Andy Lamb Deserves A Fulsome Apology From Management At Visit Wales
It’s not as big a deal as the Great Post Office Trial, but… Listening to the BBC podcast in May of 2020 was enlightening. You’d have though it would have been enlightening to our politicians as well… Nope… ITV drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office airs for the first time in 2024 and all hell breaks loose with the police looking to gain convictions and politicians finally reacting as they should have done in 2015 when the issue was discussed by a select committee. Why mention the Post Office, well, despite known wrongdoing, in our supposedly democratic and fair society, it takes a wave of outrage following national publicity for justice to be served.
Andrew Lamb has been campaigning for fair play within the Welsh Government, and with regard to Visit Wales in particular, for five years and more… And Andy deserves an apology from Welsh Government politicians, from WATO, from the chair of the South East Wales Regional Tourism Forum, and from those in the tourism and adventure activity industry who actively worked against Andy and this positive outcome for Mountain Leaders and Welsh Tourism.
For five years Wales Outdoors has been asserting that Visit Wales, for reasons known only to themselves, as they refuse to explain, has been presiding over their online tourism portal to Wales, Visit Wales, with discrimination and, indeed, malfeasance at its heart. But they were up against perhaps the most successful disruptor in activity tourism that Wales has ever seen. You know that phrase ‘dog with a bone’? That’s Andrew Lamb, that is…
And so 2025 is off to a great start! The review that Andy forced the Welsh Government to undertake, through being diligent and dogged, by expending hundreds of hours of his time and hundreds of thousands of pounds of Welsh Government cash, as Visit Wales defended their absurd position from the get go, has been published. And guess what? Almost everything that Andy was claiming and demanding has been agreed!
The review has found the following:
That the Visit Wales onboarding protocols are the most onerous in the UK resulting in constraints and limitations.
20 responses from database of 20,000 shows just how much Visit Wales and the Welsh Government are valued by the adventure tourism industry.
Discrepencies in Visit Wales website content was admitted.
Poor uptake of the existing scheme was admitted.
The review then goes on to recommend that qualified Mountain Leaders who are members of Mountain Training should be able to add their details to the Visit Wales website, albeit subject to a little jiggery pokery with the management of Mountain Training.
The review also mentions better management of the content of the Visit Wales platform.
Effectively, everyhting that Andy was claiming and demanding has been agreed.
It only took five years, one court action, a meeting with Mark Drakeford, a meeting with Vaughan Gething, huge amounts of ministerial time and even more office time by numerous Visit Wales and Welsh Government staff.
One Complaint/Question Remains…
A qualified professional who is a provider, someone who offers guided walks in Wales, will still have to jump through a few hoops to gain a listing on the Visit Wales platform but an operator can list at any time. And as far as Visit Wales are saying now, they have always been able to. This is not true as until September 2023 Andy was being informed that anyone offering adventure activities or guided walks would be required to have an accreditation. Andy will continue to pursue this matter as why should a re-seller be able to list on Visit Wales without any assurances but until the implementation of the recommendations of the review a qualified provider is not able to list their products? To date no one at Visit Wales has explained why their position on this, which is in direct conflict with Visit Wales onboarding rules, changed in September 2023.
We believe this shows great disrespect to all of the outdoor professionals working in Wales and was ludicrously exampled by Andy selling Wales Outdoors for £1 to his wife and Visit Wales then onboarding Wales Outdoors, after refusing Andy the same for four and a half years!
And The Waffle..
And there is much waffle and Welsh Government and Visit Wales self-aggrandising… But I’ll pick out one paragraph to demonstrate the nonsense, nonsense which will obviously continue to thrive at the heart of a slow-to-act and overburdened by hubris Visit Wales…
‘activity providers Visit Wales works with share these values, raising the bar in terms of the standards of safety and good practices they deliver’
Adventure Tours UK are a Visit Wales preferred partner. They registered as an agent, delivering a range of mountain sports. As an agent they cannot also be a provider, as that would fall wholly outside of the Visit Wales onboarding rules.
A short search found that the director for Adventure Tours UK, Claire Louise Copeman is not registered with Mountain Training.
Claire is clearly delivering some aspects of the courses and holidays she sells. Read the reviews on Google and Trustpilot where Claire responds to each review, many of which include her as a guide. This makes Adventure Tours UK a provider, not a reseller.
How is it Adventure Tours UK are a preferred partner with Visit Wales and Wales Outdoors under the ownership of Andrew Lamb was denied a listing? They both deliver guided walks to clients.
The worst of this is that Andrew Lamb is a qualified mountain professional of thirty years and Claire has no mountain qualifications.
So, are Visit Wales raising the bar of ‘standards of safety and good practices’ or are Visit Wales discriminating against some whilst enabling and benefitting their friends?
This dive into Adventure Tours UK is worth shouting about a little louder so likely we’ll be writing up a full blog post detailing what we have found.
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