Hidden Britain at Bleriot 2009
The 25th and 26th July saw the centenary celebrations of Louis Bleriot's historic first channel crossing down in Dover. Some 30,000 people came to see a series of flying demonstartions and the arrival of a restored original Bleriot XI plane from France.
Hidden Britain was there too helping showcase the great village and rural town destinations across Kent. The Seeda and Kent Rural Towns sponsored stand featured the villages of Chilham, Elham and St. Margaret's, alongside larger destinations like Hawkhurst, Edenbridge, Westerham, Sandwich and Tenterden.
Click here to view a selection of images >>
Competition opportunity for rural communities
The BBC and BIG Lottery Fund have launched a competition to find six villages in the UK with a great business idea. The Village SOS competition will choose the villages that come up with the best ideas for an enterprise that will benefit the community and provide funding up to £400,000 and a mentor for a year.
Villages need to apply by 14th August and will be filmed throughout the process. If you're interested and have a tourism or other enterprise idea that might benefit, find out more at the website below.
Click here to visit the BBC website >>
Botley Evaluated!
We have just finsihed piloting the HBSE evaluation guide on the project in Botley (Hampshire). Thanks to some excellent and sterling work by the Botley MTI group members, the full report is now available.
Download the Botley Evaluation Report (.pdf file 2.4mb) >>
Its all Happening in Hawkhurst!
Perched on the boundary of West Kent and East Sussex, Hawkhurst is sometimes known as the "Crossroads of the Weald", where 2 major "A"-roads meet - and which all too often whisk people straight through the village and on to other destinations.But all this is set to change, wiht a little help from Hidden Britain.
With 40,000 copies of Hawkhurst's new Heritage Trail, featuring 14 blue heritage plaques, produced and currently being distributed, some £136,000 of funding, partly gained through the Kent Rural Towns prgramme and SEEDA,, is now being used by "Hawkhurst Happens", The Hawkhurst Community Partnership, to bring 3 years of exciting events to Hawkhurst. Starting with "Flix & Pix" (A Film & Arts Festival between Friday, 19th June to Sunday, 28th June 2009), the village will come alive with:
"And that's not all - while these events are designed to increase footfall and help sustain businesses in our village, they will also be supported by a programme of important business and accommodation workshops which will start in the Autumn, an upgrade for our website (www.hawkhurst-happens.org.uk), and a planned refurbishment for our iconic Colonnade.
Visit the Hawkhurst website >>
New Destinations Added!
We've just added details on four of the new destinations we are working with; Chilham, Elham and St Margaret's, all in Kent, and Thame in Oxfordshire.
Visit their pages to find out more.
Go to the St.Margaret's Page >>
HB Marketing Toolkit Launched
We've followed up the recent Evaluation toolkit, with yet another kit, this time to help demystify the realm of marketing. Too often projects get underway without understanding who they are looking to attract, and therefore dont plan properly how they intend to reach their audiences. Effectively marketing your destination is as important as having something interesting and attractive to draw visitors.
Therefore we have put together a simple easy to use guide that outlines the fundamentals everyone should consider. The guide is free to use and we hope you find it useful!
Download the HBSE Marketing Toolkit as PDF (1.44mb) >>
Spring Newsletter is out now!
The Spring 2009 Hidden Britain Newsletter is now available. Its packed full of information not only on what we are workign on but also some wider issues for the rural tourism sector. If you have joined our mailing list you should have received a copy already, if not you can view it and previous editions at the newsletters page:.
Click here to go to the Newsltters page >>
British countryside is boring?
A survey of 3,000 Britons, for hotel chain Travelodge, found that many considered visiting the countryside to be boring with nothing to see or do.
John Tribe, Professor of Tourism from University of Surrey commented on the findings; "It is alarming news that over half of the nation thinks the British countryside is boring and there is nothing to do or see there. Maybe this is because in the last decade Britons have preferred to holiday abroad and as a result; they have forgotten the UK is abundant with great rural holiday locations.”
Rural towns and villages looking to attract tourists need to be imaginative in thinking about how to present themselves and the things to do in their area to make potential visitors think again about visiting the country.
New sustainable tourism initiatives for England
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has launched a new sustainable tourism framework for England. It addresses tourism’s environmental impact, including transport for tourism and climate change, but also focuses on social issues relating to tourism. The strategy aims to improve the quality of jobs in tourism, reduce the wide variations in demand between seasons and improve communities’ quality of life. From the visitors’ perspective, the framework outlines the need to make tourism more accessible to all members of society.
The strategy is very much in line with the work of Hidden Britain, whose work continues to contribute to many of the key challenges outlined in this new document.
Click here for more information and a link to the full document >>
Visit England have also recently published ‘9 Reasons to be Green’, which details the winners of the Award for Excellence in Sustainable Tourism. Each region has a winning tourism business who have been chosen as a showcase for sustainable tourism. These range from shopping centre in the South East, recognised for their efforts to reduce energy use, to and eco-friendly caravan park in the West Midlands.
Click here for more information >>
Tourism social networking sites
Word of mouth - what people tell other people about their visit - is probably the most important factor in deciding on a trip. Social networking sites are word of mouth on a grand scale - representing opportunities and threats for places trying to attract visitors.
On these sites, recent visitors to a place can post their opinions of the place, what they saw and did, where they stayed etc. Because the opinions and photos on these sites are by real people, they can carry a lot of weight with potential visitors. They are likely to be considered real and unbiased: Trip Advisor's tag line is 'Get the Truth'. This can mean great free publicity, but poor responses can also put others off: if one person has a bad experience, even if 90% are happy, and that one person writes their experience up, it could have a significantly damaging effect.
Many of the most popular sites, such as TripAdvisor.co.uk or HotelChatter.com, focus largely on hotel reviews, although there are also links to booking sites, information on restaurants and things to do. Others, such as virtualtourist.com and IKnowaGreatPlace.com focus more on a destination as a whole. These include review of individual businesses, like hotels, but are more about things to do and avoid in each destination.
There are a lot of sites that focus on traveller reviews and it is worthwhile spending some time looking through them to see whether your town or village is mentioned, and if so whether the information is correct. You can use these sites to spread the word about what your place has to offer and counter any bad reviews with positive information.
www.Iknowagreatplace.com is a new site that allows travellers to let other people know about the great places they know about. It focuses on destinations as well as special restaurants, things to do or places to stay. It is relatively new but is growing fast and is seeing 12,000 visitors per month. There is already quite a lot of information on places in England on the site, (see http://www.responsibletravel.com/community/search/tag.aspx?tids=175&tuid=0&restrict=1) because many users are based in the UK and interested in travelling to new interesting places. This makes it an ideal social networking site for Hidden Britain destinations, easy and free to get your place onto the site and targeted directly at the kind of people likely to visit. It's easy to register on the site and post a blog, photos, tips or join a discussion about places to visit, so a great opportunity for communities wanting to get some free publicity out to potential visitors.
There is a guide on how to use word of mouth to promote your destination at the Visit London Site.
Click here to download the pdf >>
Steyning Receives Walks Funding
Working with us at Hidden Britain South East, the Steyning Community Partnership in West Sussex has received a grant of £9,696 from The Awards For All Lottery Fund. The grant will be used to undertake the realisation of the Steyning Walks project, which aims to deliver a series of self-guided walks interpreting the heritage and environment both in and around the town, both for visitors and Steyning residents.
The Steyning Partnership has attracted a group of volunteers including both businesses and local residents who are now hard at work mapping out and detailing the routes. They aim to have the project complete for a Spring 2010 launch.
For more information on Steyning visit the Steyning website >>
HB Evaluation Toolkit Launched
Evaluation is a key part of any project, without it you cannot make any serious judgement about the value and impact of your work. What is learned from project evaluation can be as important as what the project produces or creates.
Too often this important stage in a project is overlooked or done poorly, therefore here at Hidden Britain we have put together what we hope is a straightforward guide and framework for evaluating your project.
Download the HBSE Evaluation Toolkit as PDF ( 1.1mb) >>
New website is a great place to share your destinations
IKnowAGreatPlace.com is a new community website where travellers share tips and information about places they have visited or where they live. It is linked to responsibletravel.com so has lots of UK based members who are likely to be interested in new places to visit on their doorstep.
Community sites like this one are becoming more and more important in tourism - word of mouth is the most popular way of choosing a destination. It's easy to join as a member and start posting information to tell people about your part of Hidden Britain.
Click here to visit the IKnowAGreatPLace website >>
Responsible Tourism Awards announced for 2008
This year's responsible tourism awards have been announced. Hidden Britain partners may be inspired by some of the UK winners, such as St Peters in Kent - highly commended in the Best Destination category for its innovative living history tour - or Cottage Lodge, an eco-lodge in the New Forest, which was highly commended in the Best Small Hotel category.
You can read all about the destinations, businesses and people that won in the latest R-Travel magazine.
Click here to visit the Responsible Tourism Awards website >>
Click here to view the latest R travel magazine >>
A New Lease of Life for Hidden Britain!
After three previous years of funding from Defra, the project has now gained a further two years of support from SEEDA through the Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE).
This not only allows the project to continue its work, but also to expand and work with more communities than ever before. We are targetting to work with 15 new destinations over the next two years, so if you think your community could benefit from the Hidden Britain approach then please get in touch!
We have also just appointed a new development officer to the team, Claudia Townsend, who will be working part time to help develop new projects in the South East.
Claudia has worked on community and sustainable tourism in a number of countries around the world and has an MSc in tourism and sustainability. She is looking forward to getting to know some of the South East’s most interesting towns and villages and working with their communities to promote them.
Click here to visit the SEEDA RDPE website >>
Hidden Britain on Radio Oxford!
Wednesday the 11th of June saw James Turner, the Hidden Britain Development Officer, and Margot Metcalfe from Dorchester-on-Thames speaking live on BBC Radio Oxford.
Click here to listen to part 1 of the interview (opens new window in browser)>>
Click here to listen to part 2 of the interview (opens new window in browser)>>
Click here to visit the Dorchester pages>>
Eden Valley Launch a great success !
The Eden Valley Tourism Initiative, a two-year venture designed to encourage visitors to the Eden Valley, celebrated its successful completion on 22 April at the recently refurbished Chiddingstone Castle. Private tours of the eclectic Japanese and Egyptian collections followed a special lunch for seventy.
Film tourism was the hot topic at the latest Eden Valley Tourism Forum, held prior to the launch and attended by 35 delegates from local businesses and organisations. Recent filming at Penshurst Place for "The Other Boleyn Gir"l provided the incentive for the theme.
The project has been supported by Edenbridge Town Council in conjunction with Hidden Britain, and funded by Defra through the England Rural Development Programme. The founding of the Forum was one of the many successes of the initiative and it will continue to provide a focus for local tourism providers to boost business in the Valley.
For more information visit www.edenvalleykent.org
Edenbridge & Eden Valley Project goes live!
The Eden Valley Tourism Initiative, a two year venture designed to encourage visitors to Edenbridge and its surroundings, is celebrating its successful completion witha launch at historic Chiddingstone Castle. The project has been supported by Hidden Britain in conjunction with Edenbridge Town Council, and funded by Defra through the England Rural Development Programme.
Initially, the Eden Valley Tourism Forum was set up, providing local tourism stakeholders with the opportunity to raise issues of concern. As a result of the first Forum, a branding and logo for the area and tear off pads of visitor maps were developed.
Since then, five short circular walks and five longer ones have been produced, with most of the Eden Valley Walk being covered by three of the longer ones.
The Eden Valley website went live last September and a visitor guide book, linking to the website, is available.Marketing work has also been undertaken to raise awareness of Edenbridge and Kent's Eden Valley in the eyes of the consumer.
For more information visit www.edenvalleykent.org
Come to Dorchester-on-Thames on Easter Monday!
Dorchester has just completed a three year project which aimed to highlight and enhance the village as a place to visit, and to make it more welcoming for visitors, while not damaging the local environment.
The project, part of the Hidden Britain programme, was funded by Defra to the tune of £32K (which included 25% local volunteer time).
Activities have included: Tourism audits and surveys; an enhanced village website; map boards at five entry points to the village; a Finger post in the car park at Bridge End indicating key locations (river, Abbey, etc.);Four walkers’ guides for Dorchester and environs; an updated version of the Village leaflet ; Touch screens in the Museum and Abbey loaded with key information; and Digitization/CD-Rom of the village’s Millennium album.
To mark the end of the project, and to celebrate Dorchester as a place to visit, come to the village on Easter Monday, March 24th 2008, and enjoy tours and walks, a balloon race, teas, and an exhibition of tourism-related activities.
Visit the Website at www.dorchester-on-thames.co.uk
or contact Margot Metcalfe on 01865 340054.
Go to the Dorchester-on-Thames Pages >>
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