Enterprise and Business Committee
Evidence from Under the Thatch – TOU 04
I believe you're
currently undertaking a tourism review and looking for suggestions
etc. I'm the director of Under the Thatch http://www.underthethatch.co.uk
- one of the self-catering agencies in Wales, with around 100 Welsh
properties. We're not the largest company but we do bring
£millions into the Welsh economy every year. I'm always
happy to contribute to discussions about tourism in Wales, and have
13 years experience in the sector.
We're the only agency that currently gets no support from the
current structures, either central or regional (or county) because
we refuse to play what I consider to be the 'accreditation game'
(where self-catering property owners have to pay annually or
bi-annually to receive a star grading). I've never been satisfied
with the grading system or its cost, and prefer to do our own,
saving our clients money, and refusing the 'kick-back' within the
system that the other agencies keep. This means, however that we
never get support and PR, which I've always felt was unfair.
We're fortunate that we have the most unusual selection of niche
self-catering in Wales so we tend to get more publicity anyway than
any other Welsh tourism provider (eg last weekend aone in the
travel press we had photo features in the Times, Daily Mail and
Observer travel sections). But with support from VisitWales, the
local authorities and the regional tourism support we could do so
much better. We've a few properties in England and Scotland and the
difference in support is amazing - eg Discover (or is it Visit?)
Somerset were tweeting us all over the place last week when we
launched a new property there, and we hadn't even contacted them.
They weren't calling us first to demand their £120 fee for
grading before helping us promote the place.
So, it's a small
part of the big picture, but my submission is to end the system
that means only the companies that pay into the (in my opinion
deeply flawed) star grading system get the support for PR
etc.
with best wishes, and feel free to get in touch at any time
Greg Stevenson
http://www.underthethatch.co.uk