A tale of four tourists: I host about 20 visitors a year. I recently invited 2 unconnected South Africans and an Australian couple to come and visit. The S.Africans were already visiting Europe and England. One has a sister living in Yorkshire. The other has a sister living in Warwick. But they declined my invitation, as both sisters had told their respective brothers that Cardif suffered from poverty and was not worth visiting. Btw, neither had ever been. They produced this view from local English friends, the media and Cardiff/ Wales reputations in S.Africa. We get this all the time. I am just fed up of it ! Everyone thinks how perfect Switzerland, Finland, Denmark are, yet, in truth they arent. It seems that there is so little we can do can eliminate the outmoded, negative, erroneous views of Wales, until we get people to come here. But they wont come cos theyve decided to be critical and negative. I hosted an Australian couple this past weekend. They were on a Mediterranean cruise the week before. When they told fellow passengers on the cruise, people were shocked that they were coming to Cardiff. But they came. They just left and were bowled over by our beautiful, iconic, historic, interesting city. Who are these naysayers, who have probably never been ? Weve just been voted THE BEST CITY TO LIVE in Britain !!!! The empirical evidence is totally opposite to the viewpoints held by Cardiffs detractors.
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 22:24:22 +0000