MUCH has been written, and said, about Shropshire Council’s recent decision to cut its tourism team.
Shropshire Tourism was founded over 20 years ago - the last time there were massive cuts by local authorities in their support for tourism. Since then, Shropshire Tourism continues to market and promote Shropshire and the surrounding area as a visitor destination just as it was established to do.
The only thing that has changed is that Shropshire Tourism does this without public sector money and is funded by the private sector businesses that ultimately benefit from the visitor spend in the county.
While we have always valued the support we and the tourism industry have had from the council’s tourism team, we now provide a whole raft of support services which include business and marketing advice, website and IT services, inspections and grading assessments, as well as professional tourism advice and expertise.
This too is all provided by the funding we receive from the private sector. In many cases our advice and support is provided free and where we do charge, as a not-for-profit company, we try and keep the costs down to a minimum.
We believe that Shropshire Tourism is the only countywide destination marketing body to be wholly self-funded; a model for other destinations for the future perhaps?
SIMON McCLOY
Chief executive, Shropshire Tourism (UK) Ltd
St Julian's Friars, Shrewsbury