Project Aims

This project has the primary aim of assisting tourism related businesses in taking advantage of developments in ICT and in particular the internet.

The initiative is funded and supported by Somerset County Council (acting as project manager) and the District Councils of Sedgemoor, Taunton Deane, South Somerset, Mendip, North Somerset Council and West Somerset - significant (matched) funding is provided by SWRDA. The project will initially run to August 2009.

The Project started in May 2005 when an initial series of seminars took place. A second and third series of seminars ran from Oct 2006 until April 2008. These seminars have been very well received by tourism related businesses attending (around 210 delegates have attended so far) and some have opted to pay for an on-site visit undertaken by a business advisor.

As well as the seminars, a project newsletter has been sent to all tourism businesses and regular updates have been given via email and through attendance at trade meetings - all of this without a new visitsomerset website to look at!

The project has developed strong links with the Connecting Somerset project and a good percentage of businesses have indicated that they have been assisted in moving up the e-adoption ladder.

www.visitsomerset.co.uk

In January 2007, Somerset procured the New Mind Destination Management System which powers this website. This website will be the primary initial tool to roll out the new Somerset branding, developed by the Somerset Tourism Project Team. Some experiential themes will be featured on this website, but the project is keen to ensure that the trade have a better understanding of these themes before developing specific campaign sites.

As well as being encouraged to 'up their game' independently by developing and improving their own web presence and e-commerce adoption, this website will provide tourism businesses a significant means to help increase the profile of the county by appealing to the marketplace in innovative and exciting ways. Various marketing and customer relationship management activities will link to the action plan and marketing strategy for the emerging Somerset Destination Management Organisation.