City’s tourism potential just being squandered

I TAKE exception to Patricia O’Callaghan’s column “We must strive to lead in the tourism world” ( TB, 23/ 02).

She states we are getting thousands of visitors to our city, yet she says, “Others question whether we are a tourist city”.

I recently had visitors from the deep south who had not been here before so we set out to show them the reason we live here.

A visit to the city centre was a joke, with the tourist hub showing more for the Whitsundays than our own island. After we went to The Strand and Castle Hill there was nothing, nothing at all.

Our city will never produce 4000 tourist jobs. Patricia, your attitude seems to be directed to what would be nice, and not what is actually happening. To build a tourist industry, you need attractions. Yet the government regulation, green regulation and the stinking bats are making tourists a distant memory.

We have the opportunity to create tourist jobs, yet I know of two industries that wanted to do just that but folded because of the regulations and compliance weighted on them.

Charters Towers has a mountain of uncharted history, Townsville could be the epicentre of corporate life. Kiss all that goodbye, power forcing business to close, high unemployment, and lacklustre state MPs who toe the southern line. DEBRA GIBSON, Pinnacles.