Bath may be a World Heritage city but it’s going to be turning its attention away from the global and more towards the home market – once the pandemic is behind us – and will be doing all it can to make people stay in the area for longer too.
I’ve been talking – via Zoom – with the B&NES cabinet member who has responsibility for heritage, culture and tourism – Cllr Paul Crossley.
He told me that, in a post-viral world, there will be a lot of people who won’t want to get into a plane and that we will be facing competition from all the other UK tourist cities – like York and Oxford – to persuade both British and European holidaymakers to come here.
Not only that but to get our hotels and B & B’s get back into profit, people will have to be encouraged to stay over too.
Bath’s unique attractions – both Roman and Georgian – have traditionally helped swell its annual coffers. Add the financial benefits of tourism to the income generated from property holdings and car parking, and B&NES pockets £35 million pounds a year.
I asked Cllr Crossley how hard they’d been hit by the shutdown created by the current crisis.
Whether Bath’s reputation as a major destination for Hen and Stag parties will also be dented in future remains to be seen, but while hotels and B & B’s struggle to survive, many will say its time B&NES pressed the government for new powers to stop the spread of ‘party houses’ and give them powers to better control them.
Local author, historian and publisher Kirsten Elliott was quick to respond to this interview.
She tells me her husband – writer and historian Andrew Swift – suggested: “We should be encouraging what he calls Slow Tourism. That is, encouraging people to stay here and have a holiday with Bath as a base.
And here’s another idea. We often go to Railholiday, and stay at the old carriages at St Germans Station. They offer a discount to people who arrive by train.
Perhaps this could be considered, or some sort of tourist voucher to those who come by train.
At the moment we haven’t really thought this through properly, but it seems to me that, by promoting this form of tourism, Bath could be ahead of the game, and go back to being the trendsetter it was in the 18th century.
We’ve all seen how reducing tourism in Venice has had a startling effect on the ecology – could this be done here?”
Excellent interview with Cllr Crossley. I shall send it to my colleagues in the Jumelages ( Twinning Association ) in Aix en Provence where I know they are also dealing with issues of encouraging tourists to return to Aix . It may be that we can learn from each other — we can certainly learn from the excellent pedestrianisation of the centre of Aix and the introduction of electric mini buses — like tuk tuks but more sohisticated !
Hon Ald Marian McNeir MBE
Chairman of the Bath – Aix TA
The re-think promised would have been more than timely even without the dire consequences of the Covid-19 mess. The risk with looking at the domestic UK market, however, is that it will simply increase the low-rent, day-trip trade, which will mean yet more gift shops, fast-food outlets, Hen Parties, anti-social behaviour, litter and, doubtless – heaven forfend – an even larger and longer Christmas Market.
But Bath is not Venice. Does the town really have sufficient Roman and Georgian attractions to warrant a stay longer much longer than a two-day weekend? On this basis, the number of hotel developments we’ve seen in recent years might prove to have been unrealistic and unduly optimistic.
Promoting Bath chiefly as an upscale centre for a week-long explorations of Somerset and West Wiltshire might be the way forward.