The first step towards solving a problem is recognising that you have one in the first place.

In the past 10 weeks I have been publishing the footfall ­figures for Dartmouth in my Dartmouth Business News blog. They are percentage ­figures compared against both the UK and the Westcountry figures on an annual and ­weekly basis. Those figures have shown a year-on-year drop in footfall in Dartmouth of between 18 and 24 per cent. The latest report for the Food Festival week shows a drop of 27 per cent from the previous year’s figure.

I cannot publish the actual numbers, I only have permission to access the comparison percentages.

I am sure people would agree that these figures show Dartmouth has a serious ­problem with declining visitor numbers compared with the rest of the Westcountry and

the UK as a whole, and for ­businesses in the town I suspect it will be a concern.

At a time when the weak pound is bringing more visitors to the UK, I am concerned and feel that we must now work together to respond to this decline with serious action.

Who should be responding?

The town council strategy document states that it has a responsibility to oversee the economic welfare of the town as well as its environmental health and welfare, so I would like to see the council recognise this problem in its actions.

We have heard that £350,000 was spent on refurbishing the Guildhall and hundreds of thousands are planned for acquiring liabilities from South Hams District Council. If that kind of money could be spent on recruiting a town manager with a responsibility for ­professional marketing and promotion of the town, then the positive impact on the town’s economy would be significant.

Dartmouth Visitor Centre could help to support this action by making sure it ­publishes more direct measurements of tourist activity. It could start by communicating measures that make a real ­difference to the town, such as weekly footfall, destination website hits, accommodation occupation rates, number

of Discover Dartmouth ­subscribers… These would all give a better indicator for local ­businesses of how the town is performing.

It could also harness the many young social media users in the town as a volunteer ­digital army with an objective to saturate social media with positive messages about Dartmouth and its attractions. This could be low cost and just needs to be organised by the DVC with clear targets for ­raising Dartmouth’s profile.

The district council is focused on its own money-­saving strategy, which has been imposed on it by central ­government, so it is forced to make decisions that may have an adverse effect on the local economy.

The Dartmouth Chamber of Trade seems to have lost the support of Dartmouth businesses. I am not sure why that is. So now there is no organisation investing in marketing the town. That is apart from the individual businesses in the town and the activities of our festivals. Added this year was Woofstock, which set a really good example of what can be achieved with a professional approach by a few dedicated volunteers and a sound, low-cost digital marketing strategy. The web was saturated with information and brought 2,000 extra visitors to the town – not counting the dogs.

I have hundreds of blog visitors – and not only businesses. Using my blog, I can only keep businesses informed by gathering this type of tourism data, then communicating it effectively online. It is sent to 350 local businesses, councillors and individuals with an interest in the business activities of the town. Typically, 160 local readers will pick up my newsletters, comprising business owners, town councillors, district councillors and even our MP on occasion.

Our problems, though, are now obvious from these footfall numbers and it is time for all of these organisations to work together, gather the best ­marketing skills they can and implement a programme that will reverse this downward trend. Brand Dartmouth is just as fabulous as it was in 1999,

so let’s put aside personal ­considerations for the good of the town.

However, as I said early on, first we need to recognise that we have a problem before we will be able to solve it.

Dartmouth deserves it.

Paul Reach

Swannaton Road, Dartmouth