Managing tourism through an accommodation register makes sense
THE principle of making accommodation providers in a tourism hotspot like Cornwall sign up to the compulsory registration of their bed space makes sense if the threat of overtourism – where certain areas get swamped in high season – is to be tackled.
It could also help to create a better balance between homes for rent long-term, to local tenants, and properties aimed at the holidaymaker. But it is not easy to see how it would be possible to get everyone to sign up to such an arrangement without a change in the law.
Holiday areas have always offered opportunities to the chancer who wants to try to make a killing on the back of visitors. From the enterprising youngster who sets up an icecream delivery round on the beach to the farmer who opens up his field for car parking at £5 a throw, a big influx of visitors with money in their pockets is an incentive to locals to try to make a few pounds.
In recent years, with the advent of sophisticated online accommodation booking systems, like Airbnb, the opportunities to become a temporary holiday landlord have also boomed. After lockdown, when holidays abroad were still off-limits but Devon and Cornwall were bursting at the seams, property owners saw their chance and took it. It’s hard to blame them – although the consequences for full-time tenants given a notice to quit to make way for the visitors were not pretty.
It’s right that Visit Cornwall is trying to tackle this problem. There is a law of diminishing returns when a holiday area gets overwhelmed with visitors. Add to that the anger and upset felt by the locals who see they have been squeezed out of their own towns and villages and you have all the ingredients that can turn a once happy place that welcomes visitors into one where resentment builds. That is not good for anyone. Getting sign-ups to a holiday accommodation registration scheme could work, even with current legislation, providing the benefits for those signing up were seen as worthwhile.
As Malcolm Bell of Visit Cornwall tells today’s Western Morning News: “This is an opportunity to provide a level playing field at last, with all providers bearing the same level of costs. Visitors to Cornwall will be reassured that wherever they stay the accommodation will comply with all the necessary legislation.”
The holiday industry is now, at its best, a sophisticated, well-regulated operation that provides consumers with a great product at a fair price. A compulsory system to regulate accommodation providers, via registration, would extend that state of affairs more widely. There will still be those, under the radar, renting out garden sheds and scruffy back bedrooms to the unsuspecting – you are never going to be able to stop that.
But providing a level of service that meets all the necessary standards and, crucially, means someone has a handle on visitor numbers and other pressures – to ease them where possible – makes sense. Well done to Visit Cornwall and the other organisations for taking the initiative. If they can pull this off, others will surely follow.