In a letter to one of the many tourist businesses in the area, Malcolm Bell, the Chief Executive of South West Tourism, has expressed his concern over the potential negative impact such large scale industrialisaton could have on Chilla Moor.

Many thanks for your recent email expressing your concerns about the impact of the proposed wind turbine developments. Although it is not possible to make any detailed observations, there are a number of general points that can be made.

South West Tourism is fully committed to developing a sustainable tourism industry, which minimizes the use of energy, the production of waste, the impact of tourists on the environment and the maximizing of benefits to the host community and local economy.  South West Tourism is fully supportive of the development of renewable energy and supports the careful planning of such facilities. 

However, we also recognise that the region’s environment is a key motivation for visits to the SW and that we need to ensure that this asset is maintained. Tourism spend not only impacts tourism businesses but the wider economy. For every one pound spent by a tourist, 30p finds its way to the food and drink sector, 27p to the retail sector, 11p to the attraction sector, 10p is spent on travel and only 22p is spent on accommodation.

Research around the UK on the expected impacts of wind farms on tourism is inconclusive with results ranging from positive to neutral to negative responses.
A recent in-depth piece of research looking at ‘The Economic Impacts of Wind Farms on Scottish Tourism’ (March 2008) provides some particularly relevant and useful findings.

When questioning tourists in areas where they were likely to have seen a wind farm, it reinforced previous experience that for most tourists (75%) the perceived impact on landscape is positive or neutral with respondents that had seen a wind farm more positive than those that had not.

However, in another part of the research, concerns did emerge. 18% said they would not visit an area if a wind farm was constructed  while most individuals (63%) prefer a landscape from the hotel/B&B/cottage bedroom without a wind farm which brought out a difference in opinion between a transitory view (e.g. moving on a road) and a static view (e.g. from a bedroom). It is therefore not surprising that the research also concluded that there would be a drop in revenue. It also concludes that it is the initial intrusion into the landscape rather than the scale that is significant and that having fewer larger developments would have less of a negative impact, in general, on tourism.

In its recommendation the study concludes that “the impacts in local areas are important enough to warrant specific consideration by planning authorities. These should include the following:

• The number of tourists traveling past on route to elsewhere
• The views from accommodation in the area
• The relative scale of tourism impact i.e. local and national
• The potential positives associated with the development
• The views of tourist bodies”

It argues strongly in favour of developers producing a Tourist Impact Statement as part of the Environmental Impact Analysis.

Given that there are potential risks to tourism, we would urge that a precautionary and informed approach is taken. We feel that approval should not be given before a professional and fully independent tourism impact study has been undertaken and the results carefully studied.

Let us ensure that such decisions are made on hard facts not emotions.  South West Tourism would be more than happy to advise and support such an impact study and would support any decision made based on a strong professional evidence base.

I hope these comments prove useful.

Yours sincerely

Malcolm Bell
Chief Executive
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