Clients Celebrate Record Visitor Numbers

A very Happy New Year to all our friends, patrons and business associates!

The team are frantically busy accepting deliveries of 2011 leaflets and brochures into an already bulging warehouse. Preparations are in place for the start of silly season (regular readers will know this is the frenzied period lasting roughly from February to Easter) and we are delightedly welcoming new customers into the fold on a daily basis.

In spite of the economic downturn, many of our clients received record numbers of visitors to their attractions, exhibitions and events in 2010. For example:

National Museums Liverpool - a group comprising seven museums and galleries (with an eighth joining soon) – have for many years used LDSTS to distribute and display their promotional print. In 2010, we promoted Endurance: Shackleton’s Antarctic Adventure in our VIPs (Visitor Information Points). So successful has this Mersey Maritime Museum exhibition been that it has averaged 1,200 visitors a day since it opened in July and its run has been extended to 27th February 2011. It is estimated that 275,000 people will have visited by the time it closes.

Another long-standing client of LDSTS is the Catalyst Science Discovery Centre in Widnes. Its director, Stephen Youd-Thomas recently announced that the attraction had received a record number of people through its doors last year - enjoying its “best visitor figures since 2006”.

We have displayed Cholmondeley Pageant of Power leaflets in our VIPs since the inaugural event in 2008 and last year wrote an article promoting the show, which was published in The Knutsford Times. The 2010 display was hailed a tremendous success with over 50,000 visitors enjoying the incredible spectacles on the track, in the air and on the water. In consequence, the organisers have added an extra day to the event this year.

Yet another happy customer was Wirral Borough Council who reported that tourism events had boosted the local economy by more than £2 million last year. So, we’re hoping to play our part in breaking a few records again in 2011.

If LDS Tourism Services has at any point helped you achieve unprecedented success, we would love to hear from you. If you would like us to run your leaflet/brochure marketing (or social media) campaigns in 2011, please drop us a line to discuss tactics.

Image: ©Cholmondeley Pageant of Power, 2010

A Brighter Outlook For 2011

Christmas is fast approaching and we are looking forward to celebrating the start of a new decade. It is now too that we take stock and consider the year ahead.

In recent months, financial forecasts haven’t made very pleasant reading, but there are plenty of reasons why British tourism operators should feel optimistic.

The number of holiday visits to the UK rose by about 6% between July and October, whereas the number of Brits holidaying abroad fell by 3% (Office for National Statistics) during the same period. Roger Smith, head of the International Passenger Survey for the ONS, said: “It does appear that there are signs that the large falls we have seen in the recent past have begun to stabilise and show some signs of recovery.”

In their Forecast for the Volume and Value of Inbound Tourism in 2011, VisitBritain (the UK’s national tourism agency) said that the “positive side [to the] prolonged weakness in the value of sterling continues to provide an opportunity to challenge perceptions relating to Britain's expensiveness as a destination”. They predict that the volume of inbound tourism to the UK in 2011 will be 30.0 million visits, with inbound visitors spending £17.2 billion. This 1% increase may seem slight but it is at least heading in the right direction and is an encouraging development in such gloomy times.

Ireland’s financial woes could well be advantageous to hospitality and tourism businesses in North Wales. Pay cuts in the public sector and changes to tax credits and income tax have subdued the once booming Celtic Tiger economy and will undoubtedly make an enormous difference to spending habits in 2011. The strength of the Euro against the Pound led to increased holiday bookings by Irish residents visiting North Wales in 2009/10. It now seems likely that exotic holidays will be unaffordable for some time to come and Irish holidaymakers will opt for somewhere a bit closer to home – perhaps a short ferry ride from Dun Laoghaire to Holyhead. Every cloud...

While a recent survey by StrongMail showed that a third of marketers intend to decrease their trade show spends in 2011, it also revealed that investment in social media marketing will increase by 57%. (If you scroll to the end of this article, you will see a brand new map of the world, showing the most popular social networks by country, according to Alexa & Google Trends for Websites traffic data, December 2010.)

We were, however, unsurprised to read that “print has a place in the world of new media” (PrintWeek - 10th December 2010). A report published by KPMG, the auditor running six monthly surveys on media in general, showed that “four in five consumers prefer print to online”. The latest Media and Entertainment Barometer survey by YouGov confirmed that “86% of consumers prefer to consume media offline, with the most popular reason a preference for reading physical copies”.

Please contact us to discuss your social media marketing and leaflet/brochure distribution campaigns in 2011.




Top image: ©Britainonview / David Sellman, 2010

Flying High During Hard Times

TravelMole published an interesting article on their website yesterday, entitled “Brits raid piggy bank to pay for holiday”. According to research by Abbey Savings, despite soaring utility bills, ridiculous prices at the pump and mortgage payments going through the roof, millions of Brits are refusing to allow the crunch to “stop them having their two weeks playtime”.

The bank revealed that “almost two thirds of holidaymakers” are “raiding the piggy bank to pay for breaks, spending more than £50 billion”. The bank’s findings “echo a summer of stories from diverse sources suggesting that the annual holiday really is the last thing to be sacrificed in leaner times, despite daily media predictions of a massive recession just around the corner”.

We also spotted an article in RealBusiness (“Bring on the recession! It’s good for business”) in which Moir-Jones, the CEO of London Calling – a marketing agency that specialises in leaflet distribution – told the magazine she was completely unfazed by Britain’s looming recession. “When times are hard, people go back to basics”, she said. “Leaflets are a tried and tested form of marketing. During the last recession the firm did really well. We actually experienced high growth, doubling in size that year.”

This struck a chord with LDSTS Directors, Diana and Paula, who set up the business during the slump of the early 90s. “I think we benefitted from our client’s reduced marketing budgets,” says Di. “Without a doubt, printed literature positioned in the right place to catch the eye of potential visitors has always been one of the most successful and cost effective ways to promote an attraction, region or event. Other advertising methods may bite the dust when we hit a downturn but brochures are indispensible when it comes to any short or long-term marketing campaign.”

We recently received a letter of thanks from The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) for sending them our latest batch of used postage stamps for their Save the Albatross charity appeal, which helps raise valuable funds for the protection of these magnificent birds. They thanked us for donating the stamps and expressed a hope that we would continue to do so – which, of course, we will!

If anyone else would like to do something positive to help protect birds around the world, please send your used postage stamps to:

R.S.P.B.
PO Box 6198
Leighton Buzzard
Bedfordshire
LU7 9XT.

Midsummer Madness for LDS Tourism Services

It may be mid-summer but we’re busier than ever. There has been a massive increase in the leaflet pick-up rate this year, so we’ve got our work cut out trying to keep our stands topped-up and tidy!

One wonders why this is happening when the economy is supposed to be in so much trouble. One reason could be that a great many Brits are opting to stay on home soil this summer. Indeed, TravelMole is reporting that Britain is the top holiday destination for more than three quarters of UK internet users – that’s 21 million adults! It would seem that data produced by the research firm, Continental Research has revealed that over 40% of respondents are fed up with air travel, 37% believe it is kinder to the environment to stay in the UK and 44% worry less if they fall ill. Amongst the 58% of internet users taking a paid-for short break in 2008, the survey showed that the UK dominates the destinations visited, with many people mentioning the great scenery (56%) and no language barrier (47%) as two of the main reasons. This has to be very positive news indeed for the local tourist and leisure industries.

Believe it or not, Chester Zoo has started planning for its Frost Festival! The 110-acre attraction received a visit from Father Christmas last week and it is currently seeking sponsors for the extravaganza, which will open to the public on 29th November. A range of benefits are offered to sponsors including free tickets, PR coverage and exclusive company use of the ice rink. For further information, please contact Michelle Duma on 01244 650265 or drop her a line at development@chesterzoo.org.

We’ll finish with a couple of interesting links we came across recently:

Fuel Prices Hit Leaflet Distribution Nationwide
http://www.mailboxnationwide.com/blog/fuel-prices-hit-leaflet-distribution-nationwide/185

Printed page – and beyond

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/ew/2008/04/28/stories/2008042850110300.htm