The system driving the database for the Visit Wales websites is no longer up to scratch. It’s simply not capable of delivering what we need for our websites to remain effective. Following a formal tendering process and in full consultation with the Wales Tourism Alliance, Guestlink Cymru have been awarded a contract to manage the Visit Wales tourism database. Guestlink Cymru is a consortium headed by New Vision Group and which includes North Wales Tourism and Mid Wales Tourism.

This week the Assembly announced another £22m on a “targeted clean-up campaign” for the Valleys.

With another 38 million spent on disaster areas in the North, that’s a total of £60m of silk purse creation out of a sheep’s ear. Yet the Assembly cannot guarantee that the expenditure will create a single job! The geniuses down in Cardiff docks merely hope that this tarting up will make these areas more attractive to tourists. This is optimism of a kind that makes a child putting a lost milk tooth under its pillow look like a ruthless investor.

Visit Wales (formerly the Wales Tourist Board) has already scored a number of silly own goals with the fiasco surrounding its website (exposed on this site – see above) being but the latest.

VisitWales.com, the ‘official’ online showpiece for Welsh Tourism, is officially a failure. The parrot is dead. That was the message and admission loud and clear from a consultative meeting of Visit Wales… Read the rest