A Busy Season For All

We are furiously busy at the moment, as ever more Christmas leaflets arrive at our warehouse for "immediate" distribution. Because Easter is so early next year, there are already lots of 2008 brochures appearing. Not that we're complaining, it means that we can get a good coverage for everyone before the 'silly season' (distributor talk for early spring) begins.

We also have a range of smart new brochure holders (see the above picture of a mahogany free-standing dispenser in The Quay Hotel, Deganwy), which we are frantically installing in prime sites throughout the region. Please let us know if you have any suggestions for possible host sites - or indeed, if you would like to host one in your own establishment.

Things just keep on getting better for Chester Zoo. According to the Chester & District Standard, the attraction has now "broken all records with the highest number of visitors in its 73-year history" with the number of people through the gates reaching 1,097,000! That's quite incredible when you consider there are over two months to go before the end of the year!

We can also reveal that we have signed an exclusive contract with Roadchef to display our leaflets in Sandbach Motorway Services M6 (Northbound and Southbound) - so look out for our holders appearing in these extremely busy sites.

Record Year For Chester Zoo

We always like to hear that our clients are doing well, so you can imagine how pleased we were to discover that Chester Zoo is having a record breaking year!

Apparently, more than 1,068,000 people have passed through their gates so far - the same figure as visited the zoo in the whole of 2006. The popular attraction now fully expects to pass the 1.1 million visitor mark before the year is out.

We don't wish to be accused of blowing our own trumpet, but we're positive that the hundreds of thousands of leaflets we distributed for them this year must have played a part in the zoos success.

Winners of Northwest Tourism ‘Oscars’

England’s fourth Northwest Tourism Awards took place on 10th October at Manchester Central.

The cream of the region’s tourism industry gathered for this high profile event, which was organised by the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) and hosted by BBC North West Tonight presenter Ranvir Singh.

The winners each walked away with a gleaming trophy, crafted by The World of Glass, to mark their achievement and the coveted title of best in the Northwest for 2007.

We are delighted to report that among the recipients of accolades handed out on the night were Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, who claimed the Excellence in Customer Service award, and Cotebrook Shire Horse Centre, Cheshire, who received a Judges Commendation in the Small Visitor Attraction of the Year category . Our conratulations go to both these excellent attractions.

Regional winners will now have the opportunity to represent the Northwest in the national Enjoy England Awards for Excellence, organised by VisitBritain, which will be held in April 2008.

The National Tourism Awards 2007

The National Tourism Awards for Wales took place at Bodelwyddan Castle last week. Forty-six enterprises from across the country were shortlisted as finalists – but only fourteen were selected as being the best in the industry. Sadly, there was only one winner from North Wales (Gwledd Conwy Feast).

Described as the Welsh “tourism oscars”, the National Tourism Awards came to North Wales for the first time this year. The glittering ceremony was hosted by BBC TV news presenter, Huw Edwards, and the final selection was made by an independent judge - travel writer David Atkinson - author of the new edition of Lonely Planet Wales.

A number of enterprises from across the North made it on to the shorlist, including one of our most valued clients, Mr Stephen Bristow, GreenWood Forest Park, Caernarfon (Tourism Entrepreneur). Also on the shortlist were Conwy Food Festival (Best Community Event); Conwy Golf Club (Golf as it Should Be); Bron-y-Wendon Touring Caravan Park (Quality and Customer Care – Caravan park); Richard Hughes, Tre-Ysgawen Hall, Llangefni (The Extra Mile award); Y Goeden Eirin, Caernarfon (The Real Alternative); and the Quay Hotel, Deganwy (Gold Star – Hotel) – but not one of them collected an award on the night.

Oh well, there’s always next year!

Organised Chaos

We’ve had a hectic couple of weeks and one of the busiest autumns anyone can remember. In fact, in terms of new publications arriving, it must be the busiest on record!

We’ve been dashing from one appointment to another while attempting to collect stock whenever we happen to be passing a pick-up point. Our friends at the Breakwater Railway Company have just produced a splendid new leaflet with lots of photographs and fascinating information about the area; Mentor Môn has published a colourful A5 Holyhead/Holy Island leaflet while Sefton and Wirral Councils have designed an impressive new range of brochures - to name but a handful. All these and more are available to TICs via the form on our website.

Will, our Warehouse Manager, has had his work cut out with all this literature arriving – especially when 15 pallets of Pure Taste turned up during the week. Our forklift is capable of lifting 800 kilos but the bulky magazines weighed far more than that – so it was a case of rolling up our sleeves and handballing the boxes off!

Incidentally, the Visit Chester & Cheshire run went smoothly this month with the magazines arriving good and early from the printer.

We’re expecting 2008 to be the best year yet for LDS with lots of new projects underway and more 'exclusive display' contracts in the pipeline. Watch this space for exciting announcements!

City Breaks in Britain

New research released last week by VisitBritain, the national tourism agency, suggests that Brits are embracing the buzz around city break destinations.

The report makes interesting reading. Apparently, the most visited English cities are London, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Newcastle, Liverpool and York - which is great news for the North West.

It would seem that eight out of the top ten most visited destinations in England are cities. The number of overnight visits made to the eight cities in 2006 was more than 22.8 million, indicating that city breaks on our own doorstep are of huge appeal to domestic tourists. To capitalise on and further encourage this popularity, the Enjoy England team at VisitBritain have launched a new campaign to inspire Brits to visit city break destinations. City Breaks offers Britons a wealth of reasons to visit 36 cities the length and breadth of England via their dedicated website.

Information on the website is broken down into 9 handy categories, each containing relevant city holiday ideas. These range from ‘Arts and Culture’, ‘Food’ and ‘Shopping’ through to ‘Music’, ‘Romance’ and ‘Fun with Friends’ – aiming to enthuse and inspire with lots of great ideas. The campaign has already been complimented by a 52 page Guardian supplement on 29th September, showcasing the cities involved in the campaign and driving people to the City Breaks website.

The campaign follows the successful City Culture campaigns run in the past two years, where 97% of website visitors said they had been encouraged to visit different parts of England than they had previously considered. This is a breakdown of the results:

1. London - 10,959,000
2. Manchester - 2,490,000
3. Birmingham - 2,287,000
4. Bristol - 1,825,000
5. Blackpool - 1,787,000
6. Leeds - 1,436,000
7. Scarborough - 1,383,000
8. Newcastle upon Tyne - 1,298,000
9. Liverpool - 1,257,000
10. York - 1,247,000

Incidentally, you can find our home city of Chester on their list, too!