Partner Newsletter Aug 19

22nd August 2019

Categories: Latest News

Partner Newsletter - August 2019

We are pleased to announce that the 2019 Partner Open Day will take place on the afternoon of Wednesday 18th September. These get-togethers are a great opportunity for Visit Weston members to meet each other, share ideas and catch up on the Weston-super-Mare tourism industry.

Civic Mayor and North Somerset Councillor, Mark Canniford will also be in attendance, and is looking forward to welcoming as many partners as can attend on the day. We also encourage to you bring along any other potential members that represent businesses in Weston that would be interested to hear about the partnership scheme.

Please find your invitation below with details for how to RSVP, we're looking forward to seeing you all!  

It's been an amazing season for Visit Weston and we've all be working very hard to promote all your businesses as well as the resort of Weston-super-Mare. Since the offcial start of the season in March, we've launched several marketing campaigns including: 

• Match Sponsorship of Bristol City vs. Leeds United - receiving a TV audience of 411,000 and a match attendance of 23,500. This means our Visit Weston adverts have been seen by a huge local and national audience. This match was specially selected as thanks to market research throughout the season so far, we have identified Leeds and the West Yorkshire area as an emerging market of visitors to Weston. Our match day programme artwork featured a QR code which directed the fans to a unique webpage telling them all about Weston and what's coming up in town. We also had animated digital artwork on the pitchside advertising boards and electronic scoreboard.

• We've received a staggering 42,000 visitors through the doors of the Visitor Centre since we opened to the public on Saturday 6th April. 
• Working with 'Clear Channel', we have placed large advertisements in shopping malls, fuel stations, retail areas and on motorway signage across the West Midlands, South Wales, the Black Country and the South West in July and August.

• Coach Touring UK magazine included a full-page glossy advert for Weston and Carnival in their 'Cream of The South West' feature in their summer edition.
• We have a two-month long on-air campaign with the Breeze Radio. Our jingle will he heard in the North Somerset and Bristol area on their broadcast zones.
• The Visit Weston website as received over 200,000 unique visitors since March and our social media reach across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram is over 650,000 for the same period.

We will soon be launching several advertisements in Bristol Aiport including digital screens in arrivals/luggage reclaim/departures as well as a 9m sq. fabric sail suspended on the entry exit roundabout. Passenger numbers in September and October are predicted to be between 800,000 and 900,000.

We'll have a full roundup of all our achievements at the end the of the season, following the close of the Visitor Information Centre.  

The summer season kicked off with the excellent news that Weston-super-Mare was ranked 8th Most Welcoming City in the UK in a booking.com Guest Review Survey of 1,989 respondents between 16th October 2018 and 12th November 2018.  Then in in June 2019 Weston-super-Mare was acknowledged by Day Out With The Kids as 11th in the top 50 best seaside towns in the UK for families in a survey of over 2,000 families that looked at 378 locations.  
We hope that the background work we do in encouraging such positive results and in advertising our lovely town to the wider population will bring rewards. So now that summer is drawing to a close and the school holidays are over, what next? September is nearly always a busy, shoulder season with a different tourist, those that prefer to avoid peak season.  September brings lots of events, with classic car shows, a vintage bus rally running various routes from the Tropicana around town to the Helicopter Museum and back, music from Grove Park bandstand, a Gin Festival on the Grand Pier to name a few. 
The big October event is the Beach Race and then we have half term, followed by Carnival and Remembrance Day in November.  December brings Stars of Time back to the Tropicana and the Christmas Light Switch On which promises to be spectacular this year.

What have we missed?  You tell us, please!
Please don’t forget that we are at the VIC year round, even if we’re not open to the public.  So we can place notes in the window, on the website and on social media at any time if you have special offers or need to advertise for extra business.