WTB boss wins support for holiday abroad
Tourism bosses have hit back after the head of the Wales Tourist Board (WTB) was attacked for taking a three-week holiday in Spain.
WTB chief executive John French was slammed by hoteliers and attraction owners for taking a break in Marbella while the Welsh tourist industry suffered one of its worst seasons.
But other UK tourist chiefs have defended French's decision. "Everyone has the right to decide where they go on holiday without being put under pressure," said Tim Bartlett, chief executive of the English Tourist Board.
He added: "I tend to take my main holiday in England, although this year I took a short break on the Sussex coast and my main holiday in Mexico."
Chris Collier, chief executive of the Cumbria Tourist Board, said she had taken three short holidays in the county this year. "But it's a heck of a cheek having a go at the WTB people. Our private lives are our own and we all give a lot to this industry. I had a week in Zimbabwe this January, and rightly so. It's disgraceful that people think they should be able to dictate where people should go."
A WTB spokeswoman said: "We are all entitled to take our holidays wherever we like. If everybody in the WTB stayed at home for all of their holidays, we would end up with a tourist board that was very inward-looking and have no idea what our competition was doing."
But Jim Moore, chairman of operators' group Brecon Beacons Tourism and co-proprietor of the eight-bedroom Maes-Y-Gwernen hotel, insisted French should have stayed in Wales.
"He left at a very bad time when people are really suffering. A lot of people are complaining and he wasn't here to answer those complaints."
Moore said business was down by 25-30%, partly because of the poor summer but also because the WTB had failed to improve Wales' poor image.
The attack on French's holiday arrangements follows mounting criticism of the WTB over the summer, which included a tongue-in-cheek appeal by hoteliers to be represented by the Irish Tourist Board instead (Caterer, 6 August, page 12). French was now on "extended leave", said the WTB spokeswoman.
By David Shrimpton
