EARLIER this month Worcester City Council launched a survey over a new 'five-year strategy' on tourism - hold your nose and please read on.

So many dodgy dossiers and boring blueprints have passed over Worcestershire's local authorities in recent years you'd be forgiven about not giving a hoot about yet another, but this is important stuff and not before time.

Despite boasting heritage worthy of a huge international audience, the fact is Worcester doesn't do tourism anywhere near as well as it should - and there's a big reason for that.

For all these years hot air has taken the place of big bucks, hope has been allowed to grotesquely run roughshod over genuine achievement, and the result is a gross underachievement worthy of a month's worth of non-stop handwringing.

For years people have talked about a boutique hotel for Worcester, only for the big investors to look elsewhere for a quick buck.

At one time The Hive's landscape was earmarked for one, as was the rapidly-expanding Diglis and even St Martin's Quarter, that historic bastion now loved up by a bookies, a bargain store and an in-yer-face sports retailer.

It was four years ago when a former leader of Worcester City Council, veteran Robert Rowden, stepped down as a chairman of the planning committee and said his only regret was not securing a four or five star boutique hotel somewhere close to the High Street.

The Source came across an old notepad a few weeks ago about that very conversation, which made for interesting reading - at the time he said it was the only major thing Worcester lacks, something as true then as now.

Tourism is worth £160 million to Worcester's economy and accounts for more than 3,000 city jobs, with visitor numbers up no less than 39 per cent since 2000.

In fact the whole county gets more than 100,000 international visitors a year, with Worcester a main focus of attention.

But something is rotten in the state of Denmark, with all those chances to attract a quality hotelier sadly and horrifically squandered - so much so that one Premier Inns at the cricket ground, as pleasant as it is, causes near hysteria among rank-and-file decision-makers.

If anything good comes out of this blasted survey, led it be a renewed commitment to tackle this hideous gap in Worcester's tourism offer - let all those efforts to attract an investor not be in vain.

Let this be a message to Worcester's political classes - herein, The Source is giving you just this one job.

Don't mess this up, ok?