Tourism is seen as turning local culture into a global commodity for the dilettante globe-trotter on a package or a selfish car-boundday tripper. Even the associated employment is seen as insubstantial compared with ‘real’ jobs. ‘Sustainable tourism’ is often seen as a contradiction in terms.

Yet almost every local authority wants a larger share of this dubious industry and, when asked, a large majority of local residents will usually claim to be in favour of more tourism. Every local authority has an obligation, and most the desire, to adopt locally the principles of the Rio Conference on Development and the Environment - Agenda 21, jargonised in English as ‘sustainable development’ where development (economic growth) is pursued subject to constraints to protect the interests offuture generations.

How can tourism be part of such a benign growth? We had a chance to examine the paradox in Chepstow in South Wales and later, working with the Walled Towns Friendship Circle and EC funding, inConwy, North Wales, Naarden in the Netherlands and Alcudia in Mallorca.* These four small towns are host to over a million day and overnight visitors a year. Each plans increased numbers or at least increased revenue; the studies examined how such increases, wanted for their revenue and employment, could be made compatible with NOT degrading the social and physical environment. That is to ask whether tourism could become more sustainable.

Walled towns concentrate the issues apparent in all historic towns and cities, which were generally defined by their fortffications and customs walls until the industrial revolution, even in England but predominantly in the rest of Europe, including Wales. Onagrand scale Chester, Canterbury and York attract and absorb visitors by the million but small towns may have comparable ratios of visitors to population. Conwy’s half million visitors to 10,000 residents is not dissimilar to Chester’s 5 million to 100,000 residents.

‘Bruce, D. M.: Tourism in walled towns’, Tour ism Management, 1994. 15. (3), pp. 228-230.

SUSTAINABLE

TOURISM IN

CHEPSTOW

AND CONWY

David Bruce discusses two Welsh case studies

Other small historic walled towns may feel actually missed out as bypasses remove incidental visits, as in Chepstow (130,000 visitors to 11,000 residents).

The fourtowns compared inthe study funded by the European Commission fall into both categories. ConwyandAlcudia (Mallorca) are both on the doorstep of mass tourism and are heavily visited; Chepstow and Naarden (outside Amsterdam) are both apparently ‘under- visited’. This note focuses on the contrasting experiences of thetwo Welsh towns, while taking note of the lessons from the other two towns.

Chepstow is a former river port sheltering beside a vast Norman Castle, withatowngate and thePortwall defining the medieval town. Guarding the entry to South Wales, the Wye Valley, and the Forest of Dean, it has been repeatedly bypassedbygreatfeats ofcivil engineering

- Brunel s railway bridge and the Severn Tunnel, the Severn/Wye toll road bridge, a further ‘relief road Wye bridge and (under construction) the Second Severn Crossing.

Conwy is the strategic key to North Wales and Snowdonia with UNESCO World Heritage status for its Edward I castle and encompassing walls. Finally bypassed in 1992 at enormous, if environment-friendly expense by a toll-free tunnel under the Conwy estuary, it lies at the edge of the traditional North Wales resort area stretching from Llandudno, with its

20,000 bedspaces, eastwards.

The Wales Tourist Board LEAD (local enterprise and development) initiative from 1989 to 1994 investedpublic money and aimed to stimulate private investment in upgrading both Chepstow and Conwy and ‘restoring’ tourism after the removal of trunk road traffic from each town centre. Project Conwy was set up for three years to 1994 as a team reporting to a local authority and a Wales national steering group to manage the implementation of a 1988 tourism plan by Lmduse Consultants.

AstudybyUWE, Bristol to report later this year to Monmouth Borough Council has aimed to assess the impact of LEAD in Chepstow. The study has established an appraisal method which recognises the primary Government economic objective of enhandng revenue and associated employment from tourism but which sets additional Success Criteria. These address the ‘sustainability’ of the outcome. With European funding (DGXXIII - the Tourism Unit) in 1993, the necessaryparallel studies were carried out in Conwy as well as Naarden and Alcudia. Tourists, residents and businesses were surveyed and performance indicators identified. This triangle of success criteria, studies and performance indicators provides the basis for ‘benchmarking’ and thereby measuring change over time. In Chepstow this can be done over the five yearperiod; in Conwy, some comparison with the data from the earlier tourism study has been possible and in Alcudia and Naarden the basis for later comparison has been achieved.

Chepstow’s success criteria, derived from the results of public consultation and discussion with local authority officers, proved broadly applicable to the other towns. A successful tourism growth policy is recognised if it is achieved, for instance:

El without road traffic growth and associated carbon emissions per day per visitor;

El without upsetting the townspeople;

- without more pedestrian danger;

El without damaging the historic town

CONTEXT 46

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