By the Visitor Manager, Julia White.

Julia White, Visitor Manager gave a presentation to the Forum. The Panel were updated that the official visitor guide, Windsor & Eton Town Map and Official Venues directory had been completed and had now included the phrase, “London’s Country Estate”.. There had been a push to directly target the overseas market by advertising that RBWM was close by and with good travel links to Heathrow airport and was a great place to visit. The RBWM tourism website had been relaunched at the end of 2017 with an integrated blog, special offers, details of the Royal Wedding and social media channels. The online box office had also been redesigned to reflect the main website and encourage  visitors  to buy tickets to various attractions.

A new consumer e-newsletter s had also been designed. There was estimated to be a database of 35,000 consumers on record. The forum were reminded that open rates had been strong and that newsletter content was good.

There had been great growth on social media fronts especially on the Facebook, Instagram and Twitter platforms. The Facebook page had announced the royal procession and had great viewing numbers. Current rankings for the English Social Media Index had an upward trend from 50^th position to 20^th nationally and in the south eastern RBWM had moved from number 10 to number four. The ambition was to be in the top ten nationally next year and it was felt that this was achievable. RBWM had received an influx of press and PR enquiries in relation to the Royal Wedding which had meant a lot of coverage from travel/lifestyle bloggers. In order to provide more coverage for the borough group press trips had been hostedand there had been interviews with local experts which had again raised the awareness profile and destination message across. The Royal Borough had been contacted by, broadcast media and individual travel and lifestyle journalists from the following countries; Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chine, France, Germany, Sweden and the USA. The borough had some income generated from the press enquiries and filming through licensing fees and a global audience.

The Forum were informed that the ‘Discover England Fund Projects’ included the Great West Way and Horseracing- Sport of Kings (UAE). Both of the projects were at the brand identity stage and were nearing launch. The Horseracing-Sport of Kings project was focussed on the UAE and RBWM had two of the courses out of five available for this project. AMEX had been confirmed as the exclusive distribution partner with the media launch to follow later in April in Dubai. There had been an ambition to increase the travel trade online training and cultural training programme was to be conducted. Councillor S Rayner informed the Panel that there had been £2.6m invested into the borough to upgrade the town along with highways and infrastructure enhancements.

The Forum were informed that business tourism had seen higher activity and there had been a number of partners who had bought into ‘MICE marketing.’ Highlights of the good work being carried out included; BNC Events shows (February), Meet GB(April), LinkedIn and Twitter, an e-newsletter had been launched to corporate and meeting/event buyers , weekend familiarisation trips, proactive sales calls and branded USBs. It was noted that the feedback from social media had been positive and there was a database of 3500 buyers.

As part of the Tourism Action Plan 2017-2020 there were three task groups, Marketing task group chaired by Anna Bishop, Ascot Racecourse  (focussed on business tourism growth, highlighting RBWM as a family focussed destination and promoting the borough as London’s Country Estate), Travel and Transport Task Group chaired by Ben Smith, RBWM (focussed on improving transport connections and  increasing the use of public transport) and People Task Group chaired by Mandy Lane, Live-tourism, (focussed to boost the image of jobs in tourism and to increase the number of apprenticeships).

The Forum were updated with details of the economic impact assessment that had been carried out. There had been 630,000 staying trips, 1.74 million nights spent and 7.8 million day trips which had equated to £571 million. The visitor survey showed that there was now a 50/50 split and that there had been a upward trend with overseas visitors. It was predicted by Visit Britain that in 2017 and 2018 that visitor inbound numbers would top 40 million for the first time this year. Nationally the UK had been losing market share despite record years as visitors were choosing rival destinations and those countries had more spend on tourism marketing. The forum were also updated with details of the concierge scheme and there was 17 hotels who had signed up so far. The scheme had been relaunched in January 2018 and there was a new point of sale collateral and in house training materials. Members were reminded that Barbara Hunt would be retiring after 23 years of service to the VIC. Alison Warren would be appointed to take over from Barbara. Kathryn Harlow was welcomed to the team and was currently working on the digital projects such as the concierge scheme.

At the conclusion of the presentation, Members discussed the 50/50 split of the visitors. It was confirmed that due to recent terror attacks in London, that planned trips to the capital had been diverted to RBWM and other areas and that the increase of overseas visitors was namely due to the decrease of domestic visitors. The Forum were updated that Savill- Gardens had undertaken a major refurbishment and that it now offered extended pathways, a new visitor centre, new café and online sales portal. It was noted that the car parks had not been utilised for the purposes of visiting but namely filming that had been taking place nearby and that illegal parking on nearby verges had been occurring. It was confirmed that this had presented a problem but that this would soon pass.