More Tourists Better Hotels

Wolverhampton as a city has still to do much more to take advantage of the great facilities that we have here.

Just four facilities in the City attract more than 1 million visitors annually. That is certainly a base that can be built upon.

The top four attractions are The Civic Halls, The Grand Theatre, The Central Art Gallery and Wolverhampton Racetrack.

Throw in the Wolves and you have five attractions that will help draw and create a platform to enhance the economic development of the City.

Tourism is still not being taken seriously, but it should be!

Take 10 years ago and look at the provision of hotels then to now.

There are far more hotels in the city admitted they are in the 'budget' class by and large. But the level of investment made by the hotel owners in short time is I think impressive.

What we need now is a 'first class boutique hotel' to complement those that are already in the City. How do we get it? Well there needs to be positive support from a whole range of City organisations. But we also need the bus and coach train and tram owners on board, these are the businesses that feed and keep the tourism market operating.

Coach passengers coming into the West Midlands stands at around 8million per year. Wolverhampton needs a bigger share of this market. As I have said earlier there are five venues that are delivering together more than 1 million visitors per year. Talking with coach operators regularly and providing them with early and exciting programmes may just stimulate them to place Wolverhampton on their tourist agenda's......why not!

So my plea is that the City do more in explaining what we do have to share with the nation, and speak more often with tours and tourism organisers.