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Thoughts on Wired Tourism event in Brighton

31 March 2011 | Dominic Sawyer

Yesterday evening Kate and I attended Wired For Tourism, an event organised by Wired Sussex and supported by the South East Innovation & Growth team. In the audience were 100+ organisations, either SMEs serving the visitor economy or digital marketing organisations with something to offer the tourism sector. As Phil Jones (MD of Wired Sussex and chairing) said, Brighton is renowned for these two industries and the aim of the night was to connect the two.  

We're close to Brighton and so it was great to soak up the energy from this hotbed of digital activity and tourism enterprise!

The event was also chaired by John Carmichael (Marketing Manager, Visit Brighton) and he highlighted how quickly the landscape has changed, citing a piece in the Telegraph just five years ago that talked about the introduction of online mapping, podscrolls and podcasts. Things have moved on pretty fast!

I thought I'd highlight a few points that stuck out on the four talks.

Talk 1 - Helen Wilkinson, Metro-Deco

MetroDeco is a dog friendly 1930s Parisian-style tea shop in Brighton that opened in 2009. Armed with a tiny marketing budget and a low footfall Helen looked to her social media savvy partner to help promote the business after the initial press interest had died down. As is often the case Helen has found evaluating the social media efforts difficult to quantify but was passionate about the benefits it has brought to her business.

As well as establishing a two way conversation with her customers through Twitter (she emphasised the value of maintaining communication with her customers outside of the shop) she was able to see how her business was being positively discussed amongst her customers. Just looking at their Twitter feed this morning shows how well they are using it.

They're also trying other online tactics - including a YouTube video (+2500 views in the last two years) and rewarding FourSquare check-ins with free food and drink.

Talk 2 - Paul Munton, Snooze Brighton & Stephen James, DMDC

Paul from Snooze (a boutique guesthouse) and Stephen (web designer frin DMDC) talked about their approach to building their site. From the start Paul saw the need to stand out from the crowd (understandable given Brighton's diverse accommodation options!) and wanted the site to closely match the unique experience being developed at their guesthouse.

They highlighted the one page design which was refreshing and certainly has its benefits. It meant they could focus on showing visitors the experience without getting lost in reams of text - they did this by using large slideshows in the header with lovely shots of each room. As Stephen pointed out - something they could achieve without Flash and through the use of AJAX. Here's an example of a one page site from web design agency Headscape.

Paul said 70% of their bookings come via the website and the remaining 30% that pick up the phone have mostly already visited the site. Paul's focus on social media is on Twitter and finds it a great way to softly promote their experience and what's going on in Brighton. They did try a Facebook page but were put off with having to fit their brand into Facebook's template fan pages. Perhaps a good thing as it has meant his efforts have been more focused.

Talk 3 - Rich Crosby, Brightec

Rich Crosby and colleagues from Brightec demonstrated their excellent iPhone app developed for the Brighton Marathon. I wonder whether there is scope for them to package this up as a product for other organisers  - something I'm sure they've looked into.

There was a brief Q&A afterwards regarding the dilemna of developing native apps over a mobile friendly site that can work across numerous devices. Rick pointed out that it depends on the aims of a project but I think there are risks to be considered developing a native app for one platform with the marketplace changing rapidly. There's an interesting discussion on why 37Signals chose a mobile web app over native ones. More thoughts on this from a recent blog post on Tnooz.

Talk 4 - Peter Biggs, BozBoz

Peter Biggs from BozBoz discussed the benefits of ecommerce and content management by running through a few sites that they have developed. Obviously I was already a convert to much of this but was impressed by the return on investment they had achieved and the design and content management of their sites including one for venue Concorde 2.

 After the talks we had a chance to mingle with local tourism businesses and meet colleagues working in the industry. Thanks to the organisers - we really enjoyed it, the venue was very good and the canapes delicious and plentiful!