Cheltenham Tourism – Reinvigorating the visitor economy in Cheltenham.
There are many small towns and cities up and down the UK who want to grow tourism and their visitor economy but struggle to find the investment to contribute to a marketing service of any significance. Many forward-thinking destinations are bringing ‘place’ making together combining inward investment, talent recruitment and general local culture marketing under a Community Interest Company, or other not-for-profit public/private partnership.
With a lot of smaller destination or town models, there is a heavy reliance on the Local Authority (LA) to provide a service and for years this has often been the first budget to cut as LA’s budget shrink. It’s a challenging arena to build a commercial business model when local visitor economy (including hospitality businesses) already pay business rates, probably pay into a Business Improvement District (BID), as well as one of the multitude of platforms that exist to help take their business to market.
Setting up a new marketing service that not only supports individual businesses but also works to put the whole destination on the map, under these circumstances, is not easy. Unless like Cheltenham, you have a forward-thinking retail BID, a small group of active private sector organisations who want to change, and most importantly an ambitious Council team.
“I spent a marvellous couple of years working closely with Kelly in my role as Director of Cheltenham BID while she was manager of Marketing Cheltenham. Kelly brought a wide range of experiences to the town and worked passionately to bring a new professionalism to the way the town was marketed. Her work led to the investment in a new full-time team who are promoting the town to new and growing audiences. “
Kevan Blackadder, former Director of Cheltenham BID
The situation before Marketing Cheltenham
In 2016, I was commissioned by Cheltenham Borough Council, Cheltenham BID and partners to provide strategic direction and implementation of plans to grow Cheltenham tourism and the visitor economy, after identifying that the value of tourism had remained almost static for the past ten years.
At the time destinations nation-wide were experiencing growth, both in the number of domestic short-breaks and overseas holiday makers to the UK, Cheltenham tourism had experienced a significant decrease in overseas visitors; ‘day’ and domestic ‘staying’ visitor numbers had increased slightly but the amount they were spending had declined.
Tourism was important to Cheltenham and whilst the hospitality industry enjoyed some amazing ‘race’ weekends brought by The Jockey Club at Cheltenham Racecourse, the retail businesses were suffering – people simply weren’t staying to enjoy the rest of what the town had to offer. The other wonderful festivals had their niche audiences, but again their tourism pound was not being seen in the local town other than through the accommodation.
As accommodation prices rose during festival time this was pushing people to stay further away from the town, or to travel as day visitors, barely spending anything outside of the festival site itself. These amazing festivals were creating a collective bounty of PR for the town, but the reputation as a ‘horse racing town’ was overshadowing all of the other wonderful and varied reasons to visit throughout the year.
Approach to building the service
- Lots of organisations working in silos promoting their own offer, in their own markets, with little collaboration or promotion of the whole place.
- Very little commercial income – therefore a skeleton service almost 100% funded by Local Authority, whose budgets were shrinking.
- Tourist Information Centre attempting to fulfil a tourism marketing and stakeholder support role, whilst also running the reception of the museum and art gallery.
- Weak digital portal and online presence, with little or no content creation promoting the town, reasons to visit or its culture. No local engagement in the platform.
- Poor brand identity, known mainly for its horse racing, but ‘nothing worth visiting for outside of that…there are better alternatives’, said an online survey of people outside Cheltenham.
- Little to no obvious pride and engagement from the local community telling others about how great Cheltenham is.
- A new Business Improvement District (BID) that was a great opportunity for the town, but left other outer lying businesses without support.
The main issues included:
A five-year visitor economy growth strategy was created in collaboration with a number of Cheltenham stakeholders. It moved beyond tourism to cover the whole ‘visitor economy’ ensuring that the BID’s objectives for repeat regional visitors was also fulfilled. The strategy included elements of a destination management plan, a marketing strategy, membership scheme and partnership networking structure. The strategy created can be found here.
In November 2017, Marketing Cheltenham was created as a new division of the Council in order to underwrite a service until it was able to stand on its own two feet. This marketing service was shared by Cheltenham BID and the staff sat within the BID office next to the headquarters of the very active Chamber of Commerce, to purposefully present an arms-length distance from the Council.
Operating with a flexible staff team to begin with would allow both the main funders Cheltenham Borough Council and the Cheltenham BID the opportunity to test the partnership.
Delivery of the marketing plan included using an external agency for the first two years and four full-time staff were recruited in 2019 on a two year fixed contract, in line with the BID tenure.
Cheltenham BID worked with Marketing Cheltenham to deliver a number of new events through the year including adding on elements to the existing events that would bring people into the town and into the businesses, as part of the Cheltenham Jazz and Literature festivals these were known as the Around Town programme.
The results (that I know about) so far
The strategic aim was to grow Cheltenham’s visitor economy by 5% year-on-year. Three years into that strategy (2017 – 2020) the success speaks for itself on every level.
✓ Annual visitor spend went from £159m in 2017 to £173m in 2019, an extra £14million brought into the economy, a rise of 8%
✓ ‘Day’ visits grew by 10%, with spend up 10%
✓ ‘Staying’ visitor trips were up by 8%, and spend up 7%
✓ Overseas visitor trips up by 5%; spend up by 16%
Beyond the headline stats, marketing a destination, changing visitor perceptions, driving increased footfall and turning the tide on silo working takes many years. Marketing Cheltenham has so far had three years in place to form the basis of this change and there are many positive results.
- A public/private sector business model was created, with 450 businesses involved (inc BID members), driving just under £200,000 of private sector funding by year 2. The business model continues to evolve working with stakeholders to ensure it works for everyone but most importantly is sustainable.
- Working closely with Cheltenham BID a marketing model was created combining specialist marketers and digital platforms to deliver BID marketing needs, as well as wider tourism marketing.
- The Cheltenham BID was able to benefit from a marketing service and platforms that already had traction, it was also able to take advantage of the numbers of people coming to the website or engaging on social media on platforms that would have way higher interest than a standard shopping website. This combined platform ensured one major asset for the town operating as a portal to drive referrals to local businesses.
- Key stakeholders in the visitor economy were coming together regularly through Tourism Partnership meetings or member meetings, working together on initiatives, having input into plans and getting to know each other.
- Working in collaboration with Cotswolds Tourism and GFirst LEP, several grants were successfully bid for as part of VisitBritain’s Discover England Fund. This enabled Cheltenham to more effectively market itself as a destination at regional land international level.
- Planning and management of multiple event-led marketing campaigns including a significant campaign to relaunch Cheltenham as a Christmas shopping destination. Advertising recall rates for the 2018 campaign were 47% with 19% of respondents being from out of town.
- In 2019, in collaboration with key stakeholders, a new town brand was created ‘The Festival Town’, providing distinction and characteristics that Cheltenham could grow all of its communication and initiatives around.
- A new website for visitcheltenham was developed in 2017, providing a portal to not only inspire new and repeat visitors but also helps to showcase to many businesses including retailers. The recently launched meetincheltenham.co.uk will further drive visitor business into the town year-round, post COVID.
- A comprehensive content plan was created and delivered driving an increase of 102% in website visitors over three years, as well as dramatic increases in followers of the VisitCheltenham social media.
Success beyond the visitor economy – a sense of place
Whilst the figures show that the visitor economy has grown significantly over the three years since the strategy was implemented, one significant outcome is a unified message giving the town back its confidence and a strong sense of place. Active social media channels have grown in followers and engagement, with passionate locals now proudly sharing their stories of Cheltenham.
Whilst difficult to measure, work undertaken to present Cheltenham as a great place for visitors also has a positive impact on encouraging businesses and talented individuals to relocate to the town, all of which have a positive impact on the wider economy.
The future for a service like Marketing Cheltenham
As the fixed term jobs come to an end in line with the Cheltenham BID ballot, the future of Marketing Cheltenham is thrown into a spotlight.
Like most towns and cities, unless a Tourism tax or TBID model is adopted, the future for tourism marketing is always going to be precariously balanced. Or, better still for a small town like Cheltenham where tourism is only a small part of the economy, the marketing service and platform is seen as an opportunity to pivot and provide a Place Marketing service. Still driving the cultural reasons to visit but also supporting inward investment and the attraction of talent. Working with large organisations to support recruitment and to develop a destination as its own microcosm of great living, working and playing. They are after all interlinked.
Credit also goes to local Cheltenham agency APT Marketing for their work in helping to deliver the strategy in the first two years.
