It's A Win For Tourism In Wales, Of Sorts...

The Wales Outdoors campaign to have the Welsh Government see sense and administer Visit Wales as a fair platform, with fit for purpose protocols and inclusion of the experiences that tourists to Wales want to book, has succeeded. Visit Wales has agreed to clean up their website, once and for all, and to implement protocols that will achieve all that Wales Outdoors has been asking for. Many questions however remain, the most pressing being why we had to work so hard to achieve this sensible outcome. This is our email to Dawn Bowden MS drawing a line under the matter, for the time being…

Email to Dawn Bowden MS’s representative:

I'm sorry, but you appear to be misinformed on these matters and your response is, although as expected, disappointing. 

Your standard reply regarding sustainability and quality assurance is, from my perspective, meaningless. For example, Wales Outdoors is a multi award winning 5 star feedback across all platforms provider and Wales Outdoors is not allowed access to the Visit Wales website. What you are implying is that those who do not choose to be accredited by Visit Wales but who are delivering activities within UK law and with qualified leaders are somehow 'lesser'. That is patently wrong and indeed is insulting to all of the businesses made up of Mountain Leaders and Blue Badge Guides who, for whatever reason, choose not to go through another level of bureaucratic box ticking oversight. Your systems were so poorly managed that in 2021 you wanted me to go for accreditation and at that time be inspected by a business owner who was listed on the Visit Wales website but was labelled as waiting for inspection!

Kevin Brennan MP asked many questions on my behalf, none of which have been answered by Dawn Bowden in any response. Is that usual? He did not ask was I the only provider querying the Visit Wales approach, that was clearly included in Dawn’s response, and incorrectly so, by the direct intervention and on the advice of Visit Wales staff, in order to belittle the thrust of my claims as conveyed to Kevin. 

The FOI detailed some discussions with a couple of providers and with WOTGA. 

The discussion with WOTGA was not successfully resolved, as you infer, but rather WOTGA simply gave up on the issue, finding negotiation with the Welsh Government on this matter both lengthy and intractable. WOTGA represents over 70 guides all of whom could fall foul of the 30 minutes from the vehicle rule, which is specific to Wales and the Welsh Government, goes far beyond UK law, and is in place because of the vested interests of those who manage WATO.

Yes, I met with Steffan and Heledd and it was agreed that Visit Wales had been incorrectly listing very many businesses over very many years, to the detriment of my business, and that they would continue to remove legitimate tourism businesses from the Visit Wales platform. This has been the cause of my complaint against the Welsh Government, that staff were not listening to me or taking appropriate action when clearly I was right in my assertions, as indicated by Welsh Government internal communications. I now expect the Visit Wales platform to be free of any business, both in listings and copy, that does not comply with Visit Wales rules, rules that apply solely to Welsh Government platforms and to no other tourism portals, either government, local authority or private, throughout the whole of the UK. 

Despite this acceptance of mismanagement, the excuse being that there are many pages on the Visit Wales website and that protocols could be tighter, I received no apology for the considerable effort in time and resources I have had to put into this matter, to force the Welsh Governments hand and to have this government department act professionally. 

Furthermore, there was a stated agreement, proposed by Steffan, that Visit Wales work on introducing a two tier approach, so a label for those experience providers that are accredited clearly showing they have been through the process and a label for those that have not, clearly showing that they are not accredited by the Welsh Government. 

I regard this approach as urgent and that this ought to be implemented as soon as is reasonably possible, as there are no providers offering bookable guided walks on the Visit Wales website. Searching for 'guided walk' returns 4 relevant businesses, One is a pilgrimage business, two are adventure activities and just one is specifically a walking business. None offer a programme of walks and all require group bookings. 

I believe there are hundreds of legitimate guiding businesses in Wales. Non inclusion of these businesses shows that the current accreditation system is not fit for purpose, as does the removal of numerous legitimate Welsh businesses. I have been saying exactly this since 2020, to deaf ears, until now. Please also remember that I've been asking for a level playing field since 2006! I've often had acceptance from Visit Wales management since then that they need to 'up their game' but that acceptance has never resulted in acceptable outcomes. I do hope this time round things will be different. 

I will be checking back in with Visit Wales in six months time and I really do hope we will not have to go through this process again. I reiterate, I expect all non accredited businesses to have been removed from the Visit Wales website and good progress to have been made, preferably implemented, with regard to the two tier approach. 

Please feel free to forward to both Steffan and Heledd.