New online toolkit will help towns and villages promote themselves

This month sees the launch of a new online toolkit and do-it-yourself illustration of how to create a great local website aimed at visitors. The interactive guide, commissioned by Warwickshire County Council, aims to make it easy for smaller destinations to get themselves on the tourism map.

 A great local website promoting your town or village to tourists makes terrific business sense. Alex Holmes, the council’s Visitor Economy Manager, explains what inspired the “Visit Local” scheme which aims to get local communities and businesses to up their tourism game.

Up and down the country, market towns and villages are starting to wake up to the idea that tourism is not just for the big boys in the urban centres and heritage honeypots. 

There are countless examples of good practice in smaller local communities where businesses have come together with civic leaders to create distinctive new visitor experiences, backed by proactive place marketing campaigns.

The online revolution accounts for much of this. It is now easier and cheaper than ever to attract new visitors to come and spend money in your local community.  You don’t have to mass-produce and distribute costly visitor guides. An effective local destination website is an essential first step and has huge potential to draw in visitors, yet can cost very little.

A good example is Midhurst, a small market town in West Sussex, with a local population of under 5,000.  The Midhurst Tourism Partnership is a non-profit organisation run by a group of volunteers who are passionate about their place. Their aim is to raise the profile of the town to encourage more visitors to eat, drink, sleep and shop there, no matter where those visitors come from. The town has a hugely successful website www.visitmidhurst.com driving business to the area.  Attractive, vibrant and stuffed full of great content, it really sells the place and its businesses.

A second example is Westerham in Kent.  Again, a town with a tiny local population (4,000) has come together to form a dynamic town partnership. The website, www.visitwesterham.org.uk serves as a hub for business, community and tourism information.

Of course, the challenge for local town partnerships is not just to get the promotion right – the product has to be right too. Local knowledge means they are uniquely well-placed to create distinctive visitor trails, packages and experiences to keep people in the area longer. And the longer they stay, the more they will spend locally.

Experience Chipping Norton www.experiencechippingnorton.com invites visitors to “explore the real Chippy experience” in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds. The promotional message is backed up by a host of suggestions on events, hospitality and things to do, including nearby walking and cycling routes.

Hawkhurst in Kent has a track record of inventing creative ideas to keep visitors longer. Examples have included a smugglers’ heritage trail (“When Hawkhurst Ruled the Weald”) and “Beefing it up.”  The latter was a project and Food Festival in 2010 to celebrate the centenary of the OXO cube which was created and launched in the town. The Hawkhurst Community Partnership delivered a number of events which culminated in a cookbook featuring recipes from local residents and local producers.

The moral of the story is that even the smallest places can create something special for visitors. Get the product and the promotion right and visitors will surely come!

Warwickshire County Council’s “Visit Local” scheme aims to encourage community and business groups across rural Warwickshire to support new tourism partnership work. To inspire some ideas on how you can improve your web presence for visitors, head to www.destinationtemplate.co.uk