Auchindrain Township Museum uses visitor feedback to develop new experiences and uses Facebook and Twitter to talk to their customers directly.
Auchindrain is a complete small farming community preserved to show life before the Highland Clearances.
Located near Inverary, it gives visitors an authentic insight into how people lived, worked and played in the old Highlands, including food cooked to recipes of the time from the first record of Auchindrain in 1509 until the last residents moved away in 1967.
The centre believes strongly in using visitor feedback to find development opportunities and visitor data to help maintain marketing activity, which has a tiny budget. Asking for visitor feedback led to the museum producing a guide book with more in-depth interpretation of the different places on site. Networking opportunities were also developed with other attractions in Argyle such as the Loch Fyne Food Festival and Inverary Castle to allow cross promotion of the sites, encouraging visitors to take in the different attractions while in the area.
Auchindrain have utilised social media effectively in promoting events held on site to a wide audience. Twitter and Facebook have been a cost effective way of attracting more visitors to the site. Food events such as their “Big Lunch” day, promoted mainly on Facebook and Twitter were completely sold out.
Hosting a French intern, they decided to hold a French Lunch day, with traditional French dishes cooked by the intern to offer something different. Without the use of social media to promote the event, only regular visitors who happened to have gone along that day would have known about the event and questioned why the menu was different. Instead, the promotion brought in visitors specifically to sample the food on offer, including one family who travelled 100 miles from their home after reading about it on Facebook.
Facebook is also to communicate directly with customers as well as sharing images from the museum and to promote offers such as free entry for Facebook friends.
Learn how to create a buzz and communicate with visitors online by checking out the Tourism Intelligence Scotland Shine Online Guide.