A right good read

Our new Visitor Guide for 2010 has been recently published and has gone down a storm! 60 pages of beautifully styled and stylishly written Lancashire information has seen a flurry of praise for this magazine/brochure.

The guide has been carefully crafted to reflect the new Visit Lancashire branding and to showcase the very best that Lancashire has to offer. It has emotive and inspirational copy, with real-life stories and a wealth of practical information. I know I’m biased but I can’t believe anyone can resist a trip to our beautiful area after picking up one of these.

We knew that Kate had surpassed all expectations and produced a hit when all our parents reported sitting down and reading it cover to cover. Personally, my husband now seems to have planned our weekends for the rest of the year, visiting every attraction mentioned!

As a tourism business in Lancashire – all accredited accommodations, Taste Lancashire restaurants and all attractions – appearing in the guide was as simple as agreeing to an advert, getting a free listing as a member of LBTB, or being a previous winner of our Tourism Awards.

It is so different to anything we’ve done before it seems that everyone wants to be in it in retrospect! Make sure you don’t miss out on the 2011 Guide which will be even bigger and better than this one (if that’s possible). As with this guide, you will recieve a letter and we send numerous e-mails about advertising opportunities. Also – watch this blog!

If you want to pre-register your interest for next time and you don’t want to miss out then by all means contact Kate now kroberts@lbtbltd.com

To get editorial free you need to ‘win it to be in it’. Enter our Tourism Awards 2010 right now.

Thanks go to the following for advertising in the Visitor Guide 2010:
Pleasure Beach Resort, Industrial Powerhouse Northwest, Lancashire Museums, Sandcastle Waterpark, Barton Grange Garden Centre, Mitton Hall, Camelot, Farmer Ted’s, WWT Martin Mere, Farmer Parr’s Animal World, RSPB Leighton Moss, Northcote/Ribble Valley Inns, Toast, Chapel Gallery, Samlesbury Hall, Top Hat Tours, Towneley Hall, The Hands On Gang, Harris Museum and Art Gallery, NT Rufford Old Hall, Garstang Country Hotel, Brooklands Retreat, Lancaster House Hotel, Bayley Arms, Gibbon Bridge Hotel, Highcliffe Holiday Apartments, Marina Cafe, Penny Street Bridge, The Cartford Inn, Millstone at Mellor, Shireburn, Waddington Arms, Berwyn, The Carment Rose, Dalmeny Hotel, Clogh Bottom Farm Cottages and Stanley House, Browsholme Hall, British in India Museum, Carlton Hotel, Capernwray House, Little Orchard, Mytton Fold, Redwings, Riverside, The Lodge.

sarah lundy

Revel in Rich Revelations

I’m currently working on the 2010 short breaks campaign ‘Heritage Revealed’ which I’m planning will be crammed with multi-media activity, treasure trails, day-in-the-life blogs, press articles and competitions.

There’s a lot of work to do be done before the campaign kicks-off in January and I’ve already been out and about visiting some of Lancashire’s heritage gems (both people and places) with the new addition to the marketing team – our trusty Flip Video camera.  (I was at Towneley Hall on Wednesday)

Over the next two months I’m gathering together interviews, video footage, audio recordings and images from the passionate people who work in, or tour around, some of Lancashire’s heritage attractions. All this valuable information will be used in some capacity within the campaign, whether as on-line video clips, feature articles in the brochure or as PR stories to send out to press.

The main part of the campaign is going to be the two heritage themed treasure trails we are having created for Lancaster City Centre and for the Pennine Lancashire area. We’ll be sending out 30,000 copies of the trails out to the some of our existing database and to new contacts (We are buying a list of 15,000 targeted names) who we hope to entice into Lancashire with competitions, special offers, heritage trails, tasty treats and the promise of a warm Lancashire welcome!

The brochure element of the campaign (it will be a stylish, A5 landscape design) will include a selection of day-in-the-life interviews and inspirational feature articles on places to stay, eat and visit during your visit. We are keeping the print-run fairly low for this (10,000) but will also be creating a digital version so people can read it on-line (and help us reduce waste). This will just be sent out to those people who specifically request a hard copy and made available in tourist information centres across the northwest and Yorkshire from February 2010.

From the campaign website you can expect video clips, interactive maps, blogs, trails, competitions, tweets and probably much more – As you can imagine the marketing team will be very busy over the next few months creating this website and the content required.

Tourism businesses can get involved at different levels – Gold (£595), Silver (£295) and Bronze (£150). Don’t forget that tourist board members also get a 20% discount on these rates.

These packages include varying degrees of advertising, web entries, blog entries, special offers, inclusion in the treasure hunt, press coverage and more…. For a full list of what you get for each package click here>>

Sally Jastrzebski-Lloyd

It’s Friday and it’s all quietly frantic

Even though it seems quiet in the office today, I can sense the an underlying thud thud of deadlines waiting to pounce. Holiday season has started which automatically puts the pressure on those remaining in the office to cover the myriad of meetings that fill the Tourist Board weeks. More pressure – more fun!

We’ve got the excitement of a national nomination for a TravelMole Award next week in London which takes out the only remaining member of the ‘e’ team out of the office (please don’t ring us on Wednesday!). Here’s hoping we clinch the award for best Tourist Board website away from Cumbria. Yorkshire or Oxford.

Since the Tourism Awards 2009/10 last week at Ribby Hall Village the winners in our 13 categories are frantically updating their entry forms before next week. 26 June is the deadline for entries to go forward for consideration to the Northwest Awards. Good Luck to you all.

Next week is the Marketing Group Meeting. This is where we meet the Tourism Officers from the Districts along with other ‘stakeholders’ such as Lancashire Museums. We discuss plans for the future, report on prior marketing campaigns, run though initiatives such as 2012, and show website and digital developments. It’s at Wyreside Visitor Centre, Stanah this time; we move around the districts for each meeting.

It’s also the Kids Fun Ideas Show next weekend. We’re currently surrounded in bright green little monsters and will be on a stand promoting the Family Fun campaign for this summer which many of you have participated in.

That’s enough random thought for a Friday. Back to ticking off deadlines. Enjoy your weekend. We will be back later next week………….

Will we succeed? Can you help?

This morning I was pleased to see our nomination for a Travel Mole Award live on the Awards Website.

visitLancashire.com has been nominated as best website from a Tourist Board for the prestigious 6th Travel Mole Awards.

Unfortunately, the public voting ends on 10th June so we only have – realistically – 1 day to spread the word. 1 day to gain votes and comments that will get us a place in the final four shortlist for independent judging. Oh joy.

Thank goodness for instant communications. This morning we have added news items to both our websites (www.visitlancashire.com and www.lancashireandblackpool.com), sent Tweets from our Twitter accounts (www.twitter.com/visitlancashire and www.twitter.com/touristboard, added an item to our Facebook accoounts, encouraged all our staff to spread the word to everyone they speak to today, got an e-blast ready to roll to our 20,000+ consumers, got an e-blast ready to go out to all you tourism businesses, and written this blog.

phew. you never know what you’re going to have to do in a day that’s an addition to the urgent things winking at you from your desk… what fun!

Finally……….. if you could justify all this effort with a vote and a comment for your destination website http://www.visitlancashire.com then just click here and do it.

Much appreciated

Sarah Lundy

Slideshare

Slideshare does what it says on the tin! If you have a presentation on Powerpoint that you then want to distribute to the people you have presented it to you do not need to e-mail hefty files. Slideshare enables you to upload your presentations to the web and you can then distribute a URL link.

It is very easy to create your ‘My Slidespace’ and even easier to upload presentations. You can also search Slideshare for topics that interest you. For example you may want to know more about Google Analytics. Simply search on the words Google and Analytics then download or read the presentation that looks useful to you. Slideshare opens a world of business specialists and knowledge to you. Beware – this can become addictive!

To see this in action please go to http://www.slideshare.net/lancashire to see the presentations that LBTB have uploaded to share with you. Our newest slide is the presentation made at the latest members meeting regarding our Short Breaks Campaigns. QA research demonstrate how much your business can profit from being involved in one of our campaigns.

We also find it useful (and easy) to embed these presentations into web pages using Slideshare. In particular we use this on the lancashireandblackpool website. The above presentation is embedded into the site here for you to read.

Slideshare is great, and so are our campaigns (the research showed that LBTB campaigns generated £1.3m for accomodation providers alone during 2008)!! Obviously you’ll now want to be part of our next amazing value for money campaign – speak to Nikki Duckworth on 01257 226600 to find out more NOW.

 

Sarah Lundy