Introducing our new Commercial Director

LDS Tourism Services is delighted to announce the appointment of Jennifer Prime in a newly created role of Commercial Director.

Jenny first joined the Company in 2007, and in her previous position as Business Manager, developed a deep understanding of customer engagement while proving herself adept at problem-solving and decision-making.

She brings with her a passion and determination to achieve the highest possible standards. Speaking of her appointment, she said: “I’m extremely excited about the future and I’m very much looking forward to the challenge of taking the business forward into its next phase of growth.”

Prior to joining LDS, Jenny had a background in accounting and also worked for Cheshire Constabulary.

LDS’s Managing Director, Diana Bardell-Hedley, said: “We are thrilled that Jenny has committed her future to the Company and we know that her continued expertise will be invaluable in moving the organisation forward.

Jenny’s immediate responsibilities will include supporting the team to deliver a first class service, identifying new market opportunities and generally attaining the full potential of the Company. She can be contacted at jenny@ldsts.co.uk.

LDS Tourism Services celebrate 20 years in business

We are looking forward to celebrating our 20th anniversary on 1st February 2012.

Specialising in the distribution and display of leaflets and brochures produced by the local tourism and leisure industries, LDS Tourism Services’ familiar swift logo can be seen in visitor attractions, hotels, restaurants, pubs, retail outlets and an assortment of busy establishments throughout North Wales and the North West. Our selection of wall holders, turnarounds and free-standing dispensers are known as Visitor Information Points (VIPs for short) and have become invaluable focal-points for holidaymakers and locals alike.

Diana Bardell-Hedley and I set up a small office in a spare room in 1992, with only a second-hand Post Office van and an Amstrad computer to carry out our work. We gradually built up a reputation for innovation, hard work and reliability, and with it came clients - both large and small- from around the region (nationally, too).

These days the Company has its headquarters in Chester, as well as offices in Wrexham and Llandudno – not to mention a number of sub-depots for storing literature. Our uniformed staff and modern fleet of vehicles can be seen dashing about the region on a daily basis, delivering a range of printed materials.

Diana, now the Managing Director of LDSTS, says: “My late father owned Vince’s Fishing Tackle shop on Lower Bridge Street for many years. He was a larger than life character with a regular column in the Evening Leader and was a very well known face about Town. So it seemed only fitting we should base LDS Tourism Services’ head office in Chester.

“Although we started the business during the financial downturn of the early ‘90s, we are now seeing small businesses struggle like never before and nobody is quite sure how long it will last. However, we are bending over backwards to help our clients.

“Having said that,” she continues, “British tourism seems to be bucking the trend in so many ways. People are becoming nostalgic for the old-fashioned British holidays of their childhoods and it’s noticeable that many caravan parks, B&Bs, traditional inns, barge companies and self catering establishments are positively flourishing.”

Like all businesses that hope to survive the financial crisis, we are fine-tuning our services to suit the times.

“For many years we paid extremely high rental fees to a selection of large national companies in order to have exclusive display rights on their premises,” says Diana. “But it has become apparent over the past couple of years that certain once busy outlets have slipped out of fashion and become quieter than the grave, with more staff than customers loitering about. Our clients, quite rightly, expect us to display their promotional materials in popular sites. Although we still pay rental to a number of major chains where the annual footfall is significant, we now put the emphasis on our Network Services and General Distribution. This allows us to keep our prices down.

“We supply tastefully designed leaflet holders free of charge to tourism operators, then service them on a regular basis, keeping the stands tidy and full of up-to-date information. In return, the outlet owners place our stands in prominent positions within their establishments. I suppose it's a sort of symbiotic relationship that works well for everyone concerned and benefits the local economy.”

LDS Tourism Services has successfully branched out into Social Media Marketing in the last couple of years and has several other exciting projects in the pipeline (watch this space). If you would like to know more about these and other services mentioned on the blog, please drop us a line at lds@ldsts.co.uk or visit our website at www.ldsts.co.uk. 

Image: © Roza / Dreamstime.com

LDS Tourism Services joins FTA

Last month LDS Tourism Services joined the Flintshire Tourism Association (FTA), an independent group of tourism operators with strong links to Flintshire County Council. The chief aim of the Association is to enhance the profile and importance of the County’s tourist industry by organizing events, publishing promotional literature and interacting on social media networks such as Facebook.

The FTA currently has a number of exciting projects in the pipeline, such as creating a 32 page newspaper called Discover Flintshire - which will be distributed to 30,000 outlets in the North West - and a Green Energy Expo scheduled for January 2012.

We’re thrilled to be part of this dynamic group of local business people and look forward to getting involved in future activities.

Image: © Flintshire Tourism Association  2011

Using Foursquare to promote your business

Most people with an interest in social media will be familiar with Foursquare - the location-based mobile platform that makes towns and cities more interesting to explore. We have long advocated this service as an essential part of any campaign to promote a tourism business, event or leisure facility, so with the service currently boasting over 8 million members worldwide (not to mention adding somewhere in the region of 35,000 new users each day), our initial instincts about the success of this app have proved correct.

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that we are the people behind Foursquare UK, the information hub on Twitter and Facebook. However, we can now report that our Marketing Director has become an official Foursquare Ambassador and Superuser (Level 1).

The former means that you can go to our 4sq page and follow three easy steps to verify your business. It’s completely free and will allow you to claim your establishment, set up Foursquare Specials and view your Venue Stats. The latter enables you to ask us to edit venues which have incorrect details (addresses, locations etc.).

Should you require assistance running your Foursquare campaign – or indeed, help with social media marketing in general – please drop us a line and we’ll discuss your requirements. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook to stay abreast of what’s happening within the local tourism industry.

Image: Foursquare sticker, © LDS Tourism Services Ltd, 2011

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

Turning Green: A More Sustainable Business

As regular readers of this blog will know, we have for some time been embracing the green initiative by trying to be more wildlife friendly, using recycled materials for our leaflet holders and employing a web host that relies solely renewable energy. You can now read our Environmental Policy online and see how LDS Tourism Services Ltd intends to become a more sustainable business in the future.

You will need a PDF reader to open this document.

Easter Break Dilemma

Everyone at LDSTS actually took a day off for Easter Sunday – but it will be all systems go again on Monday!

The main problem with working through the Easter break is the large volume of traffic we have to contend with on the roads. Yesterday, for instance, there was a dreadful crash on the M6 between Junctions 16 and 17, and the motorway was closed in both directions for at least three hours. I’m sure you can imagine the tailbacks this caused and we had real problems reaching the Sandbach Roadchefs to refill our stands. However, we eventually sneaked in through the back entrances - much to the surprise of the staff!

Apparently, this has been the earliest Easter for 95 years and, although it won’t happen again for another 220 years, it has led to calls for a fixed date to be introduced to minimise disruption to the tourism industry (and others). At present, Easter Sunday can be anything from 22nd March to 25th April but it would seem that many hoteliers in the UK would prefer a definite date some time in mid-April. There is something called the Easter Act, which provides for Easter to fall on the first Sunday after the second Saturday in April, but it can only be brought into effect if Christian churches around the world agree.

The poor weather this year has also caused some major headaches and means that many businesses will open for only a couple of days and then close again for a few weeks.

Would a unified spring holiday around the first weekend in April (not linked to the religious festival) be preferable? Perhaps Good Friday and Easter Monday shouldn't be bank holidays? Surely, this would be far more sensible from the point of view of both employers and schools. What do others think?