Finding a solution to tackling overtourism in Wales
Dewi Heald
Three years ago when the Queen died, I found myself in north Wales with my partner looking for something to do on the day of the Queen’s funeral. We knew everything would be shut in all the towns and so we drove up to Aber Falls for a day out. We got as far as the car park a mile from the falls, where a scene of chaos confronted us – cars parked at all angles, angry people shouting at cars blocking their path and no-one going anywhere. We turned around (with some difficulty) and drove elsewhere.
This week I went back to finally see the magnificent waterfalls just over a mile from that car park. I had learned my lesson and went by bus and was pleasantly surprised to find that even on a Sunday, a half hourly service runs to nearby Abergwyngregyn from Llandudno and Bangor and it is a short walk to the car park from there.
Once again, the car park was a scene of chaos, blockage, angry people and no order. It is a scene that I have observed at beauty spots across north Wales. Supporters of the Tourist Tax will say that it will help fund improvements to infrastructure in the area, opponents of the Tourist Tax will say that it will stop so many tourists coming to the area. Both miss the point that the problem is not just overtourism, it is how tourists are getting about.
Criticising car drivers in the UK is always a risky business. Whether it is a dislike of cyclists or speed limits, motorists are a powerful lobby and their right to park is asserted everywhere they go. The result is the chaos we have seen with people parking on roads around Yr Wyddfa / Snowdon in the north or on the A470 around Pen-y-Fan in the south. However, rather than building bigger car parks, why do we not try having fewer cars?
Opponents of a Tourist Tax say that it will reduce the number of tourists because of the financial disincentive to travel to Wales. Yet, we have tried using money to change overtourism in Wales already. You can see it in evidence at Aber Falls. If you do manage to find somewhere to park in the official car park, then you have to pay £5. If you park in the village of Abergwyngregyn a mile away, you can find free parking spaces. For comparison, my bus ticket from Bangor cost £5.30 and covered all the journeys I made that day. The point though is that the financial disincentive to use the closer car park is clearly not working.
As I found out on the Sunday of my visit, there is good and frequent public transport available. How do we encourage people to use it? The first suggestion would be more awareness – when I left Bangor the next day, my heart sank when I heard two American tourists asking at the hotel reception how to get to Aber Falls and being told how to drive there. We need to normalise using other ways to get about if we want to stop our villages, towns and roads becoming car bottlenecks every summer.
Car drivers will always ask about disabled, elderly or unfit people, but this is not the majority of car users. I would always suggest free and available car parking for all in those groups and, if social prescribing of exercise does increase in Wales, I would recommend anyone with a prescription for exercise should have also have reserved parking. However, the question is that if the problem is not too many tourists but how they move about, how we change this?
Allow me to suggest something unpopular, but perhaps workable. I would put an entry barrier at the entrance to the car park for Aber Falls. Those with blue badge disabilities or elderly or infirm would have parking allocated to them inside. For everyone else, they would have to book a space online in advance of their visit. This would be their allocated space for a specific period of time and if they took up more space or exceeded their time limit, they would be fined.
This system would ensure that those determined to park would still have access to it, others could park a mile away in Abergwyngregyn and, who knows, spend money in the small businesses there too. Best of all though would be that as this system became well-known, people would be more likely to look into the public transport alternatives.
I don’t believe this will ever happen. There are too many vested interests lobbying for motorists and little appetite for admitting that cars are as much the trouble in north Wales as the number of people visiting our beauty spots. Using Tourist Tax revenues for things like building bigger car parks seems to be the preferred solution but ask yourself this – if there are still chaotic scenes all day in the car park for Aber Falls, is that really a solution that’s working?
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How much would it cost to reinstate a small station on the line which passes right by? Too much common sense for idiots in charge. Also, no Welsh business worth its salt should have shut for the funeral of a foreign monarch. I very doubt many actually did.
Lands End is a horrendous tourist trap, not even the southern most point of the British Isles and the scenery is nothing special. But they charge £5 to park for two hours and then £10.99 for the essential selfie next to a fake road sign. For Snowdon people still park alongside a road and enjoy an amazing day in the most stunning scenery in the British Isles, but do not pay a single penny. Not only would it be a huge income generator for the area, but making people pay will also drive away the worst of the chav society… Read more »
The answer is more attractions. Twice as many means each is half as busy. Spread it out.
fair point, building a new waterfall at Llandudno junction would alleviate pressures at Abergwyngregan and offer better accessibility for people travelling from the north west
It’s about opening them up and marketing them. The reason so many queue to climb the mountain is that so many think that’s the only thing to do in Wales.
At least it keeps them in one place, so we can go to other areas where there is hardly anyone to be seen.
That’s great if you’re a retiree on a guaranteed income.
Anyone can get on a bus with their tent, to walk and camp in the hills, as I do, or just cut out the bus and walk – nearly everywhere in Cymru is within walking distance of the countryside. Are you talking about Saga holidays, because otherwise your comment makes no sense.
The only people that don’t want to see any visitors at all in an area are those who have no need for the income, or any regard for the local community.
I don’t know what axe you are grinding but you have apparently failed to understand my point. If tourism is concentrated in a few areas that means other places are less crowded, so rather than go up Yr Wyddfa I prefer to climb Cader Idris, or some other peak less well known, like the Berwyns. It will not affect the total number of visitors or the money they spend, so again your point makes no sense.
You are blinded by your self-interest.
More attractions means more visitors and higher spending visitors.
Because one mountain can be done in a day trip fueled by sandwiches meaning no money is actually spent in the local economy. And a queue for the mountain puts people off visiting the only attraction they know about. So numbers and spend are both harmed by the status quo.
Promoting less well known areas means visitors will come for longer, stay overnight and spend money in local businesses.
What self interest? I can make little sense of your argument, but you seem to be wanting an increased number of tourists in all areas. So would you be happy with more traffic congestion in more areas, and more erosion of mountain paths? How do you know people will stay longer in other areas, or stay overnight? Why should they, when they can get to anywhere in Cymru and back in a day from England? And if someone arrives at Pen-y-Pass to find the car park full, then they might give up their plan of climbing the mountain, but they… Read more »
You could also bulldoze Yr Wyddfa out of the way and make a huge massive carpark.
From the north west, you say? I live in the north west, and this wouldn’t help much. What? If you mean north west England (a.k.a. south west UK) could you be more specific? Thank you for your attention to this MATTER.
Canadas national parks in Alberta are closely managed. Campsites are state owned, reasonably priced, sellout fast when bookings open on a set date and the sites have no shops etc. Lake Louise has limited parking closeby, but a major car park near major road network and buses – need to be prebooked in summer. Change will happen if organisations such as Transport for Wales (TfW) increases revenue. Hopefully their new booking App can over-time be expanded to cover buses connecting to the train network so a user in say Wrexham can travel toBodnant Gardens by public transport and buy one… Read more »
You can buy a ‘plus bus ticket’ already which includes bus travel. You’re right – it would be nice to have a booking feature where you can buy a ticket from say Chester to Nefyn, which includes a ticket on the bus onwards from bangor and Caernarfon. The concern from the railway companies is if it’s late at night, and for example, the train is delayed and you miss the last bus connection. They would then need to pay for you to take a taxi from Bangor to Nefyn. It would be very expensive for them for about £5 extra… Read more »
Better management starts with a source of revenue.
https://parks.canada.ca/voyage-travel/admission
There are still beaches and parts of Eryri that are quiet. I went for a walk about a mile or two from Aber falls a few weeks ago and didn’t see a soul for 2 hours. Car park was empty also. As long as the tourists don’t veer off the beaten track, there are still plenty of ice locations around Ynys Mon and Eryri which are relaxing if you have a little local knowledge.
So far!
The answer is simple, but also very difficult – decolonize Wales. Tourism by and large is an extractive economy in Wales, run primarily for the benefit of England. If it was so great as some of its proponents make out, then why is Wales so poor?. Tourism has rightly been described in Hawaii, and also in Wales as a type of sugar ‘good for the tongue but bad for the teeth’.
The Republic of Ireland was decolonised and they get huge numbers of tourists, but it’s being a neoliberal borderline tax haven that makes them money. Tourism doesn’t even make money for England either, that’s why places like the West Country and Lake District are poor, but like Wales their tourists are from the rest of the UK. It’s the places that get overseas tourists that make the money for GDP, basically the big cities. I thought maybe the removal of the name Snowdon might have had some influence to reduce numbers, but visitors probably just call it “Yer Widdfer” and… Read more »
Annual income to Cymru from tourism- 15 billion ( 2015) figures.
And now you can tell us where you found the surveys that show the number of foreign versus British tourists in Cymru, because it sounds like you made that up. When I lived in Aberystwyth I met many foreign tourists, and I see lots of foriegn car number plates everywhere I go. However, unlike you I don’t think personal experience means anything statistically, so I repeat, where do your “facts” come from?
The National Park Authority have been good at attracting people.
But no good at managing or controlling them.!
Totally agree!
It’s an all Wales problem. The main car parks on the Brecon Beacons overflow too. Usuallly day trippers, local and Bristol. There was a bus on Sundays from Bridgend to the Brecon Beacons timed for walkers which allowed one not to take a car but that service vanished. It never had much publicity. Lack of marketing for infrequent bus users is a key problem.
You also can’t rely on them, and so people are put off. Its one thing if your bus into town is cancelled, but quite another if you’re stranded in the hills!
We don’t have many job sectors that actually increase here in Wales, so trying to hinder one of the biggest(here in sir Gwynedd at least) is just plain crackers. Tourism taxes aren’t just difficult to enforce, they are short sighted solutions to long term challenges.
How does managing something better become “hindering”? Nothing else in life works best under the laissez-faire model. Try leaving your garden alone for a decade.
Having just returned from a camping holiday in rural Wales, I can confidently say that none of that holiday would have happened without use of a car. From simply getting the tent and family to the campsite, to visiting local attractions (I did check public transport, it said a 5.5hr journey and not until the day after Vs a 30 mins drive at our convenience). Are you really advocating the tourist £ is spent elsewhere??
Car brained people will expect there to be ample parking at a beauty spot and will keep making that argument until the spot is no longer beautiful because the car park spoils it and no one wants to go there any more. In the US they literally kept knocking down buildings to make car journeys and car parking easier until there were no shops to go to and the downtown area just became a ghost town with no shops or people (or cars). We should remember this when anyone says free parking will save a Welsh town centre, it won’t,… Read more »
I visited Oregon last summer, they have an advanced booking system for many of the natural wonders there. You register your car on line and on the day you enter via a control gate with ANPR.. Not registered, you don’t get in. The number of places are limited each day. We need something similar in NW. I actually feel sorry for the visitors, imagine driving 4 or 5 hours only to find that there is nowhere to park. Controlled numbers is a win win for everyone.. Not simply taxes and higher parking charges.
Yes, we need to manage visits, not just increase them. If you had to book it would spread out the visitors.
Put up prices that will deter tourists from coming to Cymru. That will sort the problem. Had a long weekend at Loch Awe and stopped beside a lochside eatery on the way to Glencoe a sandwich cost £15.
The price of a sandwich doesn’t affect the number of visitors, it affects the number of visitors who buy a sandwich.
They will not come back if they think they are being ripped off.
They will come back with their own sandwiches.
Correct! They come for the scenery, not the sandwiches! Especially in Scotland, no one goes there for the food 😄
People get very confused about prices. They should be set according to demand. If you have queues out the door they are too cheap. If you are empty most of the time they are too expensive. The Goldilocks pricing means you are busy most of the time but rarely is anyone turned away.
So are you advocating dynamic pricing for a village cafe or pub?Queues out of the door could equally mean that the product on sale is highly desirable and that word has got around. If empty that could simply mean that no-one wants it; in short, quality is just as important as price in deciding a sale. People are not at all confused about prices, but maybe you are.
I might start with ‘Car Brain’ a lot of people wont consider using the bus.
If we are to have a Tourist Tax though why not set it higher and include a bus ticket?
This makes sense for a national park entry fee that includes a complimentary shuttle bus but not a surcharge on a hotel in a seaside village with no bus service.
Thinking about it a bit more………..
Yes it all costs I know