VisitWiltshire Performance & Activity Report

Transcription

1 VisitWiltshire Performance & Activity Report To: The Board Date: 27 June 2017 From: David Andrews, CEO This report describes gives an update on activity and highlights since the February 2017 Board meeting. 1. Key Points In March, Wiltshire Council reduced the company s 2017/18 grant income by 50k. The impact on contractual agreements and match-funding grant commitments to VisitEngland meant that this put the Great West Way project at significant risk. Mitigating action resulted in VisitWiltshire securing 20k funding from the LEP and 30k funding from Wiltshire Council, without which we would not have been able to proceed with our 1m GWW grant funding application. Our local Salisbury MP, John Glen, was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Arts, Heritage and Tourism in June Richard Clewer was appointed Wiltshire Council s new Cabinet member for Corporate services, heritage, arts and tourism. Richard Gamble is the new tourism portfolio holder. We expect to hear the outcome of our Round 2 Discover England Fund bid for the Great West Way (see separate Board paper). VisitWiltshire s new online shop will go live by the end of June. As the lead destination for South West England, we have launched a major travel trade event, South West Showcase, taking place in November. We will be launching 2 new campaigns this year, a Food & Drink campaign and an Attractions campaign. 2. Destination Performance Latest national figures for the Jan-Dec 2016: o Domestic tourism staying visits were -4%, mainly as a result of a 9% fall in VFR. Holiday trips were flat. o The average length of all domestic trips has dipped below 3 days for the first time with Holiday trips now just 3.42 days, indicating that the short-breaks market are increasingly looking for value for money and a competitive offer. o Domestic day visits were +5%, spend +3%. o International visits to South West England were +5%, spend +27%. Inbound tourism for the first four months of the year is significantly ahead of 2016 (visits +11%, spend +14%). The majority of this increase is coming from Holiday visitors, suggesting that they are making the most of the drop in the value of the pound. Long haul markets are performing particularly well. VisitBritain/VisitEngland are not yet reporting significant cancellations or a significant threat to forward bookings for international or domestic tourism as a result of the recent terrorist attacks. Wiltshire tourism businesses are reporting good business in the first half of 2017 and are generally positive about prospects for the rest of the year. International business in 2017 is particularly strong. The weak pound continues to have a positive impact on both international and domestic tourism, but business confidence, security and the medium-term outlook for European business remains a concern.

2 3. Partnership Activity 2.1 Recruitment and Retention As of 16 June we have 622 Partners, compared with 660 at the same time last year. Our overall Partner numbers remain down 10% following the reduction in Wiltshire Council funding. In particular as the company has focused activity on higher value businesses the drop has been among SMEs, particularly small accommodation providers. Anecdotally there appears to have been higher than usual turnover among B&Bs and pubs this year, resulting in an additional demand for entry-level and marketing advice. Notable new Partners include: Hillbrush, the Crop Circle Exhibition, Kelmscott Manor, Cosy Club, 4 golf clubs, Live Escape, Peartree Apartments, Chalke Valley History Festival, Team Pursuits, Stanton Manor, Hilditch Auctions, Grittleton House, Marlborough Literature Festival 2017/18 partner and marketing opportunity fees have been kept at 2016/17 rates. Set-up of our new Sugar CRM database (funded by SWTGF) is near completion. The number of industry networking and training events across the county, with particularly good attendance at our Wiltshire Association of Visitor Attractions, Travel Trade and Great West Way meetings. The Great West Way continues to have a significant positive impact on our partner engagement, Bristol Airport and GWR are both now supporting Visitwiltshire activity. Our online and marketing training courses continue to be in demand and well attended. Towns across the county, including Calne, Corsham, Marlborough, Bradford on Avon and Malmesbury continue to be extremely supportive of the Great West Way. We are holding a lunch for familiarisation visit for accommodation businesses at Bowood on 29 June, themed around the Great West Way. We have secured a number of town and area experiences on the VisitEngland site, including for Cricklade, Marlborough, Tisbury and the Cranborne Chase AONB. 4. Marketing 3.1 Marketing Campaigns The following national marketing campaigns are planned for 2017/18: o Escape the everyday It s time for Wiltshire (launched May 2017) o It s time for Wiltshire Days out campaign launching the new VisitWiltshire online shop Summer 2017 o It s time for Wiltshire Autumn Campaign o Cities campaign January 2018 In addition we will be launching 2 new campaigns this year. A Food & Drink campaign (including producing a new printed food and drink map), plus an Attractions campaign. Our late spring campaign, Escape the everyday It s time for Wiltshire launched in May 2017 and featured 10 partners with Longleat as the main sponsor. As part of the campaign a new social media hub was launched to gather user generated content of Wiltshire via Twitter and Instagram. This campaign aims to generate over 700k in additional spend for the county. Referrals from VisitEngland and VisitBritain websites remain extremely low. 3.2 Website and Digital From 1 February to 12 June unique visits to the Wiltshire website were just under 275k, and for Salisbury just over: 93,015. On a per annum basis we are currently tracking at 1m unique website visitors per annum. All destinations have been reporting a drop in organic website traffic this year due to Google s new destination feature which is pulling traffic away from key pages (homepage, things to do, accommodation, what s on etc). New content, for example blogs, is key. Our blog content and views are performing well. Since 1 February the page has had 28,300 unique page views, +207% on last year. Mobile traffic now accounts for 65% of our total traffic. 2

3 Our top referring sites from February - June are Facebook, Twitter and Visit South West Our consumer database now stands at just over 95,000 an increase of 20% since the last board meeting. Our new Wiltshire online shop will launch at the end of June, supported by WAVA members and featuring key attractions including Stonehenge and Longleat. We will be launching this as part of a wider Out and About attractions marketing campaign. Accommodation partners are now able to update their own entries on our website. We are rolling this out in order to monitor quality but this will save us editorial resource. A new interactive digital map will shortly go live on our website. 3.3 Social Media We now have just under 43k fans/followers, +8.4% since the last Board meeting. Instagram stories are continuing to work well on average our stories are seen by just under 400 prospects (+33%). For the first time, we are holding a joint Instameet with Igers Dorset and Igers Wiltshire at the Larmer Tree on June 25. The new social media hub which we launched in May has so far captured over 770 posts. Our target for the year is 3,000 new images. We are running the Wiltshire Farm Stay Facebook, this is on a 3 month trial (May July) with a view to take it on as a long term project. 3.4 Videos and Photography We have three new themed aerial films of which the first two have been launched and the final one (Hill forts) is due to be launched on 10 July. To date the first two have received over 30,500 views with a reach of 86,500. o Exploring Wiltshire's Kennet & Avon Canal from the air o Wiltshire s White Horses - iconic views of the landscape o Wiltshire's ancient hill forts - an aerial perspective. Our other two aerial films have received 400,000 views with a total reach of 1,450,000. We have launched a Time for Wiltshire photography competition with Newsquest. For the first time we have secured a sponsor to provide all the prizes, Castle Cameras. 3.5 Print & Brochure Distribution Our Time for Wiltshire Map (200k distribution) and Time for Wiltshire Visitor Guide (50k distribution) were published in January. We plan to produce both again for We have started advertising for our 2018 publications earlier this year. An early bookers initiative has had good take-up, and we are seeing partners upgrade from last year. For the first time we have produced a digital familiarisation passport (partners download this instead of us mailing it out saving us money). The passport offers our Partners and towns free or discounted access into a wide range of attractions, with discounts worth over 1,500. We are also looking to produce a Time for Wiltshire Food and Drink map using our illustrated map and also a bespoke Arkells map. 3.6 Groups & Travel Trade We continue to build on our recruitment of partners for our travel trade group. Holiday Inn Salisbury-Stonehenge are the most recent to join the trade group. We now have 5 investors, 11 sponsors and 16 partner businesse contributing 30,000 towards a significant programme of travel trade activity. Since the last board meeting VisitWiltshire have attended the following exhibitions/events: o Explore GB, Brighton (2-3 March 2017) 52 one to one meetings.. o ITB, Berlin, Germany, (8 12 March 2017), managed the event funded by the Great West Way, and stand shared with other South West England DMOs. o Great for Groups South at Kempton Park (26 April 2017) with 10+ stand sharers. 3

4 VisitWiltshire s spring familiarisation visit (18 20 March 2017) attracted 18 travel trade contacts. In addition to the visit programme, they also met with 17 Wiltshire businesses for one to one meetings totalling 306 meetings. Evaluation of this event indicated that this event will generate a minimum of 2,000 visits and 200,000 direct visitor spend for Wiltshire s visitor economy. In partnership with VisitBritain we hosted 3 Explore GB familiarisation visits in March: o 30 Spanish, Italian & Mexican trade delegates on 5 and 6 March o 32 Hong Kong and South China trade delegates on 8 March o 18 Canadian trade delegates on 5 and 6 March We are also currently working on the following trade activity: o Securing a regional AGTO meeting and fam for June 2018, possibly in BoA. o Finalising our 2018 travel trade strategy and programme of activity 3.7 Press & PR Since the last board report and up to the end of May we have hosted fam visits from 7 bloggers, 2 Spanish journalists, a regional journalist writing for the Midlands Chronicle & Star series and a Sunday Times journalist writing a Great British Breaks feature. We have secured significant positive PR across the travel trade media this year. Great West Way coverage has included a front cover and double-page feature on the Great West Way in the June edition of Travel GBI. Wiltshire groups and travel trade coverage has included a 6-page feature in Tourism & Travel Magazine, a Wonderful Wiltshire feature in April s Group Travel Organiser. We ran a successful training event for industry and town partners with Heather Cowper on how to work with bloggers on 31 January with 21 partners attending. From this we have received a number of blogger request visits which are likely to result in further coverage. Recent press releases distributed to over 300 regional, national and international travel media and bloggers include: o Come and see stories e.g. Feb half term and Easter o Specific time of year stories e.g. valentine s day, mother s day, father s day, April fool s day o Corporate stories eg. Launch of the Salisbury Heritage Cities app, the tourism minister attending the GWW conference, VisitWiltshire s new social hub and the launch of our new aerial films. This year we have issued press features on Chippenham, Marlborough, Ludgershall, Tidworth and Salisbury Plain, Devizes and Wilton. Many of these are featured on Our town press features have also featured prominently in local media, eg Salisbury Life ran our Devizes feature, and Wiltshire Life ran our Melksham town feature. Another key focus is on specialist media titles and we ve just issued a Golf press release which has subsequently received interest from a couple of online golf magazines who are interested in fam trips. In June we have also issued a weddings-focused press release. Key PR coverage achieved has included The Guardian British Botholes focusing on Timbrells Yard. The Metro coverage the village of Lover story for valentine s day. Mike Atkins from The Times ran his feature on Bradford on Avon. We have secured international online coverage from recent hosted press visits including Debra Bokur s series of features for Global Traveller USA, Telva, one of Spain s leading Spanish lifestyle magazines (320k monthly circulation), and 7 Days a Chicago/Detroit online & print outlet. 5. Destination Leadership & Development 4.1 VisitBritain/VisitEngland 4

5 VisitWiltshire were designated by VB/VE at the start of the year as one of 12 lead destinations in England, giving us an enhanced strategic role and input into their business planning process. As such VB/VE held a south of England destination and industry roadshow in Salisbury on 21 March. 4.2 South West Travel Trade Group VisitWiltshire continue to Chair and lead a group of South West England Destination Organisations on a proactive travel trade marketing and business development initiative. SW DMOs are contributing 5k ring-fenced funding per destination allowing us to continue to drive, and benefit from, a programme of core SWE activity that will generate additional business from international markets including Germany, Benelux and USA. As part of this by the end of June we will be launching a regional event, Showcase South West in Bristol from November which aims to attract 60+ leading international & national travel trade buyers. This is a significant opportunity for Wiltshire businesses and towns to influence key operator and wholesaler programmes. 4.3 Discover England Fund - Round 2 Application Feedback on our Great West Way bid is expected shortly (see separate Board paper). Feedback on the England s Historic Cities 1m Round 2 bid in which we have secured Salisbury as a partner is also expected shortly. 4.4 Other Grant Funding Programmes We understand that the initial level of interest shown by tourism businesses in applying for ESIF grants appears not to have translated into applications. LEADER applications appear to be going well. We are still waiting to hear if the ESIF tourism revenue programme will be released. We understand that VisitWiltshire s LEADER funding application for a Great West Way programme of activity has been approved verbally. We expect confirmation shortly. 4.5 South West Rural Productivity Commission VisitWiltshire have submitted evidence into the South West Rural Productivity Commission called by a number of south west England LEPs. 4.6 New Product HLF bids from Salisbury Museum and the Salisbury Plan Heritage Centre were unsuccessful. Both bids were favourably received and options for re-submission are being reviewed. The new REME museum and Hillbrush visitor attractions have both now opened. The new Live Escape attraction opened in Salisbury in May, initially for just 2 days a week due to planning restrictions. The 2018 Salisbury International Arts Festival has been cancelled, reportedly due to other priorities associated with the planned Salisbury arts organisations merger. Prospects prospects for the event from 2019 are unclear. Other new tourism businesses including the Farm Cookery School in Rowde, Messums Wiltshire, and a number of new accommodation providers, are bullish about their first year. Longleat s plans for a new 250 bed hotel have been well received by towns and industry. We continue to service new enquiries and interest resulting from our Wiltshire Futures accommodation supply and demand. Site availability continues to be a major barrier to growth. 5