NEW statistics suggests that tourism in South Somerset dropped by almost 50 per cent last year compared to 2000.
But a tourism boss is upbeat about the future and has presented a strategy to bring the national press to the area in order to boost figures.
The statistics referred to were presented in a report designed to measure the effectiveness of a brochure produced and distributed by South Somerset District Council's tourism unit.
It's a rather bleak picture, although it should be noted that the report is based solely on a select group from the brochure mailing list.
Each year the tourism unit distributes copies of the Country Breaks brochure to households outside South Somerset. As part of a monitoring exercise, a set number of those are telephoned about a year later and asked a series of questions.
Of households given a phone call about the year 2000 brochure, 31.52 per cent reported to have had at least one occupant visiting South Somerset that year.
The story was somewhat different last year as the figure had dropped to 18.41per cent - with the foot and mouth crisis taking much of the blame.
The statistics were presented by tourism manager Nell Barrington at a recent meeting of the council's Leisure and Tourism Policy Panel.
Despite the drop, she was upbeat and said that 95.2 per cent of those telephoned had rated their visits as either "good" or "very good".
She also reported that calculations showed that every £1 spent on the brochure (production and advertising) generated £125 into the local economy.
A total of 46,000 copies of this year's brochure had been sent out by direct mail, with ten local businesses reporting they had taken bookings within days.
Ms Barrington never revealed a precise sum, but said the tourism unit was spending a lot of money on an external PR company. This company had good contacts with national journalists, so the plan was to get the travel writers ro visit the district to gather material for articles in the national press, promoting South Somerset throughout the UK.