In The Context Of International Tourism How Has Bristol's Tourism Developed From The Description In The Article By Buckley, P. J. And Witt, S.F (1985), To The Present Day And What It It's Potentional For The Future?

In the context of international tourism how has Bristol's tourism developed from the description in the article by Buckley, P. J. and Witt, S.F (1985), to the present day and what it it's potentional for the future?

In 1985 Buckley and Witt introduced the idea of there being Ð''difficult areas' for tourism to develop, they used Bristol as an example of this. They characterised a difficult area as somewhere that needs to enhance its infrastructure, has a small amount of tourism receipts and Ð''may be regarded as unsuitable for tourism development because of a poor Ð''image', unfavourable social and economic factors' Buckley and Witt (1985, cited in Hope and Klemm 2000). Buckley and Witt decided that the 1980s Bristol fitted this description along with three other cities, Glasgow, Bradford and Hamm.

The purpose of this paper is to revisit Bristol and using literature from tourism academics, Bristol City Council and other independent sources, evaluate if and how international tourism has developed in Bristol since Buckley and Witt's report.

Bristol is a city in the south west of England located 120 miles from London and is in a prime location for an urban tourism destination. It has a catchment population of 2.2 million within a 2 hour journey (Harbourside Brief 1993) and is also a major connecting point for rail services to all parts of England and Wales (Horner 1993). In their report Buckley and Witt stated that Ð''the inclusion of Bristol in a study of difficult areas may seem unfair', but justified the inclusion by drawing attention to the redundant docklands area that in the mid 1980s was in need of regeneration, it was this area of the city that they focused on. They were picking up on the unfulfilled potentional that Bristol had for tourism and highlighting the fact that more was needed than just good transport links and location to make Bristol a successful tourism destination.

At the time of Buckley and Witt's report in the 1980s the last ships to use the port of Bristol commercially were gone, the last company to use the area, The Sand Diamond, left shortly after and the area was redundant (A history and guide to Bristol 2005). The docks and harbourside take up a huge area in a prime city centre location and so it was not long that the first developments started to take place in the form of converting old warehouses into apartments and studio flats. The council also tried hard to attract new users to the docks with events such as the Grand prix speedboat racing, unfortunately due to a number of fatal accidents as a result of the narrow dock walls the races were stopped (A history and guide to Bristol 2005). Buckley and Witt mentioned the speedboat racing in their report as a Ð''special event', even it they had not been cancelled however it is unlikely that that kind of event would have been sufficient to attract international tourists, before Bristol could develop as a successful tourist destination the infrastructure of the city needed to be improved, much of the improvement that took place was in the development of the harbourside.

The building of the TSB headquarters on the area site of former tobacco warehouses in 1989 was the first major development in the area, rising costs of being based in London along with Bristol's reputation as being Ð''The capital of the south west' meant that businesses like Lloyds bank (now know as Lloyds TSB) were inclined to move to Bristol and the harbourside was a prime location (a history and guide to Bristol 2005).

The Lloyds TSB building was seen as a catalyst for the regeneration of the harbourside and dockland area and also prompted a review of the current planning policy, as a result a more achievable planning brief was developed in November 1992 (Harbourside brief 1998). In 1993 the Harbourside Sponsors Group was established, it was formed by members of the City Council, Landowners and Bristol Chamber of Commerce and Initiative (BCCI). The aim of the group was to produce a regeneration plan to be carried out over 6-10 years and to Ð''unlock the vast potentional of the area' (Harbourside brief 1998).

The idea of urban regeneration has been discussed by many academics such as Holden (2000) who suggested in many cases tourism has been used as a catalyst to aid urban regeneration, an example of this is the regeneration of the waterfront in Baltimore, a city on the north east coast of America. Baltimore once fitted the description Buckley and Witt gave of a Ð''difficult area' but after 15 years of regeneration the tourism industry within the city was transformed (Law 1993). Law (1993) suggested that success stories such as Baltimore coupled with the recession in 1980-1982 gave town planners and civic leaders in the UK the idea to regenerate cities that had suffered distress in the inner city.

One of the objectives of the regeneration plan for Bristol was to give the region a new focus for tourism and to create a Ð''high quality environment worthy of Europe's most outstanding waterfront settings' (Harbourside brief 1998). This is important as Bristol must be able to compete with other cities in attracting international tourists. Law (1993) suggested that the image of a city can be useful in the competition to attract tourists and Holloway (1998) stated that urban resorts with an established reputation and image will attract tourists more readily than those with no clear image, their report Buckley and Witt (1985) highlighted that fact that Bristol had a Ð''non-image' as a problem.

Bristol's location means it is surrounded by cities with recognised attractive images such as London, Bath and Cardiff, in order to draw international tourists away from these destinations Bristol needed to develop its own distinct image that would distinguish it from other cities, something that could be marketed and become a selling point that people could associate with the city and would find interesting.

One of the images that has been developed for Bristol has picked up on the cities strong maritime history. This has been successful as it is something that sets it apart from other cities: attractions such as the SS Great Britain and The Matthew are very popular tourist attractions and have also been used to establish associations with America, for example the slogan Ð''Bristol-The birthplace of America' has been adopted. The strong links Bristol has with the slave trade have also been built upon, Bristol was the leading port in the triangular trade for some years during the 17th century and dispatched over 2000 slaving vessels between 1689 and 1807 (Dresser and Ollerenshaw 1996). Although