Wednesday 20 August 2014

Museum Retail Therapy Visits

Museum retailing consultancy
The series of retail workshops run by Museums Warwickshire earlier this year highlighted the desire for an informal network of those involved with museum shops. As a precursor a series of visits to West Midlands museum shops is being arranged. Details click here

Monday 18 August 2014

Running Events and Publicising Your Shop

marketing the shop
The Post title is a slight misnomer, as the download available at the end of this post is really about running events in a bookshop but it has lots of very useful marketing and publicity ideas applicable to shops in museums and other visitor attractions.

As the Introduction states, 'hosting events in store, whether they include an author or not, is a proven method of reaching your community effectively' (I'd say market!) 'and is an ideal way of making sure potential customers find out about you, and come back again and again.'

'Successful events are an ideal way to create and build links with all sorts of new markets, from schools for all age groups, book clubs, local businesses and community groups' and of course for museums and other attractions, the local visitor market. These links can lead to a number of further marketing opportunities.

'Once you’ve worked out which events work well for your store, you’ll find it easier to promote them and will get an even better turnout. And this in turn will lead to extra sales and turnover: something we are all looking for!'
So have a look at 'Books are My Bag' here and thank you to Midas PR for an excellent guide to setting up 'instore' or should it be 'inshop' (?) events.

Thursday 14 August 2014

Developing a Marketing Strategy and Marketing Plan

marketing plan for vistor attractions
Every visitor attraction and tourism destination is different whether it's a museum, heritage railway, theme park, historic garden or stately home, countryside footpath, church trail,  battlefield etc and they all have issues unique to them. However certain generic marketing and business issues face all attraction owners and operators and the article available in the following link describes an approach to creating a robust marketing strategy and plan based on a real life (but anonymous!) example. Click here to download.        

Tourism week

Tourism and the UK economy
This week, via social media, the Government is highlighting the significant contribution that tourism makes to the UK economy. Please help raise awareness by promoting any tourism job opportunities you have, and sharing any case studies of your staff, including what they do, why they chose a career in tourism, and why they would recommend it. Remember to use #getbritainworking. Please also re-tweet @DWPgovuk and @DCMS.

Monday 11 August 2014

Audience Development and Visitor Engagement - the research tool kit

cakes in a cafe at an an attraction

One way of attracting visitors - good cakes in the café!

How should you set about visitor market research as part of a programme of audience development and visitor engagement? The case study on the link below sets out a method for understanding the profile and background of past and current visitors to a major multi site museum and heritage attraction that can then lead on to creating an audience development programme for attracting new visitors, encouraging repeat visitors and importantly ensuring that both are entertained and engaged during the visit. The case study covers the requirement to gather and measure the views of visitors and ‘non visitors’ on the attraction ‘offer’. Overall the approach is aimed at determining who the visitors are, where they come from, what their needs are in terms of the visit and to identify gaps in both the product offering as well as communications, pricing, on site facilities etc.

Click here to see the case study

Friday 8 August 2014

Aviation and Tourism: Implications for Leisure Travel


Review first published in the Tourism Society's Journal of Aviation and Tourism: Implications for Leisure Travel by  Anne Graham, Andreas Papatheodorou and Peter Forsyth click here