Letters
Tourism industry: disinterest or disgust?
Ed,
When Council grabbed the multi award winning CRTA and replaced it with a what it anticipated would be a “tame dog” Tourism Advisory Committee, and then proceeded to ignore pretty much everything the Committee “advised”, you have to ask the questions: Was the shutting down of the CRTA simply a grab for the cash funding the CRTA received from the SRV imposed on, and accepted by businesses in the Valley?
Was it a delusional attempt to build a tourism industry in the upper river by shutting down the dynamic one thriving in the Lower River? Or was it simply just another inexplicably bad decision made by CVC?
Councillor Baker (CVI 25/01/18) has suggested the Tourist Industry businesses are now silent because they are all in raptures with the way Council manages tourism. That would be a convenient explanation of the complete lack of interest in Councils invitation for local industry operatives to serve on Council’s Tourism Advisory Committee. An alternative conclusion might be that The Tourism Industry in the Clarence Valley has boycotted the Council’s interference in an industry where Council seems devoid of knowledge and expertise, oblivious to the economic benefits and pretty much uninterested. The silence could be interpreted as an overwhelming vote of no confidence in CVC’s participation and direction of the Tourist Industry. Maybe someone should have a chat with the people who derive their livelihoods from Tourism in the Valley? There used to be quite a few of them.
Ian Saunders, Maclean