A recent exchange I had with a Welsh local authority highlighted a problem that has existed in Welsh tourism for decades. It isn’t a lack of enthusiasm or commitment from tourism officers. Quite the opposite. Most work incredibly hard with limited budgets. The problem is that many local authorities are still operating with a tourism marketing model that belongs in the early 2000s.
The internet has changed. Traveller behaviour has changed. Booking habits have changed. Yet much of destination marketing in Wales has not.
The traditional local authority approach is simple. Build an attractive destination website, inspire visitors with beautiful photography, provide a directory of local businesses and then send visitors away to individual business websites to enquire or book. This is still regarded as success.
It isn’t.
Every click away from a destination website introduces friction. Every new website loads differently, has different navigation, different booking systems, different branding and often no online booking at all. The visitor has to start their research again, compare options, hunt for availability and frequently ends up abandoning the process altogether.
The irony is that the biggest winners from this fragmented approach are not Welsh businesses. They are the Online Travel Agencies.
Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia and Viator have spent years solving the problem that destination organisations continue to create. They provide live availability, instant booking, itinerary planning, trusted reviews and one seamless customer journey. They keep visitors inside one ecosystem from inspiration through to payment.
Many Welsh destination websites still do exactly the opposite.
One response to Tour Wales summed up the misunderstanding perfectly. The local authority tourism officer explained that they deliberately direct visitors away from their website because they want businesses to “retain 100% of the revenue” and avoid intermediary commissions.
It sounds sensible.
Unfortunately, it misunderstands where the customer journey breaks down.
Directing visitors to business websites is not the same as creating direct bookings. Every additional click loses potential customers. Every inconsistent website creates uncertainty. Every missing booking engine encourages visitors to search elsewhere.
Visitors do not think in terms of council boundaries.
They do not visit “Neath Port Talbot.” They visit Waterfall Country, the Brecon Beacons, Gower, South Wales or Wales itself. They combine accommodation, attractions, restaurants, walks and events into a single holiday. Expecting them to jump between dozens of disconnected local authority websites and hundreds of independent business websites simply reflects how organisations are structured, not how people travel.
Modern tourism platforms, such as our innovative and wholly unique Tour Wales are built around complete visitor journeys.
A traveller wants to search for available accommodation, discover nearby attractions, find somewhere to eat, book an activity and build an itinerary without leaving the platform. If that booking can still be made directly with the operator, then everybody wins. The visitor enjoys a seamless experience while the business retains ownership of the customer relationship.
Join The Wales Tourism Community
This is not the same as becoming dependent on an Online Travel Agency.
There is a significant difference between a direct booking platform and a reseller. Modern technology allows bookings to flow directly to the operator using their own booking system or through shared national infrastructure such as TXGB, while still providing visitors with a unified search and booking experience.
That distinction is often misunderstood.
Another issue is how success is measured.
Many destination organisations celebrate website traffic, page views and visitor numbers. These are useful metrics, but they are not the ultimate objective. Tourism marketing should be measured by economic impact.
How many direct bookings were generated?
How much visitor spend remained within Wales?
How many businesses increased occupancy?
How many visitors stayed longer because planning became easier?
These are the numbers that matter.
Local authorities often argue that they have very limited budgets, and that is absolutely true. But limited budgets make it even more important to invest in technology that improves conversion rather than simply generating more clicks.
Perhaps the greatest missed opportunity is collaboration.
Every Welsh local authority has its own tourism website. Every authority maintains its own listings, produces similar content, updates events, promotes accommodation and competes for search rankings. The duplication of effort is enormous.
Imagine instead if Wales had a genuinely connected visitor platform where every authority, every tourism association and every business contributed to the same ecosystem. Local branding could remain, but visitors would experience Wales as one destination rather than twenty-two disconnected ones.
That is how modern destination marketing works elsewhere.
The future of Welsh tourism is unlikely to be another attractive directory website. We already have hundreds of those.
The future lies in reducing friction, simplifying visitor journeys, supporting direct bookings and giving visitors a reason to stay within a single Welsh ecosystem rather than drifting towards global booking platforms.
The question is no longer whether Welsh tourism should evolve.
The question is whether local authorities will recognise that tourism marketing is no longer about sending people to websites.
It is about helping them complete the journey.
You can book our walks and tours through the Wales Outdoors Website.
Your support is what allows these articles to keep being created and is enormously appreciated. Thank you.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.