A holiday co-operative this month marked 25 years of business in the tourism trade with a celebratory dinner at a Newquay hotel.
Cornish Farm Holidays, founded in 1985 to promote farm tourism in the county, offers members a network to share ideas and work collectively to raise the industry standard.
St Austell-based Pat Smith acted as the group’s first chairperson. She said: “What we did in the 1980s was ground breaking stuff – many of the farmers viewed the tourism side of things as a bit of pin money for their wives.
“Some of them have been amazed at how successful they have been and with the downturn in farming fortunes, these tourism ventures have sometimes overtaken the farming income and become the key to the family farm’s survival.”
The group has now grown to include over 80 working farms offering self-catering and bed and breakfast accommodation, marketing themselves collectively via brochure production, a new website featuring live availability, as well as advertising and PR activity.
