Emmets wouldn't be such a pain if you could actually see tangible benefits to them coming.
From how I see it, they clog up the roads so you cant get out to enjoy the fab place that Cornwall is (and when the kids are on holidays you dont want to sit at home hostage to trafic queues do you?). You cant park at the beaches unless you get there crazily early, and then usually you have to pay well over the odds because car park owners are making a buck while they can. However emmets can provide amusement watching them when you're crammed onto the beach like sardines.
I worked in the tourist industry for several years, before being heartily sick of the winter unemployment, appalling hours, and hoteliers and the like being run on such a shoestring that they think they own you because they pay you a pittance. Actually, even the 'posh' places payed pants because they could get away with it.
I've noticed in Newquay that a lot of the people working in tourism seem to be from out of county, and go home over the winter, so its not even about local jobs.
Then there's the fruitcakes that think that Cornwall is such a lovely place that they buy a little of it for thier two weeks a year ... and perhaps a couple of weekends.
There is a tangible benefit for having emmets in Cornwall in your rant about them joanie.
Car park operators are making a mint on the premium they make parking. (Granted it isn't *much* of a benefit unless you are a car park operator, but I am sure that car park operators love them.)
Many of our pubs can only stay open all year round 'cos of the cash they build up from trippers during the season. Having decent pubs to go to is 'tangible' for me.
I agree to an extent, though....... Does Cornwall as a whole get ENOUGH benefit from the tourism trade to make up for the summer disruption?
If you have business interests that benefit from tourism then the answer is probably yes.
If you are an ordinary local trying to go about your everyday life such as getting to work, going shopping (where's all the bread gone?), getting an appointment at the doctors, queueing at the post office etc etc then I'd say the answer would be a very firm NO.
Hmm... that's a very narrow view. Although you don't immediately see it in your pocket unless you work in the tourist trade (and at least 1 in 5 local people do), their money does float around the local economy, and get passed on. Local business would be doing even less well, just because there would be less money *about*.
Plus, you'd have far less pubs and restaurants and things like that - certainly less independent ones. Bear in mind the actual population here is very small, and very spread out. In most parts of the UK, a similar head of population would support maybe the number of pubs and restaurants in Penzance. Elsewhere, very few towns of, say, 20,000 people have more than, say, two (bad) restaurants and three (chain) pubs (at the most). It would be naive to say that we're different to that for any reason than the tourists. In fact, we're *poorer* than elsewhere, so would probably support *fewer* such establishments.
The same really applies to any kind of leisure facility.
I would say the issue isn't whether or not to attract tourists, but which tourists to attract. Some will spend more and be less hassle than others.
(I've got to say I'm confused by this thread, though. I've always thought that Emmets aren't tourists but incomers like me... Or doesn't it matter? Foreign is foreign I suppose?! )
Amongst all the mud slinging and anti English rants in this thread the following gem has been ignored.
Wales advertises like crazy in the USA but most of the people of Cornish descent I know in the USA have no idea how to get home, what its like, where to stay or anything.
I think Emmet Guy's got the right idea. Already, South Hams District Council in D*v*n is trying to promote themselves as an up-market tourist area, so you don't get all the oiks coming down from the north and midlands with their kiss me quick hats, knotted hankies over their heads, rolled up trousers and so forth.
The idea is that you get a better class of tourist, although less visitors because the area's so upmarket and expensive it puts the lower classes off.
It's really exciting. All you have to do is encourage people to open expensive eating places where baked beans on toast cost £4.50 a throw, or marinas where they can park their yachts, or, I don't know, some big environmental attraction which will appeal to the 'green' tourism market, or.....
it would be a good thing to consider would be the different types of tourism, like environmental tourism and cultural tourism, rather then the "I’m gonna drink ten pints of lager and throw up on your beach tourism.
although i have to say that the "up-market" tourists haven't exactly done any favours to Rock and Polzeath where this summer the only aparent difference seems to have been drinking ten pints of pimms instead.
'"up-market" tourists haven't exactly done any favours to Rock and Polzeath ' - same when I was young, which was when dinosaurs rulled the earth. Rock must've been nice once, but I doubt there are any who remember that still alive.
Whilst obviously some local people do benefit from tourism the overall benefit is nowhere near what people would like to think.
We too are suffering from globalisation as big operators realise they can make money out of everything owing to economy of scale. Now even local government is trying to get in on the act. A huge amount of money spent down here goes to national companies. Supermarkets mainly, but a lot of larger or more upmarket hotels are owned by big companies.
Also the tourism industry now actively seeks foreign workers as a) they can, b) they are cheaper and c) yes, they are better than our ill educated, lazy yute!
I do make some money out of tourism but at the end of the day I think most of Cornwall suffers theough tourism and is in no way compensated. The importance of tourism to Cornwall is also grossly exaggerated
Half a jug of Pimms, a few tins of lager and a bike ride later, I was in A&E having gravel picked out of my face and my chin being sewn back together. Cracking night that was.
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