Shropshire Tourism Economy

Tourism remains an important part of the county’s economy, with a total spend in 2011 of £500m. 35% of spend is generated by overnight visitors, the remaining 65% by day trippers. Some 11.6m people visited Shropshire in 2011. The county employs nearly 15,000 people in tourism (7% of total figures), the equivalent of nearly 11,000 whole time posts. The main beneficiaries of the tourism trade are accommodation providers (£58m), retail establishments (£133m), catering (£170m), entertainment (£65m) and transport (£43m).

The County of Shropshire is the largest inland county in England. Contained within its boundary is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution at Ironbridge, which having been granted the status of a World Heritage Site, (bestowed upon it by UNESCO in 1986), needs to be preserved at all costs. It also has several other nationally recognised tourist attractions like The Severn Valley Railway, The Royal Air Force Museum at Cosford and Acton Scott Historic Working Farm, not forgetting the beautiful countryside walks on the Shropshire hills and the many historically important towns. In fact, Shropshire has enough tourist attractions for it to surpass Derbyshire and become the country’s principle inland tourist county.

However, the last 10 years has seen a steady decline in visitor numbers to Shropshire’s principal tourist attractions which necessitates the need for dramatic and energetic change. The post Brexit and the Corvid 19 pandemic era necessitates a ‘New Dawn’ and so ‘GB Limited’ must go all out to redefine its industrial, financial and tourist economies by exploring, harnessing and exploiting every avenue to re-generate growth. Thus, the opportunity exists here to support this initiative, for Ironbridge is not immune.