WITH the strengthening spring sunshine, and lots of daffodils out on village greens, visitors are starting to come back to the Dales in larger numbers.

Not everyone welcomes the influx of 'grockles' or whatever pejorative term is sometimes used. It is all too easy to grumble about visitors’ cars on narrow lanes, crowded car parks, eroded footpaths, too many souvenir shops.

But how else would a village like Grassington be so vibrant without visitors spending in the shops, boutiques, restaurants and the four pubs the village manages to support? High house prices and second homes are not caused by visitors, but people who choose to retire to a beautiful area or invest in a property; the real cause is a failure by local authorities and others to invest in sufficient affordable and rented properties for local people, a problem suffered by all attractive rural areas in the UK, not just national parks.

Likewise grumbles about low-paid and seasonal jobs – surely better than no jobs at all – also disguise the fact that tourism in the Dales supports a huge number of small business, often husband and wife teams providing catering or accommodation.

This includes many farming families who not only offer accommodation in otherwise redundant buildings to support the farming enterprise, but can also produce high-quality food and other products not just for visitors but for wider markets – top-class Granola from Yockenthwaite, Yorkshire Chorizo from Malham, Blue Pig Sausages from Long Preston, Wensleydale, Swaledale and even Ribblesdale cheese, all now to be found in local delicatessen shops and better supermarkets.

There is a lot of snobbery and ignorance about tourism. When traditional industries such as lead mining and textiles died out in the Dales during the 19th and early 20th centuries, it led to mass out-migration of many Dales families. Even quarrying has now declined in importance, and employs far fewer people in actual quarrying or transport. Farming, now less labour intensive, requires far fewer workers than even a generation ago.

Tourism is now the biggest earner of income for Dales communities and, taken with its service industries and suppliers, is vital for the local economy. It also supports the infrastructure needed for other cutting edge service industries such as IT development, marketing and public relations.

The statistics are impressive. In 2013, in the Yorkshire Dales and what is called the wider 'area of influence' of the national park, including key market towns such as Skipton and Settle, the total number of 'visitor days' spent in the area came to a massive 12.4 million, of which 8.2 million were day visitors from nearby towns and cities, whilst 4.1 million were staying visitors from further afield.

Using the internationally accepted STEAM economic measure based on actual visitor spending in the local economy (this includes the well-known multiplier effect, as every tourist pound is spent more than once within a local economy), day visitors contribute a massive £279 million a year to the economy, but staying visitors, who pay for accommodation, meals and tend to spend more on personal shopping, contribute a massive £287 million. This totals £565 million or over a half a billion pounds each year.

This is a huge boost to the economy of Yorkshire.

But tourism in the Dales is essentially about small businesses. Sustainable tourism, the most appropriate form of tourism in the Dales, is all about visitors understanding and caring for the landscape, purchasing local produce and services, using public transport such as DalesBus or the Settle Carlisle line to reach the area or when they arrive, walking, cycling, caving, riding, staying in a local B&B, farmhouse, campsite or country hotel, enjoying locally produced food and real ale, visiting local attractions.

An important new initiative fostered by the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority and Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty is Destination Dales (details at www.yorkshiredales.org). This is a partnership of Dales businesses working together for mutual support and benefit, under the umbrella of Welcome to Yorkshire. The focus is on making the Yorkshire Dales, after the huge success of the Tour de France, an international tourist destination. This work is also supported by the Dales Tourism Network, (www.dalestourism.com), an informal network of tourism and hospitality businesses sharing information and ideas as well as offering a programme of events and training activities.

We live in a highly competitive world. Visitors from UK and overseas have a huge choice of where to go to spend their money. If the Yorkshire Dales is to be recognised as a world class destination, our tourism product, and the hospitality we offer our visitors, must be world class.

This will not happen by itself. It is all about offering a high quality experience and good value for money. Destination Dales and the Tourism Network can provide know how and support to help providers achieve this. We have a supremely beautiful landscape and rich cultural heritage which has to be protected, maintained and looked after. But we must also prevent any pathetically short-sighted decisions by any future national, regional or local Government body to cut national park and AONB budgets to leave visitor centres closed when tourists arrive, footpaths neglected and visitor facilities axed, or the bus services that bring our visitors to the Dales withdrawn.

When the visitors come to clog our roads and fill our car parks, let’s remember these are the people paying for our future.