The first step to developing your area is to get the right people together, to collectively improve the visitor experience in a sustainable way.
Create a successful partnership
By coming up with a structured plan for your area as a group, you will find that there will be opportunities to benefit everyone, and together you can be much more effective in doing this.
Your partnership will need some key ingredients.
- Like minded people, who want to improve the visitor experience
- A commitment to work together, with aligned resources and methods of working
- A commitment to complete specific tasks within a set time frame
- For the group to include people from each of the following: community, public sector agencies, private enterprises and voluntary groups
The benefits of working together
Having an integrated approach to developing your area will bring huge benefits to visitors, businesses and to the area as a whole.
The visitor
- A consistent warm welcome
- Joined up information and service
- Products and services that are more authentic and of better quality
- Easier access to more activities
- A better range of good value packages
- The confidence that feedback will be acted on
- A visitor experience that matches up with the brand promise
The destination
- A more effective focus on key markets and customers
- A boost to the local economy
- An increase in overall business confidence
- Sustainable local facilities and services
- A greater range of benefits from hosting visitors
- Civic pride and a sense of place
- New local and inward investment
- Creation of year round jobs
- Better environmental management
Individual businesses
- An increase in the demand for local produce
- A more cost effective marketing and public relations campaigns
- Greater cross-selling through a better understanding of available products
- Economies of scale through purchasing and distribution
- Opportunities for joint marketing and product development
- Increased investment opportunities
Create and develop what visitors want
Visitors will arrive at any destination with expectations, based on information gathered from websites, brochures and also recommendations from others.
It is important that visitor expectations are consistent with the experience they actually have.
A successful destination will exceed visitor expectations in terms of quality, value for money, choice, ease of access and how well the services are integrated with each other.
To achieve this, the area needs to adopt a coordinated approach to provide a high quality and seamless visitor experience. This is why your partnership will play a vital role in the success of your area’s development and progress.
Next step: how good is your visitor experience today?