One step forward one step back.........

I am not sure what to make of the latest story to be headlined in the local high quality newspaper regarding the shopkeeper excluding tourists from his emporium. It has I see also reached national press coverage so now we have Christchurch jockeying for top headlines with the crisis in Cyprus and the Russian takeover of their banking system! They do say that any publicity is good publicity but this does seem a bit over the top, in the middle of the worst recession for nearly one hundred years, to exclude a big chunk of the market potential is very strange. Maybe there is an angle here that I am missing, but it is hard to avoid the obvious reaction that we are doing everything we can to make Christchurch a good experience for visitors so this sort of story does not help. I understand that there is absolutely nothing we can do as a Council; we just have to let the process develop to see if he can continue to be successful as a business with the constraints he applies. Still I suppose this is part of the extraordinary and eclectic community we have in Christchurch and part of me thinks that the tourists will continue to visit our town irrespective of the shopkeeper’s attempts to exclude them, probably just to see the shop that doesn't like tourists and have their photographs taken next to the sign. I do hope so!