I've Hit The Visit Wales Brick Wall

This email was sent to Visit Wales as a ‘drawing a line under’ message. There is nothing more to do. The castle builders at Visit Wales are unable to work with tourism businesses in Wales in any meaningful way but certainly are able to maintain their salaries with expensive to deliver and manage systems that, ask any tourism provider, offer up no benefit to either the provider or visitor.

Yes, I get bookings from the main channels such as Tripadvisor and Get Your Guide. I've just added loads more products to all of my re-sellers too, including Visit Britain. 

Level 6 is degree level and I'm certainly not going to be in the business of getting a degree level qualification in Health and Safety. Simply overkill. Mountain Training do have a scheme, AdventureMark, but this is a failed scheme. They have no courses planned and as a course is a requisite for accreditation then it appears that Adventuremark is dead in the water. This is what they had to say 'As for the Visit Wales accreditation, I tend to agree.  It’s all about access to “getting listed” and only relevant within Wales,  I doubt it will affect the provision and offer of activities in Wales, accreditation or not. A bit of a barrier for some and irrelevant to others.'

I remain shocked that there has been no movement on this but not surprised. I've outlined a simple method of having unaccredited with Visit Wales but qualified and insured guided walk leaders listed on VisitWales and this is something that VisitWales can do in house, but VisitWales choose not to. 

So I give up. VisitWales is not going to actively promote a wide range of businesses that fall outside of the uber regulated environment that VisitWales has chosen, in contrast to other government tourism bodies. This is shameful and is in opposition to small business development and more importantly to visitor satisfaction.

I wrote to you about Snowdon Mountain Railway, who nearly lost me a group booking of 40 people from Holland over four days of guiding. They are in disarray and remain a must do for many visitors but a very poorly managed business that does not answer phone calls, does not respond to emails and ignores booking requests. You promote them. This is why I think a simple star system is all that is needed. Across the board no more inspections and the cash saved spent on managing a live review system. Let the customer decide, save the taxpayer money and loose some staff along the way. Not a welcome suggestion I'm sure as many need to justify their salaries but one that I see no flaws in, from an outsiders perspective. 

Finally, I have developed a new business and this has a website detailing training and walks that all remain under 2000 ft. Please let me know how I get this business listed on VisitWales as I believe it was not the coastal walks that were the issue (despite my feeling that these have the potential for greater danger) but the mountain walks (for which I remind you, I am qualified to deliver, receive 5 star feedback for and likely deliver more than any other leader in Wales, without incident).

Here is a link to the part of the history in this matter

And here is the email that the above is on response to:

Hi Andy,

Good to hear from you. I’m good … and looking forward to the proper arrival of spring (and the flying season!).

So big question is … are you getting any bookings from those channels and if so which ones are performing better?

I am still trying to push the engagement with the industry and whilst I have not got commitment to a specific meeting with the guided walking sector yet I have got some support for more pro-active engagement with the sector. I’ll keep chipping away at it. One thing that came up is around the Mountain Training Association – which I think administer the Mountain Leader Award? Isn’t there a way of getting accreditation at a certain level (maybe level 6?) that could then mean you can self-certify with the Wales scheme.