UPDATE - Your say on Oxford's 'tourist hell' 

OXFORD has descended into ‘tourist hell’ and tour operators should spare a thought for city residents.

That’s the view of city councillor Mary Clarkson who lashed out at the impact tourists are having in Oxford’s busiest visitor hotspots over the summer.

Just before she took a trip up to Edinburgh at the weekend, she took to Twitter to say she was looking forward to a ‘brief respite from the tourist hell of our own small city of Oxford’.

She added: “Oxford is pretty much impossible between June-October. Cycle lanes all full of illegally parked tourist coaches & pavements blocked.”

Talking to the Oxford Mail, the Marston councillor said: “There are places it’s particularly bad. On Saturday and Sundays St Giles, which is a dangerous road for cyclists anyway, cycle lanes have been totally blocked by coaches. A lot of their drivers were unable to see cyclists by them. They have been leading tourists into the traffic. You cannot walk along some of the pavements.

“You need to manage the coaches and the tourist groups and it would make everything better if they said ‘you can walk two abreast. When you’re going to give a talk about Oxford, you don’t need to stand in fire exits’.

“I am not saying: ‘don’t have tourists’. I am saying: ‘think about the other residents of the city’. We live in a lovely city and we should expect people to come all year round. The people making money from tourists, they need to think about what they’re doing.

The operations manager of City Sight Seeing Oxford, John Corti, said coach drivers had been forced out of the city centre by key improvements.

Mr Corti said: “One of the reasons I think there are so many coaches parked on and by Osney Mead and around Oxford is because of the Westgate development.

“All the coaches are now dropping off in the city rather than in the Oxpens [coach park] and they are going to park as close to the city rather than the park and ride. They can park there without any hassle.”

“Any visitors are a bonus for the city and business will and can guarantee sales if they can.

“The city is beautiful – and you share something beautiful.”

Oxford attracts about seven million visitors per year and they generate about £780m for businesses, Oxford City Council said.

And Martin Walker, marketing and development manager for Experience Oxfordshire, said: “August is the busiest month for visitors to Oxford and this does present challenges for a relatively small city.

“However visitors do bring massive economic benefits to the local economy. Each year Oxford welcomes over 6.6m people who spend over £800m in Oxford’s hotels, restaurants and attraction, with one in every nine jobs in Oxford in a tourism-related industry.”

A study by Experience Oxfordshire in December 2016 found holidays accounted for 53 per cent of the tourism, while 22 per cent visited family and friends and 20 per cent were on business. The remainder was to study or other reasons.