Fears for high street as Rochester visitor centre faces closure

Tourist groups and businesses say that the decision by Medway Council could hit their bottom line by reducing footfall.

Transcript

00:00 Earlier this year, Medway council announced plans to cut the Medway visitor information centre

00:05 and the summer Dickens festival in a bid to save money.

00:08 Many are worried what this will mean for footfall in the five towns.

00:12 So in a place which is so tourism orientated, particularly Roshester,

00:16 you know we've got Castle, Cathedral, the Dickens links, the Christmas thing,

00:20 this is basically where Dickens fell in love with Christmas, right on this high street when he was a boy.

00:24 All of that, if you don't promote it, people are going to go somewhere else.

00:29 It's as simple as that and that will have a direct effect on footfall and that affects businesses

00:35 and businesses pay business rates. So what are you then going to do when you've

00:39 then cut out businesses that were one of your sources of income? It just to me just doesn't make sense.

00:45 One of those shocked by the news is Martin, who has been running Copperfield on the High Street for 20 years.

00:50 Yeah I'm gobsmacked because lots of people ask me where the visitor centre is.

00:58 Lots of people and I direct them down there. So I'm quite gobsmacked about that.

01:03 You know this is the city, it is a city, it's been taken away, they called it Rochester.

01:11 But we've got a beautiful cathedral, we've got beautiful castle, we've got beautiful high street

01:16 and it just seems to be vanishing. It just seems that like no one's really interested in it anymore.

01:25 But with the visitor centre stopping, yeah I was quite amazed at that.

01:30 The visitor centre behind me is being closed permanently on Friday. It's been announced back in

01:36 February by Medway Council who say it's all to do with cost.

01:40 So for instance people today versus 20 years ago, they go online to book hotels, they go online to

01:46 book airbnbs. Before they arrive they look online, they can see websites for many of the places

01:51 they're going to visit. They get their information via those sources. So we've seen an overall

01:55 reduction in footfall into the tourist information centre. There is also a net cost to this of £200,000

02:00 per year. No one comes into a council looking to make cuts or reduce services but we are in a very

02:07 difficult financial position and we've had to make some objective decisions about where the public is

02:12 at the moment around access to tourism. And I'm afraid the technology changes we've seen, more

02:17 people are just accessing information online now and that is the way the trend is going across

02:22 many of our services. With talk of banning together to form a smaller independent service,

02:27 it's clear businesses here will fight for their future in Dickens country despite great expectations

02:34 of financial pressure. Oliver Lees of the Sats for KMTV in Rochester.