The family decided to stay in the resort of Cemaes Bay, a small old fishing harbour. This pretty coved shaped harbour was the main port of Anglesey’s north coast before the growth of the nearby Amlwch harbour and was the centre for fishing, shipbuilding and smuggling. Cemaes has retained its charm as an attractive village and is grouped around a small harbour and breakwater which now shields fishing and pleasure boats at their moorings. The main attraction of the bay is its two sandy beaches, Traeth Mawr, known as the big beach and Traeth Bach known as the little beach and both have been awarded the renowned in June 2004. Cemaes bay is also set in beautiful countryside and is part of the Heritage Coast and is council-designated conservation area.
Cemaes Bay local residents relay on work from farming, tourism and at the nearby nuclear power station, Wylfa and the recent threat to the future of Wylfa has aroused fierce controversy in the village.
Although Cemaes Bay has a relatively small population, it does however offer a range of tourist accommodation from Hotels, Guest Houses and B & B, Self catering and a camp site. Within the village of Cemaes Bay there are no specific restaurants apart from two pubs, a fish and chip shop and several shops included a post office, bank, chemists, newsagents, greengrocer and general stores and during peak holiday season the village can become busy and overcrowded and roads congested with the car-parks surrounding the two beaches becoming full.
Cemaes Bay tends to attract families who want to participate in water sports and couples who are over 30 and like walking, bird watching, fishing and golf. All of these types of tourists are well accepted within the local community and many local residents relay on their business during holiday season.
Cemaes Bay [on line]
Anglesey Local Council [on line]
- Planning the holiday
The family decided to opt for self-catering accommodation as it offers them more flexibility for both catering provisions and also it will enable them to participate in their chosen activities, when and where they choose.
The family looked at various self catering agents including the biggest agent in the UK, English Country Cottage, however the smaller local agent of Menai Holiday Cottages was favored as they felt they offered more local knowledge and expertise in local activities and facilities.
The self catering property they chose offered a kitchen which contained a cooker, refrigerator, electric kettle, toaster, microwave, washing machine and dryer, iron and ironing board and sufficient crockery, cutlery, saucepans and utensils. There was a lounge with TV and DVD and also a separate dining area.
The house had four bedrooms one double, and two single and all bed linen was provided, however personal towels and tea towels had to be hired at an extra cost. The house was set back from the village and offered car parking and storage for the Wright’s boat.
Electricity, gas and oil would be paid for by meter readings and there was additional charge for coal or logs.
Menai Holiday Cottages [on line]
The family plan to travel to Anglesey by car in their four-wheel Isuzu Rodeo and tow their small motorboat which they plan to use during their holiday. The drive would take 2 ½ hours and would take them first on the M56 and then on the A55 coast road through Conway, bypassing Bangor and then over the Menai Bridge to Anglesey.
This report is going to access the agent tour operators environmental polices, define the impacts that the family are likely to have on the destination and resort and access the impacts on the local social, economical and environmental aspects with a discussion on these impacts, giving solutions and suggestions.
- Service provider
- The Agent / Tour Operator Environmental Policies
Mania Straits Cottage agency do not have an environmental policy or offer any advice to the tourist that would help minimize impacts of their visit on the local environment. Although they claim to work closely with the Welsh Tourist Board to ensure that a high standards of self catering accommodation are maintained. All the properties in their brochure are inspected by the Wales Tourist Board’s inspectors and given a quality grading from one to Five Stars.
Booking the holiday involved completing a booking form which issued certain terms and conditions which covers payments, deposits, cancellation policy, liability policy, and occupancy number limits, pet policies and damage deposits.
On their website they provide good information about the local area and places to visit which includes a ‘what’s on’ guide and they also promote a number of local restaurants and shops which includes a local home grown farm shop.
During the research for this report it was found that no UK self catering agency had an environmental policy in place. This may be due to the fact that all the cottages on their books are independently owned and therefore they have no control over how each cottage operates its environmental policies. However it could be argued that it would be in their interest to educate cottage owners of environmental issues and impacts so that they could introduce such a policies, as clearly the consumer are becoming more aware of environmental issues and their impacts on the destination.
One of the schemes which is encouraging such policies to be introduced, is the Green Tourism Business, who are one of the largest and most successful environmental accreditation bodies of tourism related businesses in Europe. They have over 500 members in the UK, including accommodation providers, visitor attractions, tour operators and conference facilities. Twenty six of their UK members are independent self-catering providers and have implemented environmental polices; two of these businesses have details of the policies on their website.
Green Business [on line]
These policies include topics such as shopping and buying products locally, recycling, energy efficiency, conservation and management, car and fuel reduction consumption, management of water resources and conservation of landscape and wildlife features. These businesses set a good example of sustainable development in tourists and demonstrate that independent accommodation providers could introduce such measures.
Carswell Cottages [on line]
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Travel arrangements
Since the Wright family would be making their own arrangements for traveling to the destination there would be no set policies in place to help minimize the impacts from their journey.
It must be noted that the type of vehicles the Wright’s drive is particularly environmentally unfriendly as it uses a greater amount of fuel and also lets out a large amount of carbon- dioxide. In a recent article in the Guardian Unlimited it was clamed that 4-wheel drive vehicles give out up to four times more pollution as an ordinary car and does far fewer miles to a gallon of fuel.
Guardian Unlimited [on line]
It must also be noted that there journey will be adding to the congestion and wear and tear of the already very busy M56 and M55 and although the A55 has been improved in recent years, there is still a major problem with congestion and many claim that investment in transport in north Wales has been very limited.
BBC News [on line]
3. Methods of accessing the impacts
- Quantifying impacts
This report is firstly going to look at the various activities which a family of four might participate in during a 14 day holiday and the table below measures these definitions and defines what would be classed as low, medium and high practice of each of these activities.
Table 1
The second table looks at the definitions of the impacts and their affects and impacts on the economy, social and environmental aspects.
Table 2
Symbol guide
☒ = negative impacts ☑ positive impacts
4. Impacts
- Itinerary
The third table below lists the daily itinerary for the Wright family and the activities that they participated in, giving the total number of each activity for the 14 day holiday.
Table 3
- Impacts based on itinerary
Finally the last table measures exactly what impacts there were on social, economical and environmental aspects from all the activities the Wright family participated in during their 14 day break.
Table 4
Symbol guide
☹ Negative impacts • Moderate impacts ☺ Positive impacts
Friends Of The Earth [on line]
PR News Wire [on line]
5. Discussion
This report has revealed that this particular family did limit the amount of energy they used, although using the hairdryer did cause more negative impacts on the local energy recourses. Also their preference to have showers rather than baths helped the water resources, so overall their negative impacts on water and energy resources was limited and didn’t cause any negative impact on the destination.
One of the most detrimental impacts of the family’s visit to this particular destination is the problems their journey cause which not only produced pollution and wear and tear on the roads, but when travelling within the island during peak times of the year, it affected the local residents and their own journeys. Not only did the locals experience longer journey times than normal, but the increase in four wheel drives caused problems in the car-park which meant local residents found it difficult to park their cars.
When the family took their boat to beach this also caused some announce to local residents, with noise disturbance and as the small approach road is privately owned and not surfaced by the local council, local money would be needed to improve and maintain the road which would affect the local economy.
On the positive side the local economy benefited when the family participate in activities run by local residents, such as going on a boating pleasure trip, using the Windsurfing hire company, using the local cycle hire, using the local fish & chips shop, local pubs and restaurants.
Nevertheless this report has also revealed that the sports and leisure activities which the family participated in at the beach and in the sea did have some environmental impacts on natural sea-life and surroundings.
It can also be viewed that because the family took the holiday in peak holiday times, this caused the resort and the destination to experience seasonal income surges which accelerates the problems of insecurity for local people who find it hard to get permanent jobs, with no guarantee of employment from one season to the next.
United Nations Environment Programme [on line]
Another detrimental impact is the family’s choice to shop at Tesco’s supermarket in Holyhead. During peak seasons the supermarket can become very busy and long queues can occur at the tills which affect local residents shopping trips. Also because the family didn’t shop locally this did not benefit the local economy, but instead helped profits of a national company and caused leakages.
When the family choose to Barbeque on lawn it caused noise and smell annoyance to local residents and it also prevented the family having a meal at the local pub or fish and chip shop and consequently will have a negative impact on the local economy.
The popular coastal path which is now being used by so many walkers and tourists is in danger of erosions and even trampling has been proved to affect the natural environment. It has been demonstrated that small patches of rare plants can be destroyed by trampling or merely by people sitting on them when having their picnic and it can take only one person to destroy a rare plant. Research has also proved that many rare plants which require poor soils can be affected by excrement from tourist’s dogs and this can results in the disappearance of some species along popular paths.
Beacon Beacons [on line]
Many local welsh residents also blame tourism for the decline in the Welsh language. In a recent report which was part of a project on 'The Social History of the Welsh Language' conducted by the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies at Aberystwyth, it revealed that the Welsh-speaking population, who use their mother tongue extensively through community activities and events, complained that the greater number of non-Welsh-speaking tourists who stay within their community during holidays, put greater pressure on them to speak English.
However many other people believe that there should be more widespread use of the native language within the tourist sector and that they should ensure that the tourism industry develops in a way which would benefit the language?
University of Wales [on line]
Nevertheless it can be argued that the most detrimental and economical affect on the resort is the way in which the new tourists to Anglesey and Cemaes Bay are not using local businesses to buy their food produce and are limiting the number of times they eat out and this is therefore is having an negative impact on the local economy. Much of this is due to the poor communication and information offered about local businesses to the visitors from the booking agents and self-catering providers.
6. Conclusion and recommendation
The Wright family had decided on this particular holiday as a top up to their foreign holiday and their children weren’t looking forward to the holiday, as they viewed this typical British seaside holiday as boring and thought there wouldn’t be much to do in the evenings or many activities to participate in during the day. However Mr & Mrs Wright saw it as a chance to build family bonds and participate in family activities. The holiday did prove to be successful in this way as the whole family did get involved in activities as a group. However the family were disappointed that there wasn’t much choice of extra sporting activities in particular no local sailing school. They also thought that the facilities for local restaurants were very limited and consequently when they wanted a special meal out, they had to travel to Beaumaris which was a 30 minute drive away.
They did however enjoy the self catering facilities as it gave them more freedom as to when and where they ate their meals and the house was well equipped and provided excellent family facilities. They were also disappointed that there weren’t more historical sites to visit and they did feel that they weren’t given the opportunity to experience the local culture. On reflecting on their holiday they would not choose to visit this area for such a long period of time and would look at a shorter break of either a long weekend or just one week.
This report has shown that there were some major impacts on the resort and the destination which the family caused which included environmental and social impacts. However as Wales and in particular Anglesey have relied on tourism as a key economical source for many years and the families visit should have helped the local economy, but this report has shown that their visit didn’t benefit the local economy as much as it should.
This was the result of the lack of information and promotion of local facilities prior to or during their holiday which meant the family didn’t use the local facilities to their best advantage.
Recent research has been shown that tourism in Wales is undergoing some structural changes, with the traditional long summer holiday now been taken abroad. At the same time a tendency by the British to take multiple holidays has resulted in a growth in short breaks and additional holidays, and this change could represent a growth market for Anglesey and although the local council are trying to address this problem, this report has revealed that local agents and tour operators are not promoting these options enough.
Therefore the income that Anglesey’s and in particular Cemaes Bay receives from tourism is very seasonal, consequentially local residents are not benefiting from a steady, all year income and it should be considered that promoting a diverse tourism product, in particular concentrating on niche markets would help build activity in the off peak periods.
Anglesey Council [on line]
It must also be considered that although this report has shown some significant social and environmental issues that were caused by the family’s visit, these impacts could have been limited by providing more detailed information about such impacts and an environmental policy should be introduced by the agent, with independent cottage owner becoming more involved with such policies. The local council could also help prevent such impacts by promoting local public transport to the tourist. They could do this be introducing a coastal shuttle bus service in peak months which would help improve congestion and pollution from tourists vehicles.
Probably one of the most emotive aspects of the tourists visit to this destination is the decline of the welsh language and many traditional welsh speaking residents feel very bitter towards English speaking visitors. However it must be considered that if Anglesey and Cemeas Bay are going to continue benefiting financially from tourists, they should look at ways in which they could encourage the tourists to learn Welsh phrases which would encourage them to speak Welsh to locals. They could also look at ways in which the tourist could become more integrated into the local community which would not have negative impacts on the local community.
6. References
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Anglesey Heritage [on line] available at (accessed 20th April)
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Anglesey Council [on line] available at (accessed 20th April)
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Anglesey Local Council [on line] available at www.anglesey.gov.uk/english/council/ director/econdev/econstrat2000_2002.htm (accessed 20th April)
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BBC News [on line] available at (accessed 20th April)
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Brecon Beacons [on line] available at (accessed 3rd May 2006)
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Carswell Cottages [on line] available at (accessed 25th April 2006)
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Cemaes Bay [on line] available at (accessed 20th April 2006)
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Friends Of The Earth [on line] available at (accessed 5th May 2006)
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Guardian Unlimited [on line] available at (accessed 5th May 2006)
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Go HRW [on line] available at (accessed 20th April 2006)
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Menai Holiday Cottages [on line] available at (accessed 15th April 2006)
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Multi Map [on line] available at (accessed 20th April 2006)
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PR News Wire [on line] available at (accessed 25th April 2006)
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United Nations Environment Programme [on line] available at (accessed 25th April 2006)
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University of Wales [on line] available at (accessed 5th May 2006)
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Visit Anglesey [on line] available at (accessed 20th April 2006)