1. Introduction

Let’s keep in touch and work together. Opportunities for getting involved with our campaigns and trade events and exhibitions are usually announced in our regular newsletters and on twitter.

If you’ve specific questions about running a tourism business or starting a business from scratch then contact our colleagues at Business Wales.

2. Visit Wales Regional Team

Here are your contacts in the regions:

North Wales 

Andrew Forfar – AndrewWallace.Forfar@gov.wales

Mid Wales

Nathan Richards - Nathan.Richards001@gov.wales  

South West 

Ceri Jones – Ceri.Jones057@gov.wales 
Jane Donald – Jane.Donald@gov.wales

South East 

Rebecca Rees - Rebecca.Rees2@gov.wales

For general emails to the Regional team as a whole please contact them using regionaltourism@gov.wales  

3. Regional Tourism Forum

A Regional Fora was established in 2014 to drive the delivery of the tourism strategy in each region. There is a forum in each region - north, mid, south east and south west. The forum meets three/four times a year to discuss and review tourism developments and to bring together key stakeholders within the region. 

The forum aims to identify:

  • which individual business or destinations can work more closely together within the region
  • opportunities for tourism development within the region
  • the method for feeding into each forum through destination management partnerships

As a member of the Regional Forum stakeholder group, your details will be managed in line with our Privacy Notice.

Terms of Reference

North Wales Forum
Minutes - 01 March 2023
Minutes - 30 November 2022
Minutes - 08 September 2022

Mid Wales Forum
Minutes - 02 March 2023
Minutes - 01 December 2022
Minutes - 01 September 2022

South West Wales Forum
Minutes - 06 December 2022
Minutes - 20 June 2022 
Minutes - 08 February 2022

South East Wales Forum
Minutes - 28 February 2023
Minutes - 29 November 2022
Minutes - 20 September 2022 (Virtual Meeting (online))

 

4. Food Tourism

Welsh Government defines food tourism as: 

‘any activity that promotes a high quality, distinctive, local and sustainable food experience linked to a particular place’

The Food Tourism Action Plan for Wales 2015-2020 is still available and we continue to work with partners and businesses, encouraging them 

  • to highlight local/Welsh food and drink to visitors 
  • to offer local/Welsh produce on menus and in retail.

Offering an authentic Welsh food and drink experience helps make your business unique.

The Food Tourism Toolkit

The Food Tourism Toolkit has been updated – find out why food tourism is important for Wales and for your business and see menu and recipe tips and much more.

 

5. Promoting your business

Our consumer website has a search feature to find:

  • accommodation
  • activities
  • attractions
  • events

To add or update your business or event details, contact your local representative.

6. Event Wales

Event Wales is Wales’ major events strategy delivered by Welsh Government.
We are building and sustaining a portfolio of world class events which support economic growth and raise Wales’ international profile and reputation.
Global brands such as Ryder Cup, WOMEX, Rugby World Cup, the Ashes, UEFA and Volvo Ocean Race have all chosen to bring their events to Wales. 
We have also supported the development of a vibrant and dynamic portfolio of home grown events including

  • Green Man
  • the Machynlleth Comedy Festival
  • Beyond the Border Storytelling Festival
  • FOCUS Wales 
  • the Sandman, Snowman and Slateman Triathlon series.     

About Event Wales

 

7. The Wales Way

The Wales Way is a family of three routes, distinct but complementary, that grant access to the best of our nation. Together, they make up a powerful statement of what we value about Wales and how we wish to present ourselves to the world.

 

8. Travel Trade

Updating your information on traveltrade.visitwales.com

Top tips are now available to guide you through updating your business information for an epic listing

Videos have also been prepared to help you to update your listings:

Keep Visit Wales updated

Let us know when you have any relevant timely news for the Travel Trade, by emailing productnews@gov.wales. We can then: 

  • update our website news page
  • include in our product updates that we put together for Trade events
  • update content for our Travel Trade e-newsletters
  • include in our presentations and webinars
  • share with colleagues in other departments, our agencies and VisitBritain offices.

This is a really good opportunity to highlight your new product to the Travel Trade community.

Travel Trade

The travel trade has a full range of organisations that operate as intermediaries in the travel and tourism industry. These typically include:

  • tour operators
  • coach operators
  • wholesalers
  • destination management companies and inbound operators
  • travel agents

Our role is to influence buyers in the travel trade. Our aim is to encourage these buyers to bring business to Wales. Our travel trade work involves establishing and maintaining relationships with individuals and companies who currently include Wales in their programmes, or who have the potential to include Wales in the future.

If you’d like to generate additional sales to increase your visitor numbers and fill spare capacity, you may wish to consider working with the leisure travel trade. For a flavour of our work in this area please go to the Travel Trade Website. 

For further information:
Travel Trade Website 
Twitter
Facebook 
LinkedIn
Or contact the team at traveltradewales@gov.wales

9. Business Events

Updating your information on meetinwales.com

Top tips are now available to guide you through updating your business information for an epic listing

​​​​Videos have also been prepared to help you to update your listings:

Keep Visit Wales updated

Let us know when you have any relevant timely news for Business Events, by emailing productnews@gov.wales. We can then: 

  • update our website news page
  • include in our product updates that we put together for Trade events
  • update content for our Business Events e-newsletters
  • include in our presentations and webinars
  • share with colleagues in other departments, our agencies and VisitBritain offices.

This is a really good opportunity to highlight your new product to the Business Events community.

Business Events - #MeetInWales

Are you interested in attracting meetings, conferences, incentives and business events?

The Business Events team role is to raise Wales’ profile and reputation as a viable business events destination to the MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conference, Events/Exhibition) market. The aim is to ‘sell’ Wales to associations, corporate clients, agencies and incentive buyers and influence decision makers to bring and conduct their events in Wales.

Wales is committed to attend a series of key B2B events and exhibitions to raise the profile of Wales within the UK and on an International scale with opportunities for partners and stakeholders to partner.

For more information on attending these events, visit our Business Events page, or email us: meetinwales@gov.wales.

For further information:

Business Events – a helpful glossary & guide

Meet In Wales website

Meet In Wales Event Schedule

Twitter: @MeetInWales

LinkedIn: Meet In Wales

Email: meetinwales@gov.wales

10. Tourism Exchange Great Britain (TXGB)

TXGB is a central digital marketplace. It enables tourism suppliers to contract and connect their content, availability and pricing with a diverse range of distributors in one go and manage this in one place.

TXGB allows suppliers to become bookable on a wide range of distribution channels (including niche operators, destinations and OTAs). There is no connection charge, you don’t have to have online bookings on your own websites, and you can manage your distribution all in one place. You simply pay a 2.5% booking fee – only on bookings generated - plus commission of the chosen distributor.

Using the Tourism Exchange can 

  • provide an easy way of working with more channels without increasing admin, reaching more customers, growing sales, reduce dependency on a single sales channel and reduce commission costs
  • provide access to more distribution channels and to make by-products bookable in national and regional destination marketing campaigns. 

Visit Wales / Welsh Government has licensed TXGB to make it available to the tourism industry in Wales. The TXGB Cymru Wales platform is now up and running and Welsh businesses and regions are being on-boarded.  

TXGB Promotional Video (English)

If you are interested and want to find out more please email North Wales Tourism or Mid Wales Tourism: 

North Wales Tourism (north) - Jim Jones/Eirlys Jones (visitwalesopps@northwalestourism.com)

Mid Wales Tourism (mid / south / west ) – Val Hawkins/Zoe Hawkins (visitwales@mwtcymru.co.uk)