaders in Wales and equally agrieved businesses operating within the tourism sector in Wales. You can read their comments HERE.
Support From Within The Welsh Government
One person, Jon Munro, supported Andrew’s aims, if insipidly. You can read his clear statements of concern and frustration as well as his endorsements HERE.
What Is A Professional?
Surely, a professional is someone who has spent time and effort to gain a recognised quality qualification. That is what Wales Outdoors guarantees when we deliver our products. A guide with the appropriate qualification for the service offered.
What Visit Wales is presiding over is a platform that allows the unqualified to offer activities through accommodation providers, tour operators or resellers and also by their listing of providers that according to their own rules they should not.
I ask then what is the point in professional qualifications in Wales if the Welsh Government discriminate so glaringly against those who have invested time, effort and a good deal of cash to gain them?
You can book our walks through the Wales Outdoors Website.
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