KENT'S 3,000 tourism firms should get more involved in efforts to shout about the county, according to the new chairman of Kent Tourism Alliance (KTA).

Brent Pollard, owner of the Hop Farm Country Park, Paddock Wood, took over from Bill Dax, the former Eurotunnel shuttle boss, at the start of the year.

The blunt-speaking Lancastrian and his wife Fiona, have transformed the park into one of the county's most successful attractions and event venues in just eight years. He says it is time more businesses got off their backsides to fly the flag for Kent.

He said: "This is a bandwagon that's rolling and we want more people to jump on it. If we don't all get in there and give it a good push, there won't be a business to argue about."

Last year, KTA, the county's marketing arm based in Canterbury, spent £1m promoting Kent but most investment and support came from a handful of companies, mainly Eurotunnel, other cross-Channel operators and a few attractions.

Mr Pollard warned that unless they all engaged with the KTA, and talked up the county as a great holiday destination, then the £1.2bn-a-year business employing 48,000 people would decline.

Marketing was the first thing you should do in business, he said. "If we do nothing, we will die. We have to get behind our county and use our own money to achieve it. We need the public and media to shout about it."

KTA faced a potential funding crisis when the new board of Eurotunnel slashed its contribution from around £400,000 a year to £20,000.

But other sponsors have stepped in, even though expenditure this year - £750,000 – will be less than last year. Mr Pollard was convinced that "within a couple of years, we will be back to north of one million".

Investment is shared almost equally between public and private sectors. This contrasts with areas receiving huge grants from the Government. Yorkshire and Wales, for example, are given seven-figure sums to market their regions.

But tourism funding has always been difficult in Kent. Council spending on tourist information centres, for instance, is discretionary and several have closed.

Mr Pollard said that KTA, founded three years ago, was a good model and had made a good start. "Thanks to Eurotunnel for getting it off the ground, it's got a sense of maturity now."

But he wanted more businesses to engage with it, to ring up for information and advice. "If you don't get engaged with a larger body, you will struggle."

Around 50 firms invested in KTA, but that left nearly 3,000 that did not.