- In my questionnaire I will ask whether the locals are employed and whether their jobs are to do with tourism.
- I will also investigate further into how seasonal the employment is (whether most people only have jobs in the summer months and not in the winter)
- Buildings have been refurbished
- Lots of new shops and businesses have been opened
- I will also ask about the amount of new shops and businesses that have been opened or are going to be opened in the near future in my questionnaire.
- Tourism brings lots of traffic to the area
- I will do a survey of the amount of passing cars.
- I will ask in my questionnaire, to which extent locals are bothered by the traffic.
- I will observe the shops and services in Conway and see whether they are high order or low order.
- I will see if they match the needs of the locals or if they are geared at tourists and sell nothing of use to residents.
- I will include this topic in my questionnaire and whether they feel that their needs are being ignored.
- I will observe the ways in which locals may suffer from tourists
- I will look to see whether there is any graffiti on the walls and if the town has any vandalism.
- We also asked at the police station what impacts tourism had on the town and whether they had an influence on the amount of litter, graffiti and crime in Conway
- I will ask about this topic in my questionnaire. I would like to find out whether residents suffer from tourists in nightclubs or pubs in the evenings.
- I will try and find out the local’s opinion on school groups
- I will do this by asking in my questionnaire and by analysing the way locals react to us, when we are in Conway collection our data.
- I will also ask about the levels of unemployment in my questionnaire and research them on the Internet when I return.
- I will observe whether places are derelict and if so, consider why.
- I took photographs of such places and will discuss them later in this paper.
How can tourism be best managed in the future?
- To answer this question, I will have to analyse how tourism is being managed at the moment. To do this;
- I will observe the amount of parking space, tourist facilities and attractions and shops.
- I will observe the attitude of the locals towards different visitors.
- I will make sketches and take photographs of the appearance of shops, café’s and restaurants.
- I will map the different shops in Conway
- Once back from the trip, I will research ways tourism is being managed in other similar towns.
- Using this information, I will compare and contrast the ways of managing tourism and perhaps find a few suggestions for future improvements.
How important is tourism in Conway?
First I have to define the word ‘important’. The word can be interpreted in several ways. Tourism is responsible for bringing many jobs to towns. Jobs, in turn bring money. Conway is an area of amazing landscapes ranging from extensive sandy beaches and headlands to sheltered valleys, open moors and craggy mountains. Unsurprisingly, its economy relies heavily upon tourism. Agriculture and forestry account for jobs and money in the more rural areas of Conway County Borough. Industrial employment is limited and mainly situated by the coast, but what there is, is renowned for manufacturing and research concerns. Tourism has become one of the most important growth sectors of the United Kingdom’s economy. It is responsible for almost 9% of all jobs in Wales and brings in over £1.3 billion each year. The whole of the North Wales Coast is a major tourist area, attracting millions of visitors annually. Because of this, the local economy has starting depending upon tourism in order to earn its livelihood. Many of the jobs are seasonal but tourism does help to create permanent jobs, if indirectly in the service trades. There is much more demand for various products so manufacturing industries have benefited too. There are improved transport links. But consequently, expectations from tourists have risen, contributing to a higher demand for new and improved facilities. As a result of high tourism, employment rates in Conway are high compared to the rest of Wales.
15.7% of jobs in Conway are Tourism – related, which is a very high percentage compared to the 8.1% in both the rest of Wales and the UK. But ‘distribution, hotels and restaurants’ is a category which is also indirectly related to tourism which employs a surprising 36.6% in Conway compared to only 23.5% and 24.7% in the rest of Wales and the UK (see above table). Despite Conway’s extensive employment in tourist related sectors, they are poorly paid (see graph below) and there are still considerable levels of unemployment, but nevertheless, most of the jobs in Conway are tourist related. This proves that tourism is important to Conway’s economy. Conway has a high density of elderly people, this could influence economy, as they often either are incapable of working or are retired and don’t want to work. This creates less demand for jobs.
Many of the shops in Conway are targeted at tourists, while in Conway I constructed a map of the shops along the High Street. See below:
As we can see from the above, a fair number of shops are directed at tourists or both tourists and locals. This is only a map of the shops on the High Street and there were many similar shops on adjacent streets. Conway Castle dominates the town, its walls towering over the narrow streets and imposing its presence over all who walk there, confirming the fact that it is a tourist town and influencing the life of all its inhabitants.
Tourism alters the natural and built environment of a town significantly. Conway is acclaimed for the Castle and the Town Walls, which are the most well known tourist attraction the town offers, but Conway also offers much more for tourists to see such as Plas Mawr (the Elizabethan town house labelled on the street map above), Aberconwy House (the oldest merchant's town house in Wales, and the only remaining one in Conway itself which can also be seen above), The smallest house in Britain (a tiny red house which can be seen when approaching Conway from the direction of the quay) and the lovely St Mary's Church, located just off Castle Street. But Conway’s tourist attractions do not stop there, it also has another claim to fame, Conway mussels. Conway mussels have been harvested by family businesses for years in the Conway estuary, and mussels are still gathered in the traditional way, however on a smaller scale. There is also another, yet lesser-known by-product of Conway’s mussel industry: Pearls. Conway Mussel Museum offers tourists stories ranging from the history of pearl fishing, dating back to the Romans; to who’s crown held a Conway pearl.
As we can see, tourist attractions dominate the town and account for a good deal of Conway’s income. This further goes to show just how important tourism is to Conway. It is not only restored historic buildings and museums that show Conway is a tourist town, there are many signposts dotted around the town. There are double yellow lines along at least one side of most streets and the Castle hotel and the car park opposite take up a fair amount of space along the High Street.
Conway Marina is another major tourist attraction. It was opened in 1992 and contains 500 moorings and 300 fully serviced berths. It is a very good tourist attraction as people are attracted to Conway all year round if they have a boat moored there.
When asked in our questionnaire, most tourists said that they had come on fairly short-term visits (less than a week). 13 out of 20 tourists told us they had come to look at the castle, 13 out of 20 tourists said that they had been to Conway before and 19 out of 20 said that they would return to Conway. This shows that tourists like Conway if they have or want to return to see more.
When asked, most locals said that they lived in Conway town itself and had chosen to live there mainly because of family. Only one person told us they came to Conway because of a job. This shows that Conway isn’t really very attractive to people looking for long-time accommodation as most jobs are indeed geared at tourism. The town therefore presents jobseekers little variety and not very promising wages. 10 out of 12 people told us that they believed there was a lack of high paying jobs in Conway and 11 out of 12 confirmed that there were fewer jobs in the winter when there was less tourism. I constructed the above graph from the data we collected in one of our questions from our questionnaire. As we can clearly see, Conway Castle is still regarded as the main tourist attraction in the town.
It is also interesting to consider what Conway would be like without tourism. There would be hardly any shops; the town would be much dirtier and not as well maintained. There would be no marina and the castle would have probably fallen into a derelict state. Transport services would be awful and it would be much harder for locals to get around if they didn’t have a car. Without the influence of tourism, Conway would probably be quite empty and lonely. I would have thought that without the town being looked after and maintained by the council to make it attractive for tourists, there would be higher crime rates. There would certainly be fewer shops in Conway, as Conway has a considerably larger amount of shops than a settlement of such size requires. This is well reflected in the ‘table of population numbers and number of shops/services in selected settlements in North Wales’ shown on the next page.
more important on the larger scale of things. Good education could help lead Conway into different areas of employment and therefore better wages and more money. But of course tourism also has its advantages and brings benefits to Conway. This leads me onto the next question.
What problems and benefits does tourism bring to Conway?
As does everything, tourism comes with various problems and benefits. To answer this question I will explore the various problems and benefits of tourism and how they reflect upon Conway.
As I have confirmed in question one, Conway is very dependant on tourism, much more so than Cambridge for example, where there is a much wider range of jobs in different employment sectors. Tourism in Cambridge adds £334million to the local economy and employs over 6,500 people directly and another 2,000 in businesses that support the tourism trade. Which adds up to 10% of the workforce working in tourism related sectors. The other 90%, however, work in education, or the high-tech industry in the many business parks and science parks. There is much mere scope for change and variety in tourist towns such as Cambridge. Tourism brings in a fair lot of money, however much of Cambridge’s economy is supported by other areas of employment and therefore Cambridge thrives all year round. Conway, on the other hand completely depends upon tourism. This is partly because it is the only industry a town like Conway can make money on. It used to thrive with its mussel industry, but now demand has died down and the harvesting of mussels is only continued on a very small scale and doesn’t bring any considerable money in. The only other source of income in the surrounding area is agriculture, which is poorly paid and the fact that the surrounding land is mountainous and unfertile and will therefore yield no good crops does not make it the most enticing alternative.
Since 1985, tourism-related employment has increased by nearly 70% while total employment in general across all sectors has risen by less than 20%. Over the last five years tourism-related employment has risen by 9% across Great Britain.
Employment having grown in all tourism-related sectors, the greatest increase has been in cafes and restaurants. The graph below shows the main sectors of tourism-related industries, and the numbers of people they employed in June 2003 throughout Great Britain.
This comes a good advantage to Conway, as it is very dependant on tourism, the rise in tourism has created scope for many more jobs.
Old buildings in Conway wave been repaired and conserved to be turned into museums. E.g., Aberconwy house or the Elizabethan townhouse, both located down the High Street. But other buildings are in the process of renovation too. If tourists constantly visit a town it must be kept in the best condition possible. And in order to do this, various shops and buildings have to be renovated to improve their appearance and make them more attractive to visitors. While in Conway I took a couple of pictures to depict the fact that renovations and alterations are taking place.
In Conway, an obvious effort has been made to make the town look as attractive as possible, baskets of flowers have been hung up on the houses along the High Street and other busy streets and even planted in the car
park on the High Street. This makes a good impression and has succeeded in making Conway look very welcoming. Not only does this attract more tourists to Conway, but it also creates more jobs. Because of buildings being renovated there is demand for builders, architects, lorry drivers etc. However, on the downside, not all locals may like endless renovations and building works. There are many elderly people living in Conway, who very possibly chose to love there because of the countryside and the peace and quiet. They may find it upsetting and irritating to constantly see or hear the builders at work. Even if they are not disturbed by the renovations, locals may not like the way Conway is starting to look, as it is geared at the tourists and not at the locals. In considering every need of the tourists, locals can often be overlooked. When doing the street map of the High Street, I noticed that there are very few shops selling basic necessities for locals. There were many shops geared at tourists selling souvenirs, which are of absolutely no use to locals. On first impression, there are virtually no shops for locals; but on closer inspection, the majority are actually for locals. This impression is created because there are is an estate agents, a solicitors, a ‘camera club’ a ‘community art’ shop, a job centre, a couple of charity shops Etc. These shops and services cannot be classified as tourist shops, but they do not take care of the locals’ basic amenities either. There were no food shops and no clothes shops. There was a ‘Woolworths’, however that was as far as the locals’ needs were catered for (at least along the High Street). I have constructed a graph to show how many shops were geared at locals on the High Street, keeping in mind hat most of the shops geared at locals do not actually provide for every day amenities.
A new Tesco store has been built on the other side of the bridge, but that isn’t enough to buy everything you need. But I don’t think most people would like to do all their food and clothes shopping at Tesco’s. There is also the issue that even if there are shops and facilities fitting for the locals’ needs, they would still be relying on tourists for a fair deal of their business and the prices may be too high for locals to afford.
From the results of my questionnaire, I have constructed the above graph. We can see that even the tourists said that the shops weren’t cheap, so it is highly likely that the locals are inconvenienced because of the high prices.
It is never cheap to renovate a building and some shop owners cannot afford to do so. Hence, a couple of shops down the High Street were run down. One shop had a shattered window and flaking paintwork and another was boarded up.
However, in Conway this also has its downside. There may not be enough people to take the jobs. If we look at the population pyramid again, we can see that there are many more elderly residents in Conway than there are in other tourist towns such as Cambridge. Of course in Cambridge we see a lot of people in the 20 –24 and 25 – 29 age categories because of all the students. But Conway has a considerable lack of people of that age category. This could come as a disadvantage because it is people in their twenties and thirties that are more prepared to take on not very well paid jobs such as those in tourism. The elderly, of whom there is a high population density in Conway lot of, are not so good for Conway’s economy, as most cannot work.
Tourism can also affect the appearance of a town in a negative way. Often tourists don’t even realise, but in visiting somewhere they are causing more pollution. Just the exhausts of the transport they arrive on is polluting Conway. Often litter is left lying around. In Conway, however this seems well maintained. We made notes of the amount of pollution in three different locations:
As can be seen from my gathered data, Lancaster square is busier than both the harbour and the High Street, however it is no dirties. Lancaster square was, in fact very attractive and was also popular among the locals, many of whom chose to sit on the benches while eating lunch. We learnt that rubbish is collected at 6:30 am, which is good because the town is clean from early in the morning. Seven out of ten locals told us that they believed there was more graffiti and litter during the peak tourist season.
Traffic problems, however, cannot be resolved as easily. A local told us that the A55 was built ten years ago to prevent from Conway being used as a thoroughfare. He told us that in the past people were forced to sit in a traffic jam for up to two hours just to get through Conway. The building of the road did help reduce traffic problems. A tunnel was also recently built, connecting the town with the coach park, which also helped with traffic problems. The walls of the tunnel have even been decorated to make it look more attractive.
All the locals we asked but one told us that it is hard to find parking spaces in Conway, especially during the summer when there is peak tourism. This is another problem about tourism in Conway, tourists almost seem to take over the town, leaving no parking spaces for locals and causing them to wait in endless traffic jams.
Conway seems to have a good transport system, with regular busses and trains, but there is not timetable shown on most bus stops. The bus stops however are very pretty.
Theoretically, tourism should have benefited Conway’s transport system. But locals, however, say that busses only come every hour and it is often quicker to walk than wait for a bus. If the transport services were better, perhaps people wouldn’t have so much need for cars and that would reduce the congestion. But at the moment, it is a problem. Below is a graph of how locals get to work each morning. As we can see, they always either walk or drive, this proves that the public transport cannot possibly be ideal.
While in Conway, we went into the police station and asked about crime rates, where we were told that tourists do bring in higher crime levels, but the locals aren’t really affected.
Conway is a very peaceful and clean town, and attracts many school parties. Most locals don’t mind too much, but this may get irritating, as students ask questions and mile around, often dropping litter or disturbing locals.
Tourism should also bring Conway more leisure facilities, perhaps it has, but currently there aren’t very many. There is a small Cinema and we saw a bingo room, but when questioned, several locals said that they would like to have a swimming pool. In comparison to Cambridge, Conway’s leisure facilities are very meagre. Though Conway is, of course smaller than Cambridge, tourism should eventually bring it more leisure facilities. This is inconvenient for younger people who like to have fun. There are no nightclubs or anything, therefore young people may start drinking in the streets or doing drugs, as a result of not having any other way of entertaining themselves.
Conway makes most of its money from tourism and tourism has, no doubt brought with it a higher standard of living. This may not only be due to the money. Because of tourism, there are many more restaurants and café’s than would be expected in a town the size of Conway, which can be enjoyed, by both tourists and locals.
But this, in turn can easily lead to higher house prices, which it has done in the past years.
The house prices look fairly cheap compared to those we are used to in Cambridge, but it is important to remember that houses in Cambridge cost a lot of money and those working there earn a lot more too.
For Wales, however these prices are very expensive. To confirm my point I have drawn up a graph comparing house prices in Conway to those in various other regions of Wales:
The next graph I have inserted shows the rise in property prices in Conway since 1995.
There are positive and negative points about rising house prices. On one hand, if people are planning on selling their house and moving, they will make more money than they expected on it. However, for prospective buyers this situation is not so good. It may be hard to find an affordable house where they want, which could demand a difficult compromise on their part.
As we can see from what I have written for this question, there are good and bad side effects of tourism. It is interesting to consider how some of the negative points could be improved, which I will discuss in the following and final question.
How can tourism be best managed in the future?
To answer this question, I will begin with analysing how tourism is being managed in the present and then move onto how these methods can be improved.
As I have mentioned earlier, parking is a considerable problem. Locals complain about not being able to find parking spaces. No doubt tourists also find it hard to park. While in Conway, the only car park I saw was the one on the High Street, which belonged to the Castle Hotel and therefore was only for the use of those staying in the hotel. According to my map, there is also one by the castle, but it is fairly small. The situation could be improved by building more car parks around the town or perhaps even just on the outskirts. This could potentially encourage more people to visit, because if someone is driving past and thinks it looks interesting they might want to stop by and have a look at the town and castle. But if they cant see anywhere to leave their car, unless they are there with the intention of visiting Conway, they may just drive past, thinking it’s not worth having to search for a parking space somewhere.
There are quite a lot of tourist shops, in which I don’t think Conway is lacking. But some of the shops along the High Street, I noticed were shabby and run-down and one was even boarded up. In future, I think that it would benefit Conwy if they closed these shops down, or helped the owners financially to renovate their stores. This would further improve the appearance of Conwy.
When asked what they didn’t like about Conway in our questionnaire, the only concern tourists expressed was about the toilets. The public toilets were indeed awful. We visited the ones by the harbour. They were filthy and dark. There were only two public toilets in the whole of the town, which is not very good. We came across the following signs at the library:
I believe it would be a wise decision to renovate the toilets, and perhaps build some more. I think this would make the responses of tourists about Conway even more positive.
The library in Conway was very primitive, there were very few books and on entry it was extremely empty. There were whole rooms to walk through with absolutely nothing in them. It wouldn’t really benefit tourists directly, ass they are unlikely to take books out of the local library, but it would be wise to add more books to the library in future, as this too would create a better image and would certainly benefit the locals.
Several locals expressed their desire to have a local swimming pool. Conway has virtually no leisure facilities for locals or for tourists. If a swimming pool or a bowling alley were to be built it would benefit both the tourists and locals. Furthermore, this would create something for young people to do rather than finding often-unethical ways to amuse themselves. This could, in turn, perhaps reduce crime levels in Conway.
While in Conway, I saw a few restaurants but no café’s. However, there was a tearoom, which fit in very well with Conway’s image and atmosphere. Generally, successful and popular tourist towns have lots of small café’s and plenty of restaurants, giving tourists a good choice of where to eat. Potentially some of the run down or closed shops could be converted into café’s.
Conway doesn’t have many attractions. Its castle, however serves as a magnet, attracting tourists from all over the place to this small town. The castle is indeed beautiful and visitors are always interested to go round it on a tour, or just walk along the castle walls, from where they can look over the town and the stunning surrounding countryside.
The castle is well advertised, while in Conway I picked up several leaflets referring to it:
However, the success of the castle as an attraction could be greatly increased. In France, for example, many castles try to find new and original ways of attracting visitors to them.
Just this summer, I went to a castle in Auvergne (France) called the ‘Chateaux Murol’. It was built in the 12th century, on a basaltic rock and a descendant of the lords of Murol, added to it by finishing the interior fortress, building the keep, and a couple adjoining buildings. It resisted many various attacks, until the peace returned and the owner grew bored of it and built a beautiful house at the foot of the hill on which the castle was built.
The castle is now a communal property and during summer this strong castle is used for re-enactments of 13th century life.
On entry to the castle visitors are invited to watch a play where knights will have tournament, entertaining the audience with sword fighting skills and jokes throughout the show.
Tourists then have the option to be led round the castle, in every room of which stand its inhabitants, dressed in medieval costume and telling the visitors all about their lives. Ladies in beautiful dresses describe the wonderful banquets they have attended and minstrels entertain you with songs. This is all done with many jokes and including the children present, asking them questions or getting them to act out a part.
I didn’t understand much, as they were speaking in rapid French, but I was very impressed and enjoyed it very much. Conway Castle is only slightly younger than Chateaux Murol and I think if Conway did something similar at the Castle, it would attract even more tourists and make experience much more interesting for many.
By acting out a play or at least dressing in 13th Century dress, Conway castle could easily gain more publicity. At the moment the castle attracts mainly adults, interested in seeing the view from the castle walls or learning the history behind the castle. But by making the tours more interactive, children will also be much more interested.
Various castles over the UK host medieval Christmas banquets, where guests are served medieval food and are provided medieval costumes, from which they can choose what to wear. Guests are invited to participate in activities such as acting out amusing sketches from the 13th Century. If Conway were to host something like this, it would bring more money in and in the long run, perhaps would attract more visitors in general to Conway, as guests at the banquet may wish to come again to look at the town.
Another option would be to hold fireworks at the castle at Christmas. A castle is always an amazing backdrop for fireworks and this would certainly attract prospective visitors.
There are many different options of how to make the castle more interesting and attract more visitors and I certainly think it would be a wise decision for Conway to make an effort to hold events at its castle.
Advertisement is very important to tourism, and it would be a good idea to make a website about Conway Castle, telling about its history and presenting information about opening hours.
It would also be a good idea to make more leaflets advertising other attractions in Conway, such as the ‘Mussel Museum’ or the ‘smallest house in Britain’. Conway even has a ‘Teapot Museum’, which could perhaps be better advertised, it is no often you come across a teapot museum and tourists may be interested to have a look. Apparently, Conway’s teapot museum is the foremost in Britain! Currently, all there is to advertise it is a banner on the fence outside it on Castle Street.
For Halloween in Cambridge, punt tours are being held, where visitors can punt along the river Cam past the many colleges and listen to tales of frightening events. Tourists will be provided with a warming glass of mulled wine or hot chocolate. A spooky walk will follow this, leading tourists to places where ghostly sightings have been reported in the past.
Cambridge is a very successful tourist town and something of this nature could be easily done in Conway, it would be just as effective with it’s gritty castle and narrow winding streets and would attract visitors different to those who would come to see the picturesque views or learn the history of mussels.
As you can see, there are many possible ways of improving Conway’s economy and attracting more tourists. It is up to Conway’s residents and its County Council to bring these changes about.
Conclusion
I would have liked to have had some more time in Conway to gather more information. If I had had the chance, I would have liked to ask some of the children and younger people their views on tourism in Conway and what facilities they thought it lacked and how they would like to see it improved. This could have given me more ideas on how Conway could be improved as a town and attract more tourists.