NEWSLETTER

Shropshire Tourism members keep on performing to high standards, reinforcing our promotion of quality and excellence in the county.

One of the highest accolades received in Shropshire during the past few months has been the award given to Bridgnorth - Britain in Bloom Gold Achievement Award, for which Bridgnorth will go on to represent the UK in Europe next year.

The Hundred House Hotel at Norton has been named as the Dining Pub of the Year by the Good Pub Guide. Pen-y-Dyffryn Hotel near Oswestry was recently awarded the Good Hotel Guide 2003 Country Hotel of the Year

This year’s winners of the HETB Excellence Awards were announced in June, with 5 winners coming from Shropshire. Oxon Hall, Dearnford Hall B&B, Wheely Wonderful Cycling, Lyth Hill, and Royal Air Force Museum all winning an award for excellence.

Rays Farm has been voted “Highly Commended” in the Farmers Weekly Farm Attraction of the Year Competition (in the 20,000 – 50,000 category). The competition is organised by the National Farm Attractions Network and is supported by the Farmers Weekly, Lloyds Bank and the English Tourism Council.

Congratulations to you all!

This year we are proposing a change of format with the Places to Visit Map and Bedroom Browser.

After a recent analysis of the Bedroom Browser and the Places to Visit map, we realised that many attractions are advertising in both productions. We are therefore hoping to produce one booklet which will cover the needs of both publications. The booklet we wish to produce will provide more information than in the current Places to Visit map, but will also be of a high enough quality to leave in bedrooms for guests to refer to in place of the current Bedroom Browser. Before we commit to this change we would value your views so please contact Helen and let her know what you think of this proposed change.

We must point out however, to all the Shrewsbury Tourism Association members, that although Shropshire Tourism may be changing the format of the Bedroom Browser and Places to Visit map, the association will still be producing their own Bedroom Browser in the same format as this year.

You may already be aware of Simon McCloy’s appointment as Chief Executive of Shropshire Tourism. Many of you will already know Simon through his work in North Shropshire, as Tourism Officer for the District Council. Simon has worked in the Tourism industry for many years and was in the hotel trade before beginning work at North Shropshire District Council.

Simon is no stranger to the “ins and outs” of Shropshire Tourism, having been on the Management Group for a number of years. His position on the Management Group has now been taken by Bob Braddock from Bridgnorth District Council.

We have also more recently appointed a new Tourism Assistant. Ben Emanuelli joined us in October after completing university in the summer. He will be working on a variety of projects for the company and will also be very involved in the further development of the Shropshire Tourism website.

You will all know that at the beginning of the year, Shirley went off on maternity leave and in February gave birth to baby Carwyn. After much deliberation, she has decided not to return to work, but to spend some quality time with Carwyn in his early years.

Councillor John Morley of North Shropshire District Council has been elected as the new Chairman of the Board of Shropshire Tourism. He takes over the role from Councillor Roger Walker who has finished his year as Chairman.

John is 55 years old and a Director of an Information Portal Service for the International Toy Industry whose offices are based in New York. Educated at Caterham School, Surrey, VSO in Zimbabwe and then Birmingham University. Lived in Kent, Birmingham and the Isle of Man and now happily settled in Shropshire for over 20 years. Commercial experience gained by working for Shell, Mars and Lego in the fields of sales, marketing, research, logistics, production planning and information technology. As IT Director for Lego he was responsible for a European wide IT system covering sales companies based in 13 countries. A District Councillor on North Shropshire District Council, and leader of the majority Independents Group. Works closely with the Shropshire Partnership on IT issues. Recently appointed as a Non Executive Director of the Shropshire and Staffordshire Strategic Health Authority. Imported and built his own Swedish house in North Shropshire. Married with three children and likes the “very odd” occasional game of golf!

On his new position within the company, John said “It is a great honour to have been elected as Chairman of Shropshire Tourism by my fellow Board members. I am extremely keen to see the Company develop its range of products and services to its members so that it becomes a key player in the local tourism industry. Only by increasing the level of service and driving down costs, can Shropshire tourist businesses continue to trade profitably. I want to see Shropshire Tourism work with its members to pool ideas, generate new services and together promote tourism to this incredible County that is Shropshire”.

The website is going from strength to strength, with almost 10,000 page visits during the past month. Even better is the news that from now on, as a member of Shropshire Tourism you will be entitled to a free listing and free stand alone website within the Shropshire Tourism website all as part of your membership benefits. Alternatively, if you already have your own website, we can set up a link from www.shropshiretourism.co.uk to your site.

So if you haven’t already got a page on the website, please contact Ben on 01743 462462 and he will give you all the information you need.

For the gardening gods and goddesses amongst you, during the summer Shropshire Tourism attended two very popular garden shows - BBC Gardeners’ World Live at the NEC and RHS Tatton Park near Manchester. This was the first year we attended these shows and the result has been very promising.

At BBC Gardeners’ World Live, we had to ship in new stock within a couple of days of the show beginning to keep up with demand. We had a competition to see who could guess the mystery item – for anyone who saw the mystery item it was a Thistle Podger!

We will be attending a variety of shows and exhibitions again this year. We are always on the lookout for new places to promote Shropshire, so if you have any ideas of any other exhibitions worth attending, please do let us know

As you will be aware, Shropshire Tourism undertook a series of commercials promoting Shropshire on Classic fM at the beginning of the year. The commercials were accompanied by market research within Classic fM’s target audience, the aims of which were to establish whether or not the commercials had raised awareness of the county as a visitor destination, and to find out what exactly “Shropshire” meant to the listeners. 10% of the listeners surveyed had already heard of the ‘Love from Shropshire’ campaign and this increased by a further 2% after the campaign. This is quite a phenomenal achievement and the sort of result one usually gets with major campaigns. While we were running our £60,000 campaign (which included advertising and research), Sainsbury were running a £1.3 million advertising campaign.

One area of concern the research highlighted was the apparent “brand gap” between the quality visitors sought and whether they actually perceived it to be available in Shropshire. As we in the county know, Shropshire is full of award winners and high quality businesses.

So how are we going to get the message out of Shropshire? The AD2003 Shropshire and Welsh Borders brochure will be leading on quality accommodation and food & drink. The guide will highlight the award winners mentioned in this Newsletter as well as recent past award winners from other competitions. Shropshire has so much to offer a guest in terms of surroundings, choice and quality, and Shropshire Tourism will be working hard to make sure this message is conveyed to our potential visitors – loudly and clearly. So it’s best foot forward into 2003.

We are currently working on developing more member benefits. This year we have introduced the Visitor Pass scheme which allows members of Shropshire Tourism into Member Attractions in the county for free or for a reduced rate. There is also the free web page on the Shropshire Tourism website.

We are also hoping to introduce discounted purchases schemes for members, and we have many other ideas up our sleeve – so watch this space!

For the second year running a 10% discount has been negotiated on leaflet distribution for Shropshire Tourism Members with National Brochure Distribution and Caron Promotion Specialists. If you are interested in taking up this exclusive offer, please contact National Brochure Distribution on 0121 685 5000 or Caron on 01974 298513.

Shropshire Tourism is supporting a new regional campaign being co-ordinated by the HETB for Spring 2003. Aimed at the 25-40 year old couples market (DINKS – Double Income No Kids!), this campaign is based on motivating affluent couples from London and the South East to visit the region for a weekend break in February, March and April.

The advertising campaign is being developed by Cogent, an award-winning agency based in Meridan. The preliminary scheme boards are witty, sharp and evocative. The agency is seeking support from the tourism industry in the form of special offers as a hook to motivate an immediate booking response.

The £100,000 campaign will use Email, the Internet, Pop-ups and direct mail as well as traditional adverts in the Evening Standard and other London papers to suggest escaping, relaxing and refreshing and getting away from the drudge of office life. A 50,000 print run special brochure featuring the main destinations in the West Midlands will serve enquiries. There will also be a dedicated response telephone number and a dedicated web site. The campaign web site will link directly to www.shropshiretourism.co.uk so anyone with their own Special Offer will be able to add it to their page for visitors to look at.

We have received 51 Special Offers from Shropshire Tourism members which will be forwarded to HETB to form part of the campaign – thank you all for your support.