Top travel writer Simon Calder has urged Bath tourist businesses to respond quickly to negative comments travellers made on key sites, such as Trip Advisor. These should be used as an opportunity to improve services he said in an entertaining speech to key tourism industry figures in the city on Tuesday which also tackled the challenges and opportunities the city faces.
The respected travel editor of The Independent was one of a number of key speakers at a day-long forum at the Guild Hall, organised by Bath Tourism Plus (BTP).
Endorsing key marketing messages, specifically the need to engage with social media, he urged .
The importance of new media, together with a partnership plan for local businesses, are key strategies in BTP’s bid to boost tourism in Bath to £400m by 2014.
The new marketing strategy, aimed at increasing the value to the city from its 2010 figure of £357m was launched by David Jackson, head of marketing at BTP.
Central to the plans are initiatives to engage with a number of new markets, including both the business conference market and upmarket shoppers, attracted by Bath’s niche boutiques and unique facilities.
Designs, showing the impressive new tourist information centre currently under construction in a revamped venue next to Bath Abbey, championed the state of the art facilities that will soon be on offer. It comes complete with the Festivals box office on site and is due to reopen soon.
Other initiatives, including a new Bath Conference website, a new official Bath smart phone App and spring marketing campaign, all in development for 2012, aimed at making things easier for businesses.
The Forum was also an opportunity for the new CEO of Bath Tourism Plus (BTP), Nick Brooks-Sykes, to introduce himself to the 200 Bath business leaders, get to know them and help them to plan for future growth.
Introducing himself to members at the Forum, he revealed how, as one of three son’s born to parents who were both hoteliers, he’s had a life-long passion for the tourist trade.
Bath was a fantastic city, he said, and was certainly holding its own at a time when other destinations in Britain were ‘flat-lining’. However, there was “a danger that we are complacent.”
“We are forging new and strong partnerships with others, including the Business Improvement District, Bristol Airport and our universities.”
“I want us to be a centre of excellence and we can’t do this without the private sector and I see this very much as a partnership. We can’t do it without you,” he stressed.
One of the ways that businesses can help – and help provide a key tool vital in the fight to improve visitor figures – is to ensure that monthly tourist statistics are passed to the BTP. The importance of the figures is that, when added to BTP’s unique tourism database.
This provides a great prediction tool, analysing trends and demonstrating where marketing needs to be focused to increase occupancy rates.
Bath is one of a small number of destinations in England that will be allocated additional funds by Visit England to support new marketing campaigns designed to bring new visitor spending and associated jobs to the area.
Revealing details of the plans, David Jackson, known for his own expertise in the field of social media, set out five crucial targets to increase the value of tourism to the city.
These are:
- Building on the destination’s success in the domestic market by boosting the value of overnight visitors by 12%
- Growing the value of high-spending international visitors by 12% (focusing on the US, European and selected emerging markets such as China)
- Increasing business tourism by 9%
- Growing the value of day visitors by 12%
- Increasing the number of visitor nights spent in Bath by 10%.
Workshops for Forum members explained how ‘going digital’ was an important part of the plans. Social media experts including travel website Trip Advisor’s Alistair MacGregor were on hand to reveal their top tips to members.
These included remembering to ask satisfied customers to comment on Trip Advisor, ensuring your on-line profile with kept up to date, and making webpages short and relevant to travellers looking you up on mobile phones.
- For a more in-depth report on how Bath can develop its tourist trade, the challenges we face and which countries we should be looking to when aiming to boost tourist numbers lookout for our follow-up report later this week …
