Two resorts are laying claim to Lewis Carroll, reports Stephen McClarence At the St Tudno in Llandudno, Janette Bland, MBE, is bracing herself for Wonderland Wars. Brimming with ebullience ("Follow me to our award-winning loos!"), she runs the St Tudno Hotel in the North Wales resort that, until now, has cornered the market in Lewis Carroll tourism.

Thanks to the survival of two of the holiday homes of Alice Liddell, the child who inspired the Alice books, Llandudno has long been the world centre of Mad Hatters, March Hares and Mock Turtles.

But tourism, down its own rabbit hole of make-believe, is a competitive game. Destinations need pegs, authors are good ones, and no link is too tenuous. Sadly, with only so many well-known authors to go round, rivalries have sprung up in the looking-glass world of literary tourism.

Somerset is challenging the Lake District's exclusive claim to Wordsworth and Coleridge. Coventry and Hull are fighting it out over Phillip Larkin. The Brontes have prompted a friendly skirmish between northern villages. And now Whitby, on the North Yorkshire coast, is trying to muscle in on Lewis Carroll with its own White Rabbit Trail.

Llandudno - an elegant Victorian resort with a surprising number of palm trees - can take it. Ask Janette Bland ("the MBE is for services to tourism"), a member of the Llandudno Alice Committee, which co-ordinates Wonderlandish events and stages an annual Miss Alice competition for local girls. For 28 years, the exuberant Mrs Bland and her husband Martin have run the smart, upmarket St Tudno Hotel, where the Liddell family spent their 1861 Easter holiday. How does she feel about Whitby's pre-emptive strike in Wonderland Wars? "I'm very laid back about it," she says, with determination. "I'm not jealous. The more Alice is promoted, the better." Promotion is the key to all this. With the traditional British seaside holiday in decline, the tourist industry needs novelties - brands, themes, products, call them what you like - to woo back the millions who go abroad. "When we came here, no-one was going to the Costas and people put up with what they were given," says Mrs Bland. "My brother-in-law was in the business and he told us: 'You can give them concrete for breakfast and no one will complain'. Now people are more discriminating and you're looking for new markets. So the Alice connection is important to Llandudno. "We get a lot of Japanese and American members of the Lewis Carroll Society coming here. Some of them are quite obsessed by the Alice thing." Many head straight for the Alice in Wonderland Centre at The Rabbit Hole, the knocked-together basements of a pair of semis round the corner from the railway station. Set up in 1987, it pulls in 20,000 visitors a year to see its animated tableaux of Sir John Tenniel's illustrations. There are photographs of visiting celebrities, notably Ken Dodd (looking remarkably like the March Hare) and an enterprising range of Alice merchandise, from paperweights to table mats.

"We've all languages here, you know," says owner Muriel Ratcliffe. "Alice in Wonderland in Esperanto, if you want it." She picks up her umbrella and leads the way round Llandudno's modest Alice heritage trail. On the windy West Shore ("renowned for sunsets," says Mrs R), we see the Gogarth Abbey Hotel, another of the Liddell family's holiday homes. Across the road is a marble White Rabbit memorial, unveiled by David Lloyd George, no less, in 1933.

It is not wearing well. Vandals have knocked off the rabbit's ears and one of its legs. At one time (this is real Wonderland stuff) a stonemason repaired it with marble from a slab discarded by a local fishmonger who claimed to be "Purveyor of Fish to Her Majesty the Queen of Romania".

To deter further vandalism, the memorial has been enclosed in a globe-like metal cage and surrounded by an ugly moat. "It should be in a Victorian gazebo," muses Mrs Ratcliffe. Controversially, the inscription claims that Lewis Carroll was inspired to write the Alice books here in Llandudno. But there is no firm evidence that Carroll ever visited the resort. He preferred Eastbourne - and, as a young man, Whitby.

Over 150 miles north-east of Llandudno, Whitby is making the most of its Carroll connection. Under his real name, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the author visited the town half a dozen times between 1854 and 1871. His first published work, a poem unpromisingly called The Lady of the Ladle, was set in Whitby and appeared in the Whitby Gazette.

With those minimal facts, The White Rabbit Trail weaves its fanciful way round winding back streets and steep cobbled alleys. "We're not claiming a lot by Carroll," says co-author Anne Dennier from Whitby Civic Society. "This is just a hook for people to look at Whitby as it was in the 19th century." The only surviving building with a Lewis Carroll link - apart from the Walrus and Carpenter cafe (disappointingly, no mock turtle soup) - is the house in East Terrace where he stayed. Blue-plaqued, solidly 1840s and with grand views over the harbour, it is now Barnards Hotel. Its owner, Donald Pearson, says he has regular inquiries from Carroll enthusiasts, "but I dare say half the people who come to Whitby don't know about Lewis Carroll."

He has a point. Captain Cook (born nearby) and Dracula (the novel opens with a Whitby shipwreck) are much bigger business in Whitby. And a glance round the Tourist Information Centre shows the populist preoccupations of money-spinning tourism. A video of James Herriot's Yorkshire is on show alongside books called Classic Heartbeat Country, Inside Emmerdale and The Yorkshire Teapot Trail. Though, to be fair, St Hilda and Her Times, a less glossy publication, is also available.

Back in Llandudno, at the Alice in Wonderland Centre, Muriel Ratcliffe has just opened a parcel from Japan. "Look at this," she says. "A Japanese lady who came here last year has written a book about children's literature." She hands it over. It is called England, The Fantasy Land. With no trace of irony.

A TOWN FOR ALICE

Alice in Wonderland Centre (01492 860082),
Trinity Square, Llandudno, is open Monday to Saturday, 10am-5pm (plus Sunday, 10am-4pm, from Easter to end of October).
Admission: Pounds 2.95, with concessions.
Bed and breakfast at the St Tudno Hotel, Llandudno (874411) is from Pounds 47.50 per person per night.

 From Pounds 40 at Gogarth Abbey Hotel (876211).

From Pounds 15 at Barnard's Hotel, Whitby (01947 606167).

The White Rabbit Trail costs Pounds 1.50 from Whitby Tourist Information Centre (01947 602674).