The boss of Cornwall’s threatened tourism body has grave concerns over the impact of its possible disappearance on the county’s biggest money-spinner.

Malcolm Bell, chief executive of VisitCornwall – a subsidiary of Cornwall Council – said the proposal on Monday to withdraw all funding for his organisation came as a shock.

Cornwall Council announced its plans to stop funding VisitCornwall as part of a raft of drastic measures to cut its budget by £196 million over the next four years.

Tourism is thought to be worth around £1.85 billion every year to the Cornish economy with a quarter of all jobs reliant on trade from tourism.

Mr Bell has told his 12 staff to work under the probability that they will be made redundant in the spring of 2015.

He said: “With nobody selling Cornwall then who is going to get that supply of new customers. For every ten new customers that come, eight will return in five years and four of those will come every year.”

Mr Bell compared tourism to motor cars to explain the worth of Visit Cornwall across the board.

He said: “Ford sells Ford and Vospers sell Vospers. Visit Cornwall sells Cornwall and individual businesses sell individual businesses.

“Any business needs a supply of new customers. That’s why big companies like Mars and Bold still carry out marketing.”

Mr Bell said the impact on tourism would be felt in the long term.

He said: “The wheels won’t fall off the wagon straight away. But it could be 95% of business next year and 90% the year after and so on.”

The tourism boss, who was poached from South West Tourism to go and work for Visit Cornwall in 2010, said he was now examining other ways of maintaining a Cornish tourism body with little or no cost to the public.

He said: “I’ve got to look at how you can do it more cheaply. I have looked at other models like the Isle of Wight which is the Isle of Wight Ltd.

“It would have to be radically different and owned and run by the industry.”

Source:http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Fears-tourism-VisitCornwall-scrapped-council-s/story-22869301-detail/story.html