MEMBERS BULLETIN No. 5; April 2005
With the 2nd May Early Spring Bank Holiday only a little over four weeks away and the 30th May Bank Holiday to follow, an early Spring Newsletter featuring StayinginWales was emailed last night to 9,997 UK Holiday Consumers. The Newsletter can be viewed at StayinginWales.com/Newsletter/April2005
To benefit from this and all new features introduced this year, Associate Members are urged to become Full Members at the new monthly rate of £5.99 (inc VAT). For a complete bullet-point list of benefits, please click here and don't forget that all Full Members also get complimentary Microsites on the ThisWeek.co.uk network...at no extra cost.
Please click on the index items below to read the full articles in this Bulletin. Click here to print out the full Bulletin.
1. April Fool's Day! Take Your Pick
(Answers and observations by email please to info@stayinginwales.com)
1.1 Like Christmas as we now celebrate it, April Fools Day is more a construct than an actual event and is based on the entry into Rome on 28th March AD 37 of the emperor Caligula... Read on...
2. New £5.99 Monthly Rate
To mark the introduction of the new Search by Category, a new monthly rate of £5.99 (inc VAT) has been introduced to encourage Associate Members to join up as Full Members and gain all the bullet-point advantages listed under 4. below. A Standing Order form is available for fast download at http://StayingInWales.com/partners/StandingOrderForm.pdf. The £53 Calendar year rate remains a viable option until 1st May and more information on this is available at http://StayingInWales.com/partners/FullTermsConditions.
3. New Search by Category Launched
For those of you that missed our News Flash! over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend, the new Accommodation Categories that can now be searched at StayingInWales.com are:
3.1 Serviced Accommodation
- Bed & Breakfast
- Farm Bed & Breakfast
- Guest Houses
- Inns/Taverns
- Hotels
- Country Hotels
- Country Houses
- Restaurants with Rooms
3.2 Self-Catering Accommodation
NB Numbers slept can be searched for the first group below:
- Cottages, Chalets, Cabins, Camping Barns, Houses, Bungalows, Apartments
- Holiday, Touring, Caravan & Camping Parks
Full Members with more than one self-catering unit on their site can bring attention to this under one of the highlight headings of their Microsites or in the general descriptive text. The number of characters for this text was recently increased to more than 500 characters (100+ words). Hot tip: Full Members in the second Self-Catering group above should include the words "camper vans" and "camping cars" in their Microsite text to attract mainland European searchers using these descriptions in Keyword searches.
Star Gradings: Searchers can select 1-5 star-gradings or all star-gradings in conjunction with any other Categories selected.
Numbers Slept: Searchers can search for cottages, chalets, cabins, camping barns, houses, bungalows and apartments on the basis of the number of people they can sleep.
Pets Welcome: Searchers can select this option in conjunction with all other Categories selected.
Enhanced Search by Villages and Towns: The search by Village and Town in the new Category search page has been expanded to include static entries for Associate Members. These appear after Full Members' listings and their Microsite links.
Many thanks to all Members that have provided feedback. A spin-off advantage has been a move by Members to update their entries to ensure their properties are picked up by the new search.
Several Associate Members have asked us to provide a concise bullet-point list of current Full Member benefits, so here goes:
GIS Microsite
- Introductory text and images
- Our location map and text
- Our transport map
- Neighbourhood information channels
- Restaurants
- Attractions
- Events
- Email booking enquiries
- Website links
- Search engine optimisation
- Performance measurement
Searches
- Region
- Marketing area
- County
- Village and town
- Category
- Stars
- Sleeps
- Pets welcome
Consumer newsletters
Email marketing
Offline marketing
Joint marketing
Market research
Online focus group
Members bulletin*
Telephone helpline*
*Available to all Members.
5. Converting Enquiries into Bookings
Over 1.2m searches relating to Wales are made on the Internet each year ranging from Hotels in Wales to Welsh Corgis, and from Princess Diana of Wales to the outlaw Josey Wales. A number of searchers last year even wanted to know more about Killer Wales!
Sorting out enquiries for overnight accommodation from all these searches - without getting caught up in the expense of Dutch auctions for 'sponsored' listing positions (see Members Bulletin No. 1) - takes skill and perserverance. A great deal of innovation is also required to keep ahead of the major search engines' ever-changing criteria to prevent cheating.
But that's only part of the picture. Once filtered, any number of unique visits or "clickthroughs" mean nothing if conversions aren't made. Add to this the downward pressure on conversion rates caused by increasing numbers of people using the Internet to shop around more widely and there's a great deal of work to be done in this area.
To make searches stick it's vital to capture people's attention. Three mouse clicks is the maximum users expect to make before becoming disappointed and moving on and it's only through the provision of high quality information, ease of navigation and value-added content that users' attention can be held. If an email enquiry is then generated, anything less than an immediate response won't score many Brownie points and customer relations can go downhill from there. In the May Bulletin we'll be looking at simple new ways of boosting online conversion rates and avoiding time wasters.
Discussions about modern new approaches to tourism development and marketing in Wales continue as the Welsh Assembly Government gets on with its main merger proposals ahead of the consultation deadline of 15th April.
In the January consultation paper entitled "Making the Connections: Delivering Better Services for Wales", Tourism appears orphaned from "Economic Development" in a box of its own between Transport and the Welsh European Funding Office. The repatriation that occurred between Tourism and the Countryside after foot and mouth appears to be restricted now to occasional visiting rights via a special Advisory Panel. All this despite tourism visitors' £330m spend on food and drink annualising to several £billion and presenting new markets to a farming industry looking for value-added exports of agri-food products.
On the other hand, more general economic development activity within rural areas will continue to be run by the Department of Economic Development and Transport, complementing the work of the Department of Environment Planning and Countryside…so there's hope yet for rural tourism.
We're keeping this on the boil because the majority of our Members are micro-businesses and it's tourism micro-businesses that stand to benefit most from the rollout of Broadband in Wales and the rest of the UK.
With high-speed communications and always-on access already a part of day-to-day life in over 5 million households and for 11.5M users across the UK, any businesses not wired up to this market will lose benefit. However, it's what businesses do with all the extra speed and availability that really matters and it's here where Staying in Wales is focusing its attention on behalf of Members. Whilst email remains the killer application - over 97% of a recent Broadband research sample quoted it - more imaginative uses are on the way to give tourism businesses in Wales a strong marketing edge over their rivals elsewhere in the UK.
A meeting of representatives from BT Broadband, Wales Tourist Board and Staying in Wales is scheduled for 5th April in Cardiff to explore the potential for delivering up real-time information to visitors at their destinations in Wales. Members will be kept fully informed of developments and opportunities that arise.
News that the Traveline Cymru Helpline is to come to Porthmadog and will sit adjacent to the Staying in Wales Helpline Team is a cause for celebration. Use of public transport by visitors when they are here in Wales is an issue high up on the tourism agenda and we have many attractive bus rides and scenic rail trips to offer. Staying in Wales Members will benefit from a number of marketing campaigns planned.
9. The Staying in Wales/Aros yng Nghymru Team
The Staying in Wales/Aros yng Nghymru Team is totally dedicated to the interests of Wales' visitors and consequent advancement of Members' businesses. The team works year round with Members to provide fast, accurate information to visitors, drawing on expertise second to none in the UK:
Sion Thomas, Helpline Manager
Dorothy Williams, Helpline Assistant
Llinos Griffin, Helpline Assistant
Elena Roberts, Helpline Assistant
Terry Jackson, Project Co-ordinator
Arvind Nehru, Network Manager
Roger Thomas, Content Manager
William Worship, Image Management
Alison Davies, Mapping
Tony Davies, Mapping
John Harrington, Cartography
Harish Nehru, Software
Aamer Sardar, Software
Richard Edwards, Software Design Consultant
Tom Pollock, Graphic Design Consultant
Phil Evans, Interactive Digital Television Consultant
With special thanks to Kim Colebrook, Head of Information and New Media at VisitWales and Steven Potter, Marketing Director, London Marketing at LondonTown.com in Llundain.
NB A Welsh and English language voicemail service operates outside all opening times shown below. Simply leave your name and telephone number and your call will be returned without fail.
Staying in Wales 01766 543011*
Open Weekdays: 9am-8pm
Closed Weekends
*Local call rates: 4.2p/min 8am-6pm; 4p all other times. (35 miles.)
*National call rates: 6.7p/min 8am-6pm; 4p all other times. (35 miles+.)
Visit Wales 08708 300 301**
Open Weekdays: 9am-8pm
Open Weekends: 9am-6pm
**National call rates: 6.7p/min at all times.
11. Archive
Please click here for archive copies of previous Members Bulletins and Market Research information.
12. Next Bulletin
- Converting Enquiries into Bookings.
- Broadband Report.
- New Developments.
Answers and observations by email please to info@stayinginwales.com.
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1.1 Like Christmas as we now celebrate it, April Fools Day is more a construct than an actual event and is based on the entry into Rome on 28th March AD 37 of the emperor Caligula. Renowned for his cutting wit, capricious cruelty, hairbrained schemes and habit of sending friends off on foolish ventures, his propensity for stripping people around him of their dignity contributed to his downfall and four years later at the age of 28 he was cut down by his own Praetorian Guard for pushing things beyond a joke. So pranksters beware!
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1.2 A more prosaic and believable origin of April Fools' Day has its roots in Victorian times and celebrates the 1st April 1835 birthday of the mathematical genius James Moriarty. Moriarty was an early exponent of "Game Theory", what psychologists call the theory of social situations. Players have either perfect or imperfect information, marking out the educated from those easily taken in and made to look foolish through trickery and practical joking. Like all those born born between the 1st and 20th April under the Aries star sign, Moriarty was quick-witted and a bit of a daredevil and is probably better known as the criminal adversary of Sherlock Holmes, lampooned over a hundred years later in a BBC wireless programme called the Goons.
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1.3 Celebrated up to the end of the 16th Century as the first day of Spring and hence the first day of the 'New Year', it was only fool's that continued to celebrate the day despite the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar by Charles IX of France, which saw New Year's Day moved to 1st January. In a mobile-free environment and without fast Broadband connections, these so-called backward people didn't get to hear about the change until years later and were ridiculed, made the victims of practical jokes, and given fools' errands. This version hasn't stood the test of time as long as the Roman one but is equally plausible.
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PS We couldn't find a Welsh one!
Staying in Wales-Aros yng Nghymru
Unit 4, Penamser Business Park, Porthmadog LL49 9GB Wales UK
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