The post you are reporting:
Tourism should have a much higher priority than it does, but back in 2003, (I have said this all before), Dover District tresidents were asked what was more important to them - tourism or anti-social behabviour and people said that the Council's money (the public's money) and efforts should go into Anti-Social Behaviour; so the asb unit was set up.
Not trying to be too political here, but there was a massive hole in the budget at DDC after 10 years or so of Labour administration, so many financial holes had to be plugged up first.
Balancing the budgets at DDC (at any local authority) is one of the most important issues facing the administration, so savings had to be made and as tourism is NOT a statutory responsibility and the majority of the people voted for asb, it's importance and money spent on it, was reduced.
The Tourism Manager's post was done away with and an existing person (Jon Iveson) was made Tourism Manager.
Jon is a great guy, is really very hard-working, very knowledgeable (he has a mountain of information about Dover's history (especially the Westeren Heights, in his head) and has in fact helped enormously with the Historic Walks of Dover I (and others) have been working on, but on Jon's own admission, he isn't a Marketing Man, nor a Tourism Manager, but does well at everything he does.
There are moves afoot which may help with tourism, but I would say that the priority should be a return of the tour bus for next year (too late for this year of course) and working on making Dover a destination as regards Group Travel.
I received some leaflets and other information from VisitKent and the only mention of anything to do with Dover, was the Castle - that's why we don't get anywhere - our tourism is in the hands of people who do not promote us; even our cruise ship benefits - from tourism, is no where near as big as it should be - some businesses obviously do benefit, but not our local shops or tourist attractions, not as much as they should.
This topic could go on forever.
Roger
