I wish to reply on behalf of The Bath Independent Guest Houses Association to Dr Swift's Chronicle letter of July 22, as we feel it contains some inaccuracies and some common misconceptions of the accommodation situation in the city of Bath.

Firstly, we have to mention the hotels.com data (about high costs for staying in the city). This is a frequently quoted statistic and unfortunately it is only based on a small sample of very high-end hotels.

It does not take into account the nearly 50 per cent of bed spaces made up by guest houses and B and Bs in the city, nor does it take into account a large number of the other accommodation providers in the city. These are all ignored by the hotels.com figure. Research under taken by both BTP and BIGHA across the whole sector indicates that average room rates are closer to around £75- £85 a night, not the £111 often quoted, which is much closer to the national average, but does not make for such interesting headlines!

Secondly, we have to comment on the availability situation. We are all aware that there is a bottleneck of accommodation in high season , on a Friday and Saturday night in Bath. This is because we are a busy tourist destination, and many people want to come at weekends. However, we are nowhere near as busy on the other five nights of the week, and also not as busy outside of the summer months. Indeed, research by BIGHA indicates occupancy levels of around 40 per cent at many of these times.

This is why B&NES Council spent nearly £40,000 of taxpayers money undertaking a Visitor Accommodation Study to look at the current situation, and to suggest a way forward for the future accommodation needs of the city and surrounding area until 2026.

What the study states is that there is a need to expand the accommodation offer in Bath, but this needs to be in a managed and sensible way, so as not to damage our current, high-quality accommodation offer in the city and unique mix of businesses. What we do not want to become is a characterless "clone" city like many other towns around the country.

We agree with this study, and its conclusions, but it is not just as simple as saying, "we are busy on Fridays and Saturdays in the summer, let's build hundreds of hotel rooms" – this would be ludicrous, and eventually bad for Bath and its unique accommodation offer. The study says we need one major four or five star development, plus a couple of "boutique" hotels to compliment our offer in the city centre. It also suggests an average figure of an expansion of around 300 rooms in the next six years to 2016.

We are not against development and growth, as we have said many times. Indeed, we supported the development of The Gainsborough Hotel at 114 bedrooms, because we felt this was good for the city. We would also support, a smaller, higher quality development at Green Park. However, we do not support a huge expansion on that site with a huge amount of budget rooms that the independent study commissioned by our council states is just not needed. Especially when there is a six floored development appearing just across the road at Kingsmead House at the same time, which again, would appear to be of the higher quality hotels required by the study.

Anyone can see that with Green Park at 190 rooms, plus The Gainsborough at 114 rooms this just adds up to too many rooms, even without the new development at Kingsmead House, and we are still six years away from the 2016 date set by the study. Are we seriously saying there will be no other expansion after this for the next six years? What about Bath Rugby's plans? The Western Riverside? All this could do is flood the city with more and more rooms at one time and this cannot be a good thing for anyone in the long term; residents, businesses and visitors alike. This needs to be researched, managed and sustained like all of Bath's precious assets, not just pushed through until it all goes wrong.

LES AND LYNSAY REDWOOD Apple Tree Guest House Bath