WIREDGOV

Figures published by the Welsh Government today reveal the Easter holidays were an excellent start to the holiday season for the tourism industry.  

Of the 400 business surveyed in the Business monitor 82% reported an increase in visitor numbers or a similar number to the same period last year. And significantly, 96% of tourism businesses feel very or fairly confident about the season ahead. 

Deputy Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism, Ken Skates visited Llandudno today and met with Barry Mortlock from The Alice in Wonderland Trail to hear more about the plans for the 150th Anniversary of the first publication of the book classic, Alice in Wonderland. The town of Llandudno is celebrating this event by launching its series of Alice in Wonderland town trails in order to attract tourism into the area.   May 1st has also been announced as Alice Day.

Llandudno had a very busy Easter weekend, Geoff Lofthouse from the Imperial Hotel, said:

“We had a brilliant Easter, very high occupancy plus a good footfall from casual visitors with an added bonus of an excellent wedding on Easter Monday. An excellent March and April after the notoriously tricky January and February has put us back on track.  Looking further forward, bookings and events coming up are all very positive and the bonus comes with the weather which can impact sales by as much as 20%.”

Deputy Minister for Culture, Sport & Tourism, Ken Skates, said:

“Easter provided an excellent start to the season for the tourism industry in Wales and confidence is now high for the rest of the season. The industry is in a strong position and Visit Wales’ activities will continue to ensure that Wales is kept at the front of the mind when people in our target markets make their holiday choices over the coming months.  

“Recent figures show that Visit Wales' 'Have you Packed for Wales?' Campaign is delivering great results for Wales and has generated an additional £238 million in additional expenditure to the Welsh economy.   There was a 26% increase in the number of unique users to the Visit Wales website during 2014 compared with 2013 and Visit Wales has half a million followers on social media.”

Hotel Room Occupancy  figures for the whole of 2014 saw a rise in room occupancy, up by 3 percentage points (to 64%) when compared with 2013 (61%). Hotel occupancy figures for the first two months of 2015 also show a continuing upward trend with an increase of one percentage point on the previous year.  

The Great Britain Day Visits Survey show that 90 million tourism day visits were made by British residents to destinations in Wales in January-December 2014, generating expenditure of £2,677 million.  The volume of trips is up 1 per cent in comparison with 2013.   Day visits are also showing positive signs at the beginning of 2015 with numbers on par with 2014 and expenditure up on the same period last year. 

Full year figures for 2014 from the Great Britain Tourism Survey, which covers overnight visits, will be published on 12 May.