Development of Tourism and Regulation of Visitor Accommodation (Wales) Bill

The Development of Tourism and Regulation of Visitor Accommodation (Wales) Bill was referred to the Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee for Stage 1 scrutiny of the general principles of the Bill.

About the Bill

The Bill’s aim was to promote the development of tourism in Wales, and:

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>>>restate and modernise the Welsh Ministers' functions of promoting tourism in Wales, while requiring them to have regard to the potential social impact of tourism and its potential impact on the environment and the Welsh language;

>>>regulate the provision of visitor accommodation in Wales by:

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***introducing a licensing regime to reassure visitors that accommodation meets the standards they would expect and aligning those standards, in the case of self-catering accommodation, more closely with corresponding standards already applicable to the private rented sector in Wales,

***making a standard in relation to the fitness of visitor accommodation a contractual requirement, and

***building on the register created by the Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Act 2025 to establish a visitor accommodation directory for the purpose of providing information to the public about visitor accommodation in Wales.

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Terms of reference

To inform its scrutiny, the Committee considered:

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>>>The general principles of the Development of Tourism and Regulation of Visitor Accommodation (Wales) Bill and whether there is a need for legislation to deliver the Bill’s stated policy objective, which is to promote the development of tourism in Wales as set out above.

>>>The Bill’s provisions, including whether they are workable and will deliver the stated policy intention.

>>>Any potential barriers to the implementation of the Bill’s provisions.

>>>Whether there are any unintended consequences arising from the Bill.

>>>The Welsh Government’s assessment of the financial and other impacts of the Bill as set out in Part 2 of the Explanatory Memorandum.

>>>The appropriateness of the powers in the Bill for Welsh Ministers to make subordinate legislation (as set out in Part 1: Chapter 5 of the Explanatory Memorandum).

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The closing date for sharing your views was 16.00 on Monday 17 November.

Overview of the analytical methodology

All responses received through this consultation were analysed using a mixed methods approach.

The text was analysed with the support of Natural Language Processing (NLP) software. The purpose of this approach was to enable us to efficiently analyse the growing number of responses to this consultation over time. This approach gave the Senedd opportunities to be more flexible in analysing the consultation responses, drawing out themes, sentiment and key messages for individual subject committees based on their areas of interest.

While the NLP tool assisted in identifying themes, research analysts still provided the most significant input in terms of analysing and reviewing all consultation responses and quality assuring the themes coming from the NLP. The NLP would not make any decisions about individuals or individual responses and was only accessible to limited members of the research team.