As the lockdown begins to ease the Welsh Government must hold back the tourism flood

‘Mynnwn y ddaear yn ôl’ Dywediad yna,rhoid ias lawr y cefn. Oes, angen newid petha i dyfu'r wlad, a ddim suddo o dan dwristiad.Rhaid edrych i greu gwaith drwy'r flwyddyn yn lle y gwaith misol ma.

Dadansoddiad rhesymegol iawn Huw - diolch.

I am worried by putting people into categories. Tourists consist of individuals with different relationships to the place they visit. They used to be called visitors, which implies a relationship of host and guest. I think this is an opportunity to consider our relationship to our guests. We have so much to offer them, and they have so much to offer us. But numbers comes into it. The same people returning to the same place over many years builds relationship, whereas fast and furious tourism turns them into money on legs and for them there is no care or understanding of the host community. The peace and beauty that sinks so deeply in during lockdown, makes us realise a clean world is possible, and also a caring one. So yes lets not go back, lets reframe our future. And build a love and welcome for our guests based on real relationship. If its the cars thats the issue, well that is solvable, with money and vision. But sure, lets stop flying, lets stop the global bulk trade in basics that we can produce at home, lets transform the economy and place the things that matter at its heart. Many tourists in my area are Welsh people forced away to earn a living, this is the home of their heart. Many English people feel the same. This is a relationship to build on. We plan a meeting, zoom, to discuss how to welcome safely, it is a Pembs meeting but please let me know if you can contribute usefully to it. Diolch

Huw, you omitted the fact that Welsh private companies involved in tourism like Coastal Cotages and private Airbnb owners actively pro oted Wales as a lockdown retreat, which is totallycrazy

It is a delicate subject for the English. The UK may well lift restrictions but the Europeans "light touch" even after lifting restrictions is still twice as rigid as ours ever was. They won't open their doors as long as we have a failed testing system and unknown quantities of infected, asymptomatic and carriers. Worst case scenario is that they close the ferries and Chunnel to protect their drivers. If they open up Wales to unrestricted tourism it may well cause much more grief on the other side of England. Mind you, going by recent experience, the governing politicians may well not even consider repercussions since most of them have never been personally responsible for anything in their pampered lives.

Saturation tourism such as Wales suffers has always been unjustifiable because it brings few benefits for Welsh people and causes serious cultural and environmental damage. The writer mentions that many of the workers for the low-paid seasonal jobs have to be imported; he could have added that they're imported by businesses most of which are owned by non-Welsh people and companies. Let's face it, there's something very colonialist about tourism in Wales. That's because it was developed to serve England not Wales. And it's promoted now because it keeps money in the UK, money that eventually makes its way to London. Let's put an end to saturation tourism; let's make tourism both more manageable and more beneficial to Wales. By limiting numbers and imposing a tourism tax to be used for the benefit of the local population in the areas worst afflicted.

The voice of the turtle is of course the choice of the turtle dove- practically extinct in Wales (though I did see a migrant in Eifionydd a couple of years ago), and just about hanging on in south east England. For the turtle to return we should need to adopt much more nature friendly farming practices. The State of Nature in Wales requires it.

Some decent points here from Huw, despite shoehorning his trademark hardcore Remain argument into an issue which has nothing to do with Brexit as such. Nevertheless, who can argue with his central premise that the easing of mass tourism into rural Wales has been a real awakening moment for all of us. One element which has really surfaced I feel in the midst of this unprecedented period of peace and quiet, is the realisation in rural Wales, that we are literally living alongside real treasures in the form of the beauty of our natural environment. To safeguard these treasures, we now need an honest and dispassionate appraisal of the whole tourist industry. I would go even further than that in suggesting that this problem needs to be dealt with in exactly the same way as someone would treat an addiction. Because you could argue that mass tourism in rural Wales has become an addiction for both parties. Welsh people have been the suppliers of the drug(for easy lucre) and visitors have been the buyers of the drug(for easy access). Both parties need to be weaned off the drug gradually. Yes, of course we know of the entitled and insensitive attitude of many visitors, especially during this particular period involving the virus. But, speaking personally, I'm uncomfortable with all the finger pointing at English visitors of late. We need to acknowledge that we as Welsh people have also been complicit in allowing mass tourism to have such a stranglehold over our rural economy. All options should now be considered to treat both the supplier and the buyer. Perhaps a 50 mile travel to stay measure should be introduced for a certain period of time. Perhaps local communities should be empowered by means of local referenda to decide upon how much volume of tourism they want to see each year. Perhaps, even different areas could decide when their 'tourist season' should be allowed, and stagger these so that the whole of rural Wales is not over-run at the same time every year. But if rural Wales is to be successfully weaned off the powerful drug of mass tourism, there must be a pay-off in terms of alternative employment prospects. One option would be for the Welsh Government to move certain departments from Cardiff Bay to strategic parts of rural Wales. These areas will need to be reimagined as year-long meaningful employment zones. Why not go further and designate these areas as 'treasure zones'?Where the environment is forever safeguarded against the perils of mass tourism, hand in hand with an intensive programme of creating new employment prospects for the people living in these areas. The fact that these areas are often the strongest Welsh-speaking parts of Wales can also add value to this 'treasure zone' approach. GWLAD, the new national party of Wales, will be arguing for a wholesale root and branch reform of the Welsh tourist industry at next year's Senedd Elections. Check us out at www.gwlad.org.

We are planning a zoom meeting in Pembs on How to welcome visitors safely. It would be really helpful if someone or a few from here would join the discussion and if possible speak a little at the start of the meeting. This is to bring the factions together to reach shared suggestions if that is possible. People from Pembs tourism will speak a little at the start. This is to be a deliberative democracy event. It is initiated by PCSN, the network of penbs. coronavirus community response coordinators who meet weekly (zoom). We have a large meeting on community food networks on Tuesday if anyone wants to join it to see how it works give me a shout [email protected] We have speakers from NFU, Community supported agriculture, environmental regulation, the Land workers Alliance, Wellbeing economics/ a market garden campaign. They will speak briefly before going into the deliberative break outs.

Yes we need reconciliation not exploitation of the Natural World

We're already wrecking the preciouses things that bring in the tourists... Scenery and space from other people. The proportion of those staying and spending are proportianlly much less than those visitng for a day. With most filling up with fuel and proivisions close to homes, driving over then driving back. Net benefit to e.g. Snowdonia?... B*g**r all... Actually, a loss.