After a flurry of correspondence detailing all of the businesses offering the same provision as Wales Outdoors that Visit Wales is platforming whilst they continue to disallow the same platform to WALESOUTDOORS.CO.UK - WALKING TOUR OPERATOR OF THE YEAR, despite Wales Outdoors being platformed by Visit Britain, the UK Government tourism portal, and able to be platformed by Visit Cardiff and the other local authority run tourism websites, being the face of the National Lotteries Days Out Campaign for Wales and receiving Five Star feedback for delivery of our guided walks in Wales, Wales Outdoors offered to have a meeting on 1st September 2023. This offer was not replied to.
Wales Outdoors then made an appointment to meet with Visit Wales managers for 1pm Monday 11th September. This was unresponded to. Today Andrew Lamb, the Wales Outdoors owner attended the Welsh Government offices as he said he would and the staff at Visit Wales hid in their offices, refusing to engage with him.
Heledd Owen said that there was no one working at Visit Wales today. Jon Munro received a telegram message from Andrew Lamb at 13.04 and that message is pictured here.
Key staff at Visit Wales have been off all summer. Visit Wales had seven days notice of Andrew’s proposed meeting. Wales Outdoors are calling out Visit Wales staff as liars and cowards as they will be attempting to mitigate this crisis of their own making rather than meet and engage and seek solutions.
Directly after leaving the Welsh Government offices Andrew fortuitously bumped into Vaughan Gething, the Minister for the Economy of Wales, and Andrew took the opportunity to doorstep Vaughan and update him on the matters relating to the Wales Outdoors dispute with Visit Wales. Vaughan said he would speak with Dawn Bowden, the Deputy Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, and would have her respond to Andrew’s MP, Kevin Brennan, who kindly agreed to write to Dawn on Andrew’s behalf in an attempt to get some resolution and indeed fair play at Visit Wales.
These are the most recent Wales Outdoors blog posts regarding this dispute. A full timeline of Visit Wales’ broken promises will be published in due course.
Welsh Government Staff Are Cowards