Clutching a pint of Guinness in one hand and flicking through photos on his cell phone in the other, Nestor Aguedelo laughed and joked with his wife and sister-in-law in a corner of The Turf, a pub in north Wales that has rapidly become one of Britain’s most unlikely tourist hot spots.
“We came to Wrexham because of the TV documentary,” said Aguedelo, an engineer from Bogota, Colombia. “We got to know the city because of that, and we just wanted to see it for ourselves.”
It’s a familiar story being told across this former market, mining and brewing town, whose status has been transformed after its down-on-its-luck soccer club was bought by Hollywood celebrities Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney for $2.5 million in 2021.
That notoriety has only increased since the pair launched a fly-on-the-wall TV series — “Welcome to Wrexham” — that has turned the team’s players and some of Wrexham’s residents into familiar faces on screens around the world.
Tourists from around the world are now coming to find out more about this long-overlooked Welsh city with an urban population of 45,000.
“When we think of Ryan Reynolds, we think of Wrexham,” said Linda Williams, 70, a visitor from Reynolds’ native Canada, as she walked through the city center during a three-week trip to Wales.
Tourism revenue in Wrexham reached about 180 million pounds ($235 million) in 2023, up 20% from the year before and almost 50% since 2018, according to Ian Bancroft, chief executive of Wrexham County Borough Council.
“We know from our tourism stats that the classic tourist route is America-Windsor-Wrexham-home,” Bancroft said, referring to Windsor Castle, the royal fortress outside London where Prince Harry married Meghan Markle in 2018.
As “the Rob and Ryan effect” — as some are labeling it — takes hold, the local economy has been boosted by businesses investing in, or relocating to, Wrexham.
American food manufacturer Kellogg’s recently announced it is creating Europe’s largest cereal factory in Wrexham’s industrial estate with a $100 million investment…
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