Cylchgronau Cymru

A View of Welsh Tourism By D MORGAN REES Now that the glorious party is over we ought to stop and take a good, long hard look at ourselves. This long dream of a fme summer must surely mean that the Welsh Tourist Industry has had a bumper year. Nineteen fifty-eight was of course the year with Welsh Tourism having a turnover of approximately £ 49 million. But then there was the big attraction of the Empire Games and the Festival of Wales. Wales was making a big concerted effort to bring the crowds in. In 1958, too, for the first time, Wales achieved parity with Scotland, attracting 10 per cent. of British holiday-makers. Will she be so successful this year? But the interesting fact is that out of a total of four million visitors in 1958 only 150,000 came from overseas. Therefore Welsh Tourism depends vitally on home support. But I have a horrible feeling that few of us in Wales really appreciated the value of our tourist industry. Do we, for example, realise that Welsh Tourism in earning power ranks third after the Welsh steel and coal industries? As a whole the Welsh take the visitors to Wales in the summer for granted. We accept without a murmur the fact that 60 per cent of them go to North Wales and only a mere 18 per cent come South. But why should places like Rhyl, Colwyn Bay, Llandudno and Prestatyn continue unchallenged to have the lion's share of tourist prosperity? We are not taking our tourists seriously. Obviously the Welsh Tourist and Holidays Board is being very earnest about it all, spending large sums persuading Americans that Welsh women skip around in funny hats with harps clutched to their red-flannel-encased bosoms. But overseas visitors seem to go only to the well-trodden tourist haunts, to gape in awe at Snowdon, to get caught up in the queue of charabancs in Llanberis, to suffocate in the commercialised quaintness of the International Eisteddfod at Llangollen, when all the rest of Wales' beauty is left undiscovered-the glory of the Brecon Beacons, the Carmarthen Vans, the Border Country, the Pembrokeshire Coast.