Letter: Putting county town on tourist map is vital
There is a great debate that Chester is a better tourist venue than Shrewsbury. We need to go no further with this issue.
Chester is near large areas of population. Liverpool, the Wirral and the North Wales coast with good road and rail links. Cheshire is a very rich county.
Chester is traffic free. And has a very good and well established marketing plan for tourists and shoppers.
On the other side of the coin, Shrewsbury is a market town on the way from and to Wales. With no real large areas of population except Wolverhampton and Birmingham. They find the Ironbridge area far more attractive.
Our problems are geographical. We are surrounded by a river and have a poor parking plan and public transport concept. We've a fragmented tourist plan which does not have a good marketing strategy like Ironbridge or Chester. We are a far more attractive town than Chester and, let's face it, Ironbridge 50 years ago was not a jewel in any crown.
We can and must attract the tourists. It will need a great deal of work and leadership. We can do it. I've worked as a guide in Ironbridge and Shrewsbury churches. We can work together to promote our wonderful county.
We need to have everybody work as a team and promote our town. If we don't we'll pay a high price.
John R Brown, Shrewsbury
