SIR — Why the fuss over whether the council does or doesn't join up with other councils re the future of tourism marketing?

Times have changed now and how! Councils must be aware of what is going to happen now the internet is the main marketing tool.

Having spent 35 years in all sorts of jobs within the tourism trade and the last 15 with top graded holiday cottages, we had no choice in where we advertised - expensive local or national brochures produced by councils, committees and media consultants.

Well we have a choice now! At least four independent websites are now marketing Exmoor and two others, and a portal site http://www.visit-exmoor.co.uk">www.visit-exmoor.co.uk partially funded by the council. This competition ensures that market forces now apply in the selling of Exmoor.

My own commercial site http://www.exmooraccommodation.co.uk">www.exmooraccommodation.co.uk has gone from just an idea 12 months ago to a live site now getting 150 individual visitors making approximately 1000 hits daily. So collectively the areas websites must be having an enormous effect.

I feel like a woman who has just got out of a very bad marriage re marketing. Free! The Internet has freed us all!

We can all now market ourselves independently, however we like, wherever we like, with whom we like, to a world wide audience, 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year at a fraction of the cost of all previous advertising and, if required, change our adverts, pictures, prices and information daily, not yearly.

We can tell by site meters on our own websites which advertising site is working, what guests are searching for, which country the potential guests are from, right down to how long they look at your live brochure. Never before has so much marketing information been available at our fingertips.

My phone now rings with new customers - Exmoor has always had a good regular trade but attracting new faces was difficult. Four out of every five of my enquiries are now internet born and I have cut my marketing budget in half for this coming year, yet still increased my budget spend on the web.

The advice to all tourism businesses must be to get yourselves a website with site meter or log stats information on and, most importantly, get the site hosted well. Don't go for homepages on other people's sites - imagine having your paper brochure kept by someone else to distribute.

Do this very quickly because the bigger professional run tourism businesses who have in the past done the larger adverts now know how well the internet is working and will no longer pay huge sums to go in a expensive brochure where it is difficult to monitor the results.

So the councils have no choice - they must at some future date join forces to collectively raise funds to sell the whole area, otherwise it is going to cost the ratepayers bucket loads of cash for little results on an ever-increasing scale.

This does not mean the end of the Exmoor brand - Exmoor is far too big and beautiful and will always be the main selling point. Join it up with the rest of North Devon and Somerset's best assets and it can only strengthen the entire areas sales pitch.

Marketing has at last totally changed very quickly and for the better.

Tammy Cody- Boutcher,

Little Quarme Cottages,

Wheddon Cross.