The Economic influence of Surfing in Cornwall
Literature Review
The economic influence of surfing in Cornwall is put in context by an article by Billings (2005) who reported on the Cornwall Tourist Board’s search for an agency to handle its one million pound United Kingdom advertising account. There is no incumbent on the business, as the organization has previously used local agencies on a project basis, and this work has promoted initiatives such as Cornwall Pure Business, a recent drive to encourage businesses to relocate to the area. Tourism is in fact one of the biggest industries in the South-West, and in 2003 was worth 4.9 billion pounds, with one billion pounds of that generated by Cornwall, and hence has a major economic impact on the local area, and the United Kingdom as a whole.
The tourism industry also impacts on other aspects of the economy, with Meadwell (2002) claiming that “Tourism is booming and office rents are up [in] Cornwall. In April 2002, Ryanair launched a daily flight from Stansted to Newquay and back, the number of cars using the A30 has increased year on year, and the number of holidays taken in Cornwall likewise.” Yet as early as 2002, the tourist industry was helping to highlight a fundamental flaw in Cornwall's plans for continued economic growth: the lack of transport infrastructure. “The trains that are busy and slow, the A30: the main arterial route into the county, regularly gets snarled up with traffic because large chunks of it are still single carriageway [and] most agents put infrastructure at the top of their list of what the county must do to maintain the business momentum.” (Meadwell, 2002) Indeed, it has been claimed that the amount of tourism overloading the transport infrastr ...