Councillors in Tenby have reiterated the importance of tourism to the resort and county, after meeting with Pembrokeshire’s head of regeneration.

Martin White, the county council’s head of regeneration, along with the authority’s tourism marketing and development manager, Alan Turner, met with members of Tenby Town Council ahead of their meeting on Tuesday night.

Mr. Turner gave a presentation to councillors, focusing on ‘Promoting Pembrokeshire’ activity, through printed and online media coverage, and the Visitpembrokeshire.com website.

“In the first full year of operation (from April 2014), the website attracted 694,385 visitors who viewed 2.3 million web pages. In the 12 months up to the end of September 2016, the number of sessions reached 861,721, so it’s on track to reach its target audience of one million by 2017,” explained Mr. Turner, stating that the hard work of the Destination Pembrokeshire Partnership, which includes Pembrokeshire County Council’s tourism team, Pembrokeshire Tourism, PLANED and the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, had played a significant role in generating growth in the tourism industry for the county.

He said that the focus of 2017 would be on a Pembrokeshire ‘Year of Legends’ with a grant of £40,000 awarded by Visit Wales to undertake this project.

With the county council recently conducting a series of consultation meetings across the county, looking at alternative ways that leisure, culture and tourism services are delivered across Pembrokeshire, with unprecedented budget reductions to take place over the next few years, Mr. White told councillors that the authority were duty bound to explore other options, with establishing a charitable trust, one model being looked at.

“We’re looking at alternative ways, but if they’re not there, then we won’t do it, but we owe it to ourselves to explore all options, and we want a robust analysis to find out if this plan is viable,” remarked Mr. White.

Clr. Mike Evans said that it was unfair of the authority to say that tourism was costing the county council in referring to budget cuts, when numerous properties in Tenby and full car parks devised invaluable income for PCC.

“PCC makes more money back from tourism than it puts in, and Pembrokeshire would be a poorer place without the value that tourism brings to the county,” he remarked.

“There is no business anywhere close to tourism for Pembrokeshire, ” continued Clr. Evans, stating that when the town council recently studied the consultation documents produced by PCC on alternative ways that services could be delivered, members were concerned that they weren’t signing up to a way of PCC ‘washing its hands’ of tourism.

“What you’ve achieved over the past five years for the growth of tourism in Pembrokeshire is tremendous, so we were worried that if the service was to be passed over to a social enterprise to look after, we were struggling to see how it will fit out of the hands of PCC, ” continued Clr. Evans.

Mr. White reassured councillors that wasn’t the case, and that PCC were simply going through a process of identifying an imaginative way to maintain the service.

The Mayor, Clr. Laurence Blackhall, said that tourism was “absolutely essential” for the resort, with his colleague Clr. Dr. Peter Easy adding that if “Tenby didn’t have tourism, it wouldn’t be here!”

“We pay higher council tax, charges for parking and public toilets etc, in Tenby, yet we find that the first cuts to services are always here in our town,” stated Clr. Paul Rapi.

“PCC can’t keep raping Tenby of all its cash and then spend it elsewhere in the county, the people of Tenby won’t stand for it,” he added.