Tourist groups and businesses say that the decision by Medway Council could hit their bottom line by reducing footfall.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Earlier this year, Medway council announced plans to cut the Medway visitor information centre
00:05 and the summer Dickens festival in a bid to save money.
00:08 Many are worried what this will mean for footfall in the five towns.
00:12 So in a place which is so tourism orientated, particularly Roshester,
00:16 you know we've got Castle, Cathedral, the Dickens links, the Christmas thing,
00:20 this is basically where Dickens fell in love with Christmas, right on this high street when he was a boy.
00:24 All of that, if you don't promote it, people are going to go somewhere else.
00:29 It's as simple as that and that will have a direct effect on footfall and that affects businesses
00:35 and businesses pay business rates. So what are you then going to do when you've
00:39 then cut out businesses that were one of your sources of income? It just to me just doesn't make sense.
00:45 One of those shocked by the news is Martin, who has been running Copperfield on the High Street for 20 years.
00:50 Yeah I'm gobsmacked because lots of people ask me where the visitor centre is.
00:58 Lots of people and I direct them down there. So I'm quite gobsmacked about that.
01:03 You know this is the city, it is a city, it's been taken away, they called it Rochester.
01:11 But we've got a beautiful cathedral, we've got beautiful castle, we've got beautiful high street
01:16 and it just seems to be vanishing. It just seems that like no one's really interested in it anymore.
01:25 But with the visitor centre stopping, yeah I was quite amazed at that.
01:30 The visitor centre behind me is being closed permanently on Friday. It's been announced back in
01:36 February by Medway Council who say it's all to do with cost.
01:40 So for instance people today versus 20 years ago, they go online to book hotels, they go online to
01:46 book airbnbs. Before they arrive they look online, they can see websites for many of the places
01:51 they're going to visit. They get their information via those sources. So we've seen an overall
01:55 reduction in footfall into the tourist information centre. There is also a net cost to this of £200,000
02:00 per year. No one comes into a council looking to make cuts or reduce services but we are in a very
02:07 difficult financial position and we've had to make some objective decisions about where the public is
02:12 at the moment around access to tourism. And I'm afraid the technology changes we've seen, more
02:17 people are just accessing information online now and that is the way the trend is going across
02:22 many of our services. With talk of banning together to form a smaller independent service,
02:27 it's clear businesses here will fight for their future in Dickens country despite great expectations
02:34 of financial pressure. Oliver Lees of the Sats for KMTV in Rochester.