Why Welcome to Yorkshire's demise is a cautionary tale of hubris - The Yorkshire Post says

Welcome to Yorkshire, which was a private company but received millions of pounds in public money, had arguably its finest hour when the organisation helped bring the Tour de France Grand Départ to the region in 2014.

However, since those heady days the agency has fallen off its bike and went into administration earlier this year. The pandemic hit the wider sector and played a part in the agency’s demise but it had already started hurtling downhill long before then. The controversy surrounding the conduct of former chief executive Sir Gary Verity and his subsequent departure showed that all was not well.

Welcome to Yorkshire then struggled to secure the requisite funding it needed to make itself viable.

Now the true cost of propping up the region’s former official tourism agency is coming to light. Councils and businesses owed money by it are set to lose thousands of pounds.

As the original version of Welcome to Yorkshire is placed into liquidation with the brand name passing on to new owners Silicon Dales, it has emerged that unsecured creditors are set to receive 40p in the pound – slightly less than expected initially in April, with unsecured creditors collectively owed £1.8m.

Somewhere along the way, Welcome to Yorkshire had lost sight of what it was there to do. It would be remiss to overlook the organisation’s successes with the value of tourism growing by an estimated £1bn under Welcome to Yorkshire’s watch.

Its demise is no cause for celebration and Yorkshire needs an organisation that can show the world all this great region has to offer but it must do so while staying connected with the grassroots of our tourism industry.