With ASKAR SHEIBANI

Chair, DBF and CEO, Comtek Network Systems UK Ltd

North Wales is blessed with an incredible, breathtaking landscape, magical castles, history, culture and its beautiful language. These are the priceless and unique fixed assets of North Wales.

People all over the world travel to visit the Magic Kingdom of Disneyland in the USA. In North Wales, we do not need to fabricate such a make-believe world. We have a real living Magic Kingdom with its amazing theatres, such as Theatr Clwyd, and internationally recognised actors to tell the tails of our land.

Tourism in North Wales brings billions to the UK's economy and employs about 40,000 people. It's a key industry for the UK and must be protected. It has enormous potential for radical growth. At the moment it attracts mainly visitors from the UK but its potential to become a world attraction for international tourism is huge. The whole world can access North Wales from the air through Manchester and Liverpool international airports and via sea from Holyhead. A train from London takes just about a couple of hours.

The government has to recognise the, as yet, untapped economic potential of North Wales tourism. It would be a crying shame if the Government has no vision for this region's vast economic opportunity for growth past Covid-19 and Brexit. This industry needs to be protected during this pandemic and the Welsh Government has done a great job in doing so. Now is the time to plan, not just for its revival, but for aspirational growth.

The North Wales Growth Deal has identified an incredibly unique project opportunity in Holyhead that will create over 4,000 jobs, by reconstructing the port as a deep-water facility for heavy loading ships and cruises. This project will transform North Wales' tourism industry and take it to a new level. It will attract wealthy international visitors from all over the world. It will help our locally-based leisure, culture and transport businesses. The private sector is ready to immediately invest £45million on this project.

However, both the UK and Welsh governments have to commit to £35million public investment to enable this project to go ahead. I call on both governments to act now, not tomorrow, to make this transformative project become a reality.

Tourism, just like aerospace is a special sector. We cannot allow our key economic sectors to be destroyed. If our governments opt for indecision right now and become blind to the unique opportunities such as the Holyhead Gateway project, we will live to regret it for generations.