IS IT REALLY VIABLE?
Thursday, April 26th, 2007The Herald - 26 April 2007
Again I see the advocates for providing moorings for HMS Plymouth gathering to drum up support. Again I see them stating airy-fairy numbers to support their plans. I carefully chose the word ‘plans’ over ‘CASE’ as they have yet to show any substantial commercial case. Repeatedly they dangle the mythical carrot of millions of pounds and tens of thousands of visitors coming to Plymouth to see; ah! to see what? A piece of British maritime history? A symbol of British bravery and gallantry? A prime example of maritime engineering? Some may answer yes to all these, but they are few in number outside of Plymouth.
HMS Plymouth may be beloved to members of the senior service and dockyardies who built her, but to the visitor/tourist public she will never warrant a ’special’ visit to Plymouth.
Oh if they are passing on their way up to the Hoe they may, on a slow day, have a look. Ok, so that is an opinion, but the following are official tourist figures for Jan; Feb; Mar 2006:
1) The South West has 151 major tourist attractions giving a monthly average visitors total of 3,424 (over the year would mean 41,096) less than half the 90,000 ‘envisaged’ for HMS Plymouth.
2) The South West had a 66 per cent drop in visitors’ numbers going to ’similar’ attractions.
3) The number of visitors selecting to visit ’similar’ steel vessels at Southampton has shown a 70 per cent decline.
It IS easy to allow our heads to be misled by our hearts; the plan may be emotionally laudable but large amounts of public money are involved and commercial viability must be paramount.
RAY GLASSON
Plymouth