Planning For The Year Ahead

If you get a few quiet minutes during the day, we would suggest you visit our good friends over at the Directory of Chester. The website, which lists businesses and services available to both residents and visitors, is chock full of fascinating features, useful details regarding things happening in and around the City and a wealth of valuable information about where to eat, sleep and shop. Recent articles in their blog include: Looking for the Perfect Christmas Weekend Break? and Christmas and New Year is all wrapped up at the Helsby Arms, Frodsham, Cheshire. Why not head over there right away and make the most of the festive season by listing your business?

We are as busy as ever at the Border Distribution Centre, with winter brochures filling our vans and 2010 leaflets arriving for the anticipated spring scramble.

A brief reminder to existing clients and anyone else intending to use LDS Tourism Services for leaflet distribution next year: the crucial word is ‘early’! The sooner we receive your promotional print, the better spread you will have in time for Easter!

We wish you all a thoroughly spooky and profitable Halloween.

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A Happy New Year For UK Tourism?

We were delighted to read that, “demand for UK domestic holidays is up due to the weak pound, according to Hoseasons” (Weak pound boosts domestic market by Bev Fearis); and according to TravelMole: “As the pound continues to struggle against the euro, the self catering operator says its bookings for UK breaks in 2009 are up 20%.”

The Chief Executive of Hoseasons Holidays, Richard Carrick, has revealed that over the last few months they have seen, “an increasing appetite for holidays in Britain, as a strong euro and a desire to manage household budgets has meant that more and more holidaymakers look to stay in the UK in 2009.” He went on to say that Hoseasons were “benefiting from people who know that by taking a self-catering holiday they can manage and control their holiday budgets more tightly."

If Carrick is correct, this could mean that money spent by holidaymakers will help the wider British economy. Consequently, the Government is being encouraged to back UK tourism as the plunging value of the pound makes Britain a more affordable holiday destination for foreign visitors – indeed, the Tourism Alliance has gone so far as to describe the sudden change in the country’s competitive position as something of a “potential silver lining to the cloud of recession” for British businesses. They could well be right as the fall in the value of the pound against the euro and the dollar has created what is widely being hailed as an “unparalleled opportunity” for the UK tourism industry.

Moving on to a completely different topic, we are delighted to reveal that there are now 432 members of our Brochure Marketing group on LinkedIn. If you would like to join, simply follow this link and click the ‘Join Group’ button.

LDS Tourism Services will be closing its offices from 24th December 2008 until 5th January 2009 – although staff will continue to service key display sites throughout the festive season. However, it will still be possible to contact us by leaving messages on this blog.

May we take this opportunity to wish all our readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

A Hectic Autumn for LDS Tourism Services

We are delighted to announce that we’ve become official members of Visit Chester and Cheshire (VCC), the official tourism management organisation for Chester and Cheshire. Set up in 2004, it is one of five tourism boards in the North West and is funded and supported by the North West Regional Development Agency, seven local authorities and over 400 private sector tourism stakeholders in the county. We are very much looking forward to working alongside our new friends and partners to help build and improve the local tourism industry.

There are currently 282 members of our Brochure Marketing group at LinkedIn. Following recent improvements, it is now possible for them to take part in Discussions (recent topics include next month’s World Travel Market Excel show in London and flash based web2print solutions); follow group Updates and look at the profiles of fellow Members. If you have a professional interest in promotional print, please feel free to join.

Autumn may be in full swing but we continue to receive a steady stream of leaflets for distribution. Many Christmas brochures are now on display in popular establishments throughout our service area and we are busy talking to both new and existing customers, planning fresh marketing campaigns and signing contracts for exclusive display rights. Be sure to visit this blog regularly for exciting announcements!

Contracts, Cadw & Christmas

We have just this week renewed our contract with Charnock Richard Welcome Break Services on the M6 (north and southbound) for exclusive rights to display our client's literature in their foyers. We will be installing a brand new holder on the north side (heading into our area) – specifically designed for this site – which will also have space for posters and A4 brochures.

Look out for us if you attend the Holiday and Travel Show at Manchester Central (formerly the G-MEX) on 11th-13th January 2008. With over 800 exhibitors, representing more than 100 countries from around the world, the Show is expected to attract even greater numbers than usual. You will find either Diana or Paula on the Cadw stand throughout the event, so please do pop over and have a natter with them if you are passing.

We are currently distributing the council's new Christmas in Chester leaflet in and around the city. Inside you will find listings of all the late night opening hours, plenty of suggestions for events to attend during the festive season and a useful map. Be sure to pick one up on your travels.

How Many Shopping Days Did You Say?

We always know that the festive season is on the horizon when our client's Christmas literature start arriving from the printers.

Chester Zoo has produced a nice big Frost Fair leaflet this winter, whereas Hoo Farm has gone for a glossy, A5 Halloween/Christmas combined flyer. Today we received an attractive 1/3 A4 Llangollen Wharf Mulled Wine leaflet - the same size as Park Hall's Xmas pamphlet but we've been putting the latter out for almost a month now.

Does Christmas really arrive earlier every year or is it merely that we're getting older? Then again, perhaps it only feels that way because the visitor season has extended so much over the years.

In the Company's early years, there was a very distinct cut off point for leaflet distribution at the end of September. One or two attractions would ask us to keep working into October, but they were few and far between and, by November, most of our customers were taking a well earned holiday in the sun.

How things have changed since then. We now get a slight lull after New Year - although we're hardly aware of it because we're so busy meeting clients to discuss their latest promotional campaigns - but on the whole, the distribution season just keeps on going. Rather like that Eveready powered rabbit you see in the TV adverts!