Revealed: The New Visit Wrexham Website

We had our first glimpse of Wrexham Chamber of Trade and Tourism’s new website during a members’ meeting at the Wynnstay Arms Hotel on 17th November.

Following discussions about the Chamber’s Christmas Festival (10th-11th December), the Down Under Street Party (29th-30th January) and the Wild Welsh Wrexham Event (5th-6th March), members selected their favourite WCTT logo from a choice of three. The Chair (Stephanie Booth) then introduced us to the speakers for the evening.

Diane Greenhalgh and her team from Lloyd’s Hotels Group are the people behind designing visitwrexham.org and she came along to discuss their work in progress. Jane Redfern Jones, the editor of Coed-y-Glyn & District Life Magazine, is also working on this project and talked to the group about the importance of social media.

Visit Wrexham is modern, clean and slick; it is easy to navigate and packed with useful information about things to do, places to eat and events taking place over the coming months. There is a blog, which will be written primarily by Diane and Jane with regular input from the group. In addition, members will be given a page each to advertise their own business, with a heading, synopsis, links and a gallery of up to six pictures. Diane took questions from around the room and showed us pages from the new site using a projector and screen.

Jane’s talk was also extremely interesting and she announced that her highly popular Wrexham Blog is to be integrated into the new website. She stressed the importance of social media to Visit Wrexham – with particular emphasis on Facebook – and made the point that the site will undoubtedly receive plenty of visitors even before it has been picked up by Google because it will be promoted on a number of very busy fan pages.

Several other items were discussed, such as the Big Breakfast Event (date to be announced) and the possibility of a street party to celebrate the Royal Wedding.

Incidentally, Diana, Hayley and I went to Wrexham’s Christmas Lights Switch On the following evening. It was wonderful to see so many families having fun in Queens Square, clearly enjoying the entertainment provided by Calon FM, the cast of Glyndŵr University’s Aladdin and others.

The next WCTT meeting will take place at the same venue on 15th December 2010 (6.30pm for 7pm, with free coffee and bacon butties supplied).

Image: Wrexham Christmas Tree, ©LDS Tourism Services, 2010

Wrexham Has Big Plans

Bangor Bridge crossing the River Dee

Having watched the first episode in the second series of Hotel Stephanie (New Hotel Stephanie, BBC1 Wales, 10.35pm) on Tuesday night, Diana and I were looking forward to meeting the indomitable Stephanie Booth at an official gathering of the Wrexham Chamber of Trade & Tourism (WCT&T) the following evening.

For those who have been living in a hole for the last few years, Stephanie is the millionaire owner of a chain of up-market, highly successful hotels in North East Wales (seven at last count). She is also Chair of both Llangollen Chamber of Trade & Tourism and WCT&T; Group Managing Director at Global Investment Group plc. and star of the aforementioned fly-on-the-wall series. In her spare time she cares for over 300 rescue animals.

Regular readers will be aware that LDS Tourism Services has long supported the FSB’s Keep Trade Local campaign and (for obvious reasons) we very much want to see tourism thrive in the region. Joining WCT&T is our way of giving something back to the area while hopefully advancing our own business interests.

The group met at the Wynnstay Arms Hotel (Stephanie’s latest acquisition) in Wrexham town centre. Free coffee and bacon butties were provided in the Function Room before the meeting commenced, which gave everyone plenty of time to chat before the minutes were read and approved.

Stephanie is a warm, vivacious lady, with an incredible memory for facts and figures and a lively sense of humour. She spoke animatedly about her plans for the area and encouraged all present to “work together to achieve success”. Indeed, her mantra seems to be, “little people become very powerful when they work together”.

A great many topics were covered in just under two hours and much enthusiasm was shown by the vast majority of those present. Up for discussion were the Chamber’s new website, the Christmas Festival and Victorian Market, a forthcoming meeting with Wrexham County Borough Council, the Year of Culture, public toilets, hot air balloons and the importance of social media marketing.

We left feeling extremely positive about the future of Wrexham and would urge anyone with a business based in the County to join. You can download an application form right here.

The next meeting is likely to take place on 13th October at the Wynnstay Arms. Keep watching our regular Twitter updates for any changes.

Image: ©Britainonview, 2010