Tourism Strategy
Key Objectives (KO’s):
- Improving the performance of existing tourism businesses, with
strong emphasis on quality improvement
- Capitalising on the predicted growth in VFR tourism (Visiting
friends & relatives)
- Strengthening selectively the borough’s tourism offer
- Growing business tourism
- Exploiting Ashford’s location en route to/from the continent
and at the heart of the county
- Developing a special promotional focus on Tenterden and the
‘String of Pearls’
- Maximising the benefits of tourism partnerships through
ensuring active participation
- Consolidating the importance of Tourism Information Centres in
Ashford & Tenterden through service improvement in line with
established best practice
- Addressing Ashford town’s poor visitor profile, working closely
with the Ashford’s Future delivery team
- Monitoring the impact of all actions and feeding results back
into the strategy and action planning processes
Key Measures of Success (KMS):
- Improved signing, training &increased membership of quality
initiatives, targeted marketing campaigns
- Great local days out marketing campaign, residents passports,
marketing campaigns to attract local people
- Feasibility studies into new attractions, grow the range of
events & festivals, encourage McCarthurGlen visitors into town
centre & rest of the borough.
- Create brand awareness of Ashford as a conference destination,
feasibility study of conference centre linked to sport/culture,
campaign for companies to conference locally
- Promote benefits of Ashford as a stop off destination to / from
the continent, Welcome Host training courses, and special language
training for tourism businesses
- Develop a themed short breaks campaign for String of Pearls and
include in new Tenterden Brouchure, maybe extended to Cranbrook
& Rye
- Review partnership outputs and effectiveness on a regular
basis, work with tourism partners on research and product
development initiatives
- Review the Tourism Information Centre provision with partners,
develop a destination management system to enable on line booking,
introduce mystery shopper to Tourism Information Centres
- Include tourism priorities in Greater Ashford Development
Framework, work with Ashford Town Centre Partnership to create a
sense of place, improve visitor signage in town, increase B&B’s
in town
- Benchmark against other Kent districts, review action plans,
monitor and review the outputs of related strategies: Economic
Development, Cultural , Ashford’s Future
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):
- BV170 Museums | Performance Indicator
- Benchmarking against other districts
- Value of tourism each year
- Number of tourism jobs each year
Download
the Full Tourism Strategy 419Kb PDF here
Author & Contact: Sarah Barber
Passed by Executive:
Review period (months/years:
Review date:
This webpage was updated on
7/21/2010