Agenda item

To consider the Borough Council Report.

The Tourism Manager presented a report which provided an update on the Borough Council’s tourism marketing and development activities since 2015 and highlighted the following areas:

Destination Marketing Campaign

2015 West Norfolk Holiday Guide

The 2015 brochure campaign had progressed well. To the end of August around 35,000 copies had been sent to people requesting the brochure through the advertising campaign, around 10,000 to TIC’s nationally and 13,000 copies through West Norfolk TIC and local events. Further campaigns running in September and October would see a further 11,000 distributed with the balance of 6,000 continuing to be distributed through Tourist Information Centres.

2016 West Norfolk Holiday Guide

Work is underway on production of the 2016 guide. Advertising rate cards were sent out on 1^st September. The new format introduced for 2015 would be continued and the print run of 75,000 will continue.

www.visitwestnorfolk.com

Traffic to the website www.visitwestnorfolk.com had continued to increase in 2015. This had seen the Hunstanton and King’s Lynn pages become the most viewed pages, ahead of the home page which reflected work done to improve search rankings for these terms.

When asked which themes/activities were of most interest to website visitors in 2015, the coast and beaches were ranked slightly ahead of countryside with similar numbers highlighting King’s Lynn. In terms of activities/themed areas of interest the three most popular areas indicated by users were.

 

-        Nature and wildlife

-        History and heritage

-        Food and drink

 

New Version of the Website

Work has been taking place since June on developing a new version of the website. Most importantly this would be a responsive website optimised for viewing on mobile phones and tablets as well as desktops. (currently 42% of people access the website via desktop, 29.5% via mobile phone and 28.5% via table). In April, Google indicated it would favour responsive websites over non responsive websites in its search terms. Around 83% of current visitors to www.visitwestnorfolk.com were from organic searches. Development of the new version of the website was largely in response to these changes.

 

The new site would provide much more content on many of the villages within the Borough. This was aimed at improving awareness of visitor opportunities throughout the rural areas of the Borough.

 

Mobile Phone App

Work on the new mobile phone app for the whole of West Norfolk would be progressing during the autumn. The aim was to use the same content database used for the West Norfolk website so that consumer information on facilities, services and events was consistent across online and down loaded formats.

 

Location specific and attraction based marketing

 

Distribution of the following publications had taken place throughout 2015.

 

-        Where To Go and What to Do in West Norfolk - 200,000 copies.

 

-        Discover King’s Lynn - 130,000 copies.

 

-        Hunstanton Mine guide - 42,000 copies.

 

-        Downham Market Mini Guide – 15,000 copies.

-                               

-        Lynn Lumiere (Art, Cities & Landscape) - 50,000 copies.

 

-        King’s Lynn Guided walks - 15,000 copies.

 

-        King’s Lynn Heritage open day - 11,000 copies.

 

-        Flightpath of the Spitfire Trail - 8,000 copies.

 

The King’s Lynn Pilgrimage Trail, King’s Lynn Hanseatic Trail, King’s Lynn Maritime Trail, Hunstanton Wolf Trail and Hunstanton Horticultural Trail continued to be printed and distributed with quantities of between 1,000 and 5,000 for each publication distributed each year.

Partnership Working

 

.West Norfolk were again working with Visit England. Most recently we had submitted a number of autumn experiences which Visit England will promote including.

-        Lynn Lumiere – as part of Visit England’s ‘Heritage in Autumn’ theme.

-        Castles and historic houses – as part of Visit England’s ‘Heritage in Autumn’ theme.

-        West Norfolk’s wildlife wonders – as part of Visit England’s ‘Rural escapes in Autumn’ theme.

 

The Borough Council of King’s Lynn & West Norfolk were active partners in the Visit Norfolk partnership and had continued to support and work with Visit North Norfolk Coast & Countryside.

Events

A number of new or expanded events had taken place in King’s Lynn for 2015.

In addition to the main King’s Lynn Festival, Festival Too, Poetry Festival and Fiction Festival and the Grand East Anglia Run, additional heritage events had included, and expanded to 2 days King’s Lynn Hanse Festival (16 &17 May), Magna Carta event celebration 13 & 14 June, 1940s day and RAF cadets Freedom Parade and launch of Spitfire Trail 17 & 18 July,  Beer, Butchers & Barbers 12 & 13 September, Heritage Open Day and Classic Car event 13 September.

 

Other Developments

 

Work on the Stories of Lynn is progressing well. It was expected that the new attraction would open for Easter 2016.

 

Improvement works to King’s Lynn Bus station and links to the rail station had been completed. The new information office at the bus station included new visitor information leaflet racking and a 24 hour touch screen information kiosk. The kiosk uses the same database content as the www.visitwestnorfolk.com website.

 

New pedestrian fingerpost signing for Hunstanton was installed in July.

 

The first stage application to the Heritage Lottery Fund under the Parks for People scheme for enhancements to the garden spaces (The Green, Esplanade Gardens and the cliff top to St Edmunds Chapel) at Hunstanton had led to an invitation to submit a more detailed second stage application in spring 2016.

 

Councillor Mrs Nockolds stated that she thought that it was still good to have paper brochures as these were still used. 

 

In response to a query from Councillor Mrs Wright regarding the promotion of events to the north of the Borough, the Tourism Manager explained that the Council was an active partner in the Visit Norfolk Partnership and continued to support and work with Visit North Norfolk Coast and Countryside, which gave wider promotion of West Norfolk events.  There was however always the opportunity to try and promote events more to people in the local area.

 

The Chairman noted that West Norfolk needed to be included as strongly as possible in the tourism partnerships.

 

Councillor Humphrey suggested that links to Parish Council websites could be included in the main website.  He also asked if all the publications previously referred to, were available to view on the website.  The Tourism Manager confirmed that they were, however Councillor Humphrey pointed out that in some cases the user had to rotate the view to see some sections.  The Tourism Manager agreed to look into the matter.

 

Councillor Tyler made reference to the issue of leaflets at the train station and following a meeting with the Regional Manager, the leaflets would be back in the foyer.

 

Councillor Tyler also asked if the Sensory Gardens in Hunstanton were promoted.  In response, the Tourism Manager explained that it was included within with Hunstanton Horticultural trail and the Hunstanton mini guide.

 

Councillor Tyler referred to the success of the Heritage Open Day, etc and asked if the Council was providing events that the public were interested in.  The Tourism Manager explained that he had received positive feedback on the events which had been put on, ie. Lynn Lumiere and Spitfire Trail.

 

The Chairman thanked the Tourism Manager and Museum staff and added that it had been a fantastic summer of events and hoped that it continued.

 

AGREED:       That the report be noted.