http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/cardiff-only-welsh-destination-top-3901442

Barely any foreign tourists went anywhere else in Wales.

How many of them are Dr. Who fans?

I thought that Wikipedia page where it said that Cardiff got 18 million visitors was a bit off.

Judging by the comments from the Welsh Government spokesperson in the article, you'd be forgiven for thinking that we were punching above our weight.

I find these figures rather shocking, but alas unsurprising bearing in mind that it's such a palaver to get here from overseas even if you wanted to.

If you take out the large number of visitors who visit simply for 6 nations and similar matches (eg those from Ireland and France who would be classified as overseas visitors) at the Millennium Stadium, then the underlying figures are surely terrible for a capital city? Shouldn't the sporting visitors be the icing on the cake which push us up the rankings rather than being the base of our tourism visitors ?

Jeez Ben, that reminder has just gone and made the picture appear a whole lot worse than even I had imagined.

I thought that the official line was that visitors were flocking from afar to watch Olympics football at the Mill Stadium? Hmmm.

Wizard - the blunt truth is that Cardiff is not really a capital city in the sense that London or Paris are, or even to the extent that Edinburgh is. I honestly think people need to be a bit more realistic in their expectations.

Does anyone have any ideas about what could be done to boost the numbers?

I agree, Cardiff doesn't feel like a capital city. I've been to Bern, New Delhi, Wellington. All capital cities, and all with similar populations as Cardiff, and they all feel like capital cities, whereas Cardiff just feels like another slightly large town.

Again, any ideas about tourism?

I think the likes of Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow etc also get visitors connected to sporting events - possibly even more than us given the amount of Irish and non-UK fans Liverpool, Man Utd, Everton, Man City have. We only play France, Italy and Ireland once a year normally. This year we only played Ireland at home.

Having said that I think the figures are disappointing. I don't think Cardiff can compete with the likes of Edinburgh, Liverpool and Glasgow in terms of attractions and I think the Scottish cities benefit from 'ancestory' tourism much more than we do. We have a nice little city. It's pleasant and for us who live here we are very lucky. But to choose Cardiff over say Edinburgh is like choosing Brno over Prague, Aarhus over Copenhagen, Nantes over Paris, Stuttgart over Berlin. You either have to have a reason to go there or you like to seek out places a little off the beaten track.

Plus you can't fly directly here from most places. You have to make a big effort and bypass other lovely places to visit like Bath, Bristol, Oxford etc on the way.

If Cardiff was a base for other attractions then I think that would make a big difference. I'd imagine that people staying in Bristol would use it as a base to explore Bath, the Cotswolds, north Devon etc. Outside of Cardiff we don't really have destination towns or cities that you would also want to visit. I suppose there are the Brecon Beacons or maybe the Gower but you wouldn't use Cardiff as a base to explore west or north Wales for example.

I don't think the 'league' ranking is too bad. Above larger cities such as Leeds, Nottingham, Newcastle and Sheffield. Disappointing to be 94K visits fewer than Bristol though.

Interesting to note Cardiff was last top 10 in 2008 but since 1999 has always been between 9th and 12th.

Some more facts: 60,000 of the staying visitors came from France. 28k from Ireland, 23k from USA and 22k from Australia.

For holidayers, 30K from France, 15K from Australia, 13K from USA, 10K from Belgium, out of 121,000 total.

Out of 52k staying visitors for business purpose, 12K from France, 5K from Germany and 4K from USA.

Playing around with the stats is quite interesting. Around 2k staying overseas visitors to Merthyr Tydfil, of which 1k came from Portgual.

I think there are a large amount of Portuguese workers at various food plants in the Merthyr area. Probably relatives coming over to see them.

God could you imagine, trading Portugal for Merthyr Tydfil.

Missing part of the puzzle? http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/guggenheim-lets-bring-one-worlds-3904239 I believe that only around 5% of the National Museum of Wales' collection is ever on display. This could help. Guggenheim did wonders for Bilboa and people go there just to see it. Although the Pembrokeshire lad in me says it would be better in Tenby.

Wales has never sold itself as an international tourist destination in the same way that Scotland and Ireland does.
Anyone who has visited the tourist honeypots in Scotland will know just how bad Wales is at marketing itself.

Welsh tourism is primarily aimed at the cheap and cheerful caravan park crowd or the outdoor activity type who are encouraged to treat the Welsh countryside as one big adventure playground. Neither faction has any regard for the local people or culture.

It's hardly surprising we attract so few overseas visitors.

A pair of Chinese tourists asked me to take their photos in front of the Alliance sculpture today. We do have tourists, we just don't have that many.

Where would you put this guggenheim cymru?

The bay?

One location could be Porth Teigr. Another could be the Sports Village, where plans had a 40,000 square feet art gallery in the base of the hotel tower. So perhaps the developers have been talking about this?

Somewhere next to water, Porth Teigr or Sports Village for me, unless the major catalyst for Dumballs Rd redevelopment along with other projects to make the area viable/visitable.

Doesn't the CCC master plan have an 'iconic' building planned for where the Red Dragon centre is? What about the council offices location? Close to some water and the train station and a lot easier to get to than the ISV for tourists.

The word iconic is almost inevitably attached to the word building in any development blurb these days, in the same manner that the word apartment cannot be printed with the luxury prefix.

Every city the length and breadth of the globe have conversations about 'having a Guggenheim' on their patch. It's a bit adventurous imagining having one nestled between Morrisons and Toys R Us in the Sports Village so I wouldn't get too carried away with the dream!

Now that would be art!!

A great museum, yes. A Guggenheim, I think not. I understand there are massive fees to be paid to the foundation for the branding. The money might be better spent on other things that make the museum good. We are not in the same league as Berlin, Venice and New York, and might not have the revenues.

And Bilbao minus the museum is still much nicer than cardiff. although i recognise the museum has contributed to the broader upkeep of the city.

I've always thought that something like this
http://m.skyline.co.nz/mobile/m_rotorua_luge/
Could do very well up near castle coch.

Okay, let's brainstorm.

What does Cardiff have that we could exploit? It had Roald Dahl, Doctor Who, and the Merlin legends.

Okay, then perhaps we could start a Roald Dahl museum, and a museum about Merlin and local legends.

Doctor Who would be harder because it's owned by the BBC, but I'm sure a savvy negotiator (Jantra?) could allow them to use its image a bit more.

The Doctor Who Experience down the bay could be expanded, as the show has fifty years of history, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down any time soon.

Then there's the "official" Doctor Who convention which is organised by the BBC. I remember that when it was announced, there was a huge furor because the tickets were too expensive, and there were too few seats. Maybe we could start with a smallish venue, then work our way up as numbers grow, eventually going for the MilStad. I've been to Doctor Who conventions, and they are always packed, even more so if the stars of the show appear. Maybe we could write it into their contracts that they have to appear?

Following Doctor Who, we could also come up with a Dalek Walk. We place a dozen different coloured Daleks all around the city, and make a game of finding every one. They'd all have to be within walking distances of each other, but it could be a great opportunity to show people the local sights, and I'm sure the kids would eat it up.

I know people who have come from the states to go to the dr who experience, no idea how busy it gets though as to whether it is worth expanding.

Roald dahl is perhaps our most famous son, there definitely should be something, nite sure about a museum, that seems too formal and stuffy.
The thing that kids love about Dahl, compared to Disney for example, is dahl can be much more dark and macabre - I would hope that any Dahl themed attractions in cardiff would be able to capture that aspect.
There are loads of things you could do though.

I also think a braveheart style film about a leading figure in Welsh history could make a surge in interest , has anyone got mel Gibson's number?

Hugh the younger despencer would make a brilliant baddie.

The main problem is after his childhood, Dahl lived outside of Cardiff. There is a museum/attraction in Buckinghamshire where he lived so I think we've missed a trick with that one.

I don't think of Merlin being Cardiff. The places I associate him more with are Tintagel in Cornwall, and Camarthen in West Wales. What is the Cardiff link?

I think we could sell the castles more; could sell our modern music and culture better (e.g. A museum of modern Welsh music and culture); and push it as a great place for a combined city visit and beach/country visit.

Cardiff has Arthur associations but they're rather tenuous such as the original Welsh for Cathays was Caerarthwys - Arthur's Fort and other things to that nature. One thing that we can exploit as a country would be the mabinogion. The Irish may have shaped the world's vision of Celticness but the mabinogion are ours. I've always thought they'd lend themselves easily to a series of films. They are however based in West and North Wales, Ireland and England so wouldn't really be of direct benefit to Cardiff. The books were a major influence on the well known cambriaphile Tolkien and could do well in the wake of LOTR and The Hobbit whilst capitalising on the major popularity of series like Game of Thrones. These could be our Braveheart. If all else fails a film on Glyndwr or Llew. ein lliw olaf could work.

I think we're missing a trick here. Robin hood lived in she roof forest - a forest that covered most of England at the time. Nottingham picked up on this and have exploited it. Cardiffs famous sons:-

Marconi
Willows
Scott
Dahl
Doctor who
Ivor bach
Merlin/Arthur/Camelot
Bassey

The city was the fuel of the industrial revolution and do on. Leprechauns don't actually exist but that doesn't stop the Irish exploiting it.

Talking about 'taking advantage', how is Scott (born in Plymouth) a 'son' of Cardiff? Surely not because of his sailing from here on his last expedition. Using that loose connection, there are so many Cardiff 'sons' of many nationalities who left/arrived at Cardiff docks! 👲👳👮💂👶

Then you must be more lucid in your posts.

Indeed, New Delhi is as big as London. Far more chaotic too.

You could fit the Cardiff city centre all along the Raj Path and still have acres of land left over. Methinks someone is telling porkies about their visit to India (or meant to say somewhere else).

I would suggest a small Dylan Thomas museum to boost the tourist numbers, either here, or in Swansea. But from what little I've heard about him, he wasn't particularly proud of Wales.

Please, correct me if I'm wrong.

Cardiff's story is wrapped around the Docks and the explosion from rural to urban in short space of time. Developments here were accelerated at a pace akin to parts of America and in a UK context is fairly (not wholly) unique - there was no real exisiting centre of population like Manchester, Glasgow etc etc.

Bute Street, in its heyday, has been labelled 'an artery of the empire' such was its importance in a British context, wider still it has a global context, as we know what we are left with a city where in excess of 50 languages are spoken.

For me Cardiff isn't about one or two people its about all of us, we are all basically from somewhere else but add to the beat of this city and bring our own flavours. We have enough castles, musueums, sporting events, musical concerts and successful sports teams and the like as generic attractions but what we should do is to concentrate on the story of the people.

I like The Cardiff Story Museum, yes it could do more and their a plans for this, it tries to tell this story. The story doesn't make us unique but it makes us what we are and that is far more important.

There is a Cardiff Story in the old library. Its interesting enough to get a feel for the place. But it is a bit whimsical