Over the summer we’ve been busy expanding our team to meet the demands of our growing client base and workload.

Our new Operations Manager Pam McNally has joined us to manage our team, lead on our finances, work with our Directors on business planning, resourcing and generally ensure the smooth running of the office.

Following our appointment by West Midlands Growth Company to deliver the Digital Visitor Engagement strand of their Business and Tourism Programme, leveraging benefits from the upcoming Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, we have appointed Ollie Ferres as our Digital Projects Manager and are currently recruiting a Digital Analyst.

As part of the consortium appointed by Fáilte Ireland to deliver major strands of their ambitious Digital that Delivers programme, we have recruited Megan McGurren as the Bookable Experience Development Project Coordinator, Eleanor Higgins as the CRM Manager and we are pleased to once again be working with consultants Anh Nguyen, Carly Straughan and Mike Newman.

Welcome all.

Along with our regular associates HemingwayDesign, we have been commissioned by Swindon Council to develop a place brand for its Heritage Action Zone.

Swindon was the epicentre of the Great Western Railway and much of its railway heritage is still present within the designated Heritage Action Zone area – from the railway village housing, to the Health Hydro, Farringdon Park, The Cricketer’s Arms, the Carriage works and the Mechanics Institute, to name a few of the iconic buildings and infrastructure. You may be less aware that is was also a fascinating model community – build around very contemporary values of home, work, learning and wellbeing. Following major grant awards the council is investing in the regeneration of the area over five years.

For a quick overview of this remarkable history have a look at Google Arts & Culture’s exhibit of Swindon: the heritage of a railway town produced by Historic England.

We have been appointed by the West Midlands Growth Company (WMGC) to deliver a major Digital Visitor Engagement project for the region, as part of the government funded Business and Tourism Programme (BATP).

The BATP is supporting the showcasing opportunity of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games to drive trade, investment and visitors to the West Midlands region and the UK.

Its Digital Visitor Engagement strand will create a new Digital Visitor Information Network that connects the destinations and tourist attractions throughout the West Midlands via a centralised listings platform. The new platform will provide increased opportunities for visitors to discover and book culture, leisure and tourism products via multiple consumer channels.

Delivery of the project comes at a critical time for tourism in the region, with preparations well underway for next year’s Commonwealth Games and Cultural Festival, as well as Coventry recently kickstarting its delayed celebrations as the UK City of Culture 2021.

To support The Digital Visitor Information Network, we will lead a digital marketing collaboration bringing cultural partners together to work on region-wide marketing campaigns that can deliver measurable results through improved reporting and ongoing optimisation of digital engagement.

Dan Lukas, Digital Director, said: “This is a really exciting time for the West Midlands and it’s fantastic to be working with the West Midlands Growth Company to make sure that all destinations and attractions throughout the region will have the digital capabilities they need to maximise their own tourism products and offer.

“The Digital Visitor Engagement work will make it easier for visitors to discover the culture and tourism offer at a time when all eyes will be on Birmingham and the wider region in the build-up to, and beyond, next year’s Commonwealth Games.

“This is a chance to harness digital in a way that both drives direct visitor engagement with individual attractions while also taking a holistic approach to showcase the wider visitor offer by responding to how today’s visitors research and book online, using many different digital channels.“

Becky Hall, Head of Visitor Attraction, West Midlands Growth Company, said: “We look forward to working with CTConsults, whose expertise will prove valuable as we deliver the digital visitor engagement element of our Business and Tourism Programme. This new digital project will lead to transformational ways of interacting with cultural and tourism industry partners across our West Midlands destinations.

“By increasing our region’s tourism digital know-how and collaborating to promote the depth of our cultural offer, we will give visitors a seamless experience of finding information, and booking events, festivals and performances.

“Tourism brings so many benefits to the West Midlands, from improved quality of life to job opportunities, and this programme will contribute to the long-term resilience of the sector.”

As England’s cultural sector continues to open up, thanks to Culture Recovery Funding from Arts Council England and the Department for Culture, Media & Sport, we are launching over 20 new town and city destination guides, expanding our existing content and reach beyond the city regions of Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds. These free-to-access online guides showcase the best of the North’s cultural offer through the award-winning what’s on listings website www.creativetourist.com, from Blackpool to Sunderland, Crewe to Hull, Penrith to Ilkley, Buxton to Newcastle, plus many more culturally rich places.

The Culture Recovery Fund investment enabled us to retain our full independent editorial team of artform specialists and recruit new writers representing different parts of the Northern region. Tapping into this expertise, the local knowledge of the team of writers, and recommendations from cultural partners in each place, the destination guides uncover hidden gems as well as cultural flagship venues and attractions.

During the lockdown as the cultural sector pivoted to online experiences, we conducted adaptations to the website to enable inclusion and promotion of online events, also supported through the Culture Recovery Fund grant.

Creativetourist.com has a loyal and growing following of culturally-engaged audiences keen to reconnect in person with the cultural offer locally but also further afield. As towns and cities work hard to recover from the impact of Covid-19, we are working with partners across the North to promote these new online guides to encourage visitors to explore what’s on their doorstep as well as venture out to experience new cultural destinations.

#HereForCulture

Most people know us for creativetourist.com while in reality, this only a small part of what we do. Over the past 10 years CTConsults has completed many complex projects, ranging from writing the Cultural Tourism Strategy for the Mayor of London, to implementing large-scale digital transformation projects for venues and places across the UK and Ireland. The new brand aims to simplify what we do, and give the people behind CTConsults a little more of the spotlight. 

As part of our recent rebranding, we redesigned our brand, and our website and during this process realised that we wanted to add an aesthetic element that represented the creativity and culture that we are engaged in every day. We decided the Manchester based illustrator Jane Bowyer would be a good fit for what we wanted to achieve – Jane’s illustrations balance playfulness with purpose to deliver work that is both beautifully crafted and memorable.

What Jane had to say: ‘We wanted to create something that was clean, bold, and personable, that represented creativity and culture. I worked with texture in this way to give the CTConsults illustration style its own distinctive and recognisable look and feel. The final product is a result of the design team and I working closely together to create something that is eye-catching and integrates well with the design and layout of the new website.’ 

Website: bowyerjane.co.uk
Instagram: @bowyerjane
Twitter: @bowyerjane

Cumbria and the North East are places that are special to me for lots of reasons and I always jump at the chance to work there now.

As CTConsults we have long connections with Cumbria especially, and we have recently been working with our friends at Eden Arts to explore the case for collaboration across the A66 counties and district authorities – (that green bit crossing the country that gets forgotten or at least until a fateful trip to Barnard Castle) –  to see how working together can be good for place identity, community, enterprise and tourism. The #66 project is now gaining momentum – it was a great idea before the pandemic but goodness it seems very ‘right now’ for our build back better post-COVID times.

So, when Eden Arts asked me to join in a conversation with Gill Haigh (Cumbria Tourism) and Michelle Gorman (This Is Durham) with a loose brief, including sustainable tourism, and permission to just see where it goes, I happily agreed. As Gill said, it was a lovely way to end a difficult year, to share why we are passionate about the North and discover some of the surprising things we have in common.

Anyone want to come outdoors with me?

Have a listen, available here:
Anchor  |  Spotify  |  Apple Podcasts

Reflecting on the last ten years there have been the inevitable highs and lows, but doing that during a pandemic lockdown means that you not only look back, but are forced to look forward at what the next ten years may bring and where we want to be as a company.

Like everyone else we don’t have a crystal ball, but suffice it to say, if we thought the last ten years of austerity have been tough, especially for the cultural and tourism sectors in which we predominantly work, then we ain’t seen nothing yet! 

In some ways, we’ve been lucky as we have already been reviewing what we do, how and with whom as our sectors move and shift in response to changing demand. As destinations start to think more holistically as places and what that means for their local residents, businesses, students, investors and visitors, we have been developing our approach to place branding and destination marketing. We don’t just work with tourists or creative organisations, and whilst we continue to run our popular CreativeTourist.com what’s on listings site, we felt it was time to also consider naming, slightly adjusting our company name to better reflect our wider consultancy work – so we’re now CT Consults. We still work with the cultural and tourism sectors but are more often than not now working across places to shape how they think about and articulate what makes them distinctive for locals as well as visitors.

Keep it relevant

Nobody was prepared for something like coronavirus, not just in arts and culture, but across the board, in all walks of life, we were taken off guard. Your audience is understanding of the situation and for those that paused to take stock, rather than rushing in out of fear of being lost in the shuffle, they were able to respond more effectively to the needs of their audiences, engaging audiences appropriately.

It is hard enough for arts and culture to get the attention which we would like to see online – especially if you are a smaller organisation with limited reach. People are still probably more concerned with getting their supermarket order than they are about their favourite cultural organisation pumping out content.

Even a few months into the pandemic, it’s worth taking the time to see what resources you have already and how you can use them. There is a higher risk of losing followers and goodwill from your audience by throwing anything at the wall than there is by saying nothing. Keep it relevant. 

You won’t become a YouTube sensation overnight, so don’t kill yourself trying to! Be realistic in your expectations and work on a content plan that you can actually deliver and is relevant to your audience – like you would in normal times.

All organisations are not equal and your digital archive will only be as big as your funding. It’s easy for the National Theatre to stream world-class performances captured on the highest budget to everyone with an internet connection, we’ve similar examples from the likes of the Berlina Philharmoika who have switched their paid service to a free one. This is great stuff, but it’s not something many can achieve. 

That said, we’ve seen some excellent examples here in Manchester, in particular, the work of Manchester Collective has stood out. A comparative minnow, but also incredibly agile and forward-thinking, Manchester Collective seemed to switch onto digital overnight. Again, they were already digitising their content so found themselves in a better position than some. Another ace up their sleeve is that they suit the online space better than most classical organisations – they are not a BBC Philharmonic or Hallé who rely on scores of players and a concert hall, they all about intimacy and performing in found spaces and the sense of occasion isn’t lost too much over a broadband connection.

It didn’t just happen though – they branded what they were doing, Isolation Broadcasts, and put together a schedule of performances alongside a proper marketing campaign. They engaged publishers like our own consumer-facing website, creativetourist.com, to promote their programme, and found trusted voices like BBC Radio 3’s Elizabeth Alker and their own star violinist and Music Director Rakhi Singh who have big profiles to help extend their reach engaging audiences.

“Our work has always been about forging an arresting, personal connection with our audiences, and we knew that we had to continue in this vein throughout this wild and woolly time” says Adam Szabo, Manchester Collective’s Chief Executive. “As a small, relatively new organisation, we’ve never had huge reserves or an endowment to fall back on. Any measure of success that we’ve had in this period has been due to the authentic and high-quality way that our artists and collaborators have communicated with our audiences. In times of crisis, audiences and stakeholders will not respond to “woe is me” messaging – arts lovers have always been attracted to passion and vision. Right now, part of that vision has to be about how to work effectively and inspirationally in a totally digital landscape.”

It is the way they have used their artists and collaborators, not falling back solely on recorded concerts, but engaging audiences across their social platforms to create interactive content. If anything, it feels like Manchester Collective has raised their profile in the past few months. 

We’ve seen similar examples from Band on the Wall who were the first to make an event and schedule around re-watching their archive concerts, and the Old Bank Residency – a twelve-month creative occupation of a disused bank in Manchester – who has shifted their entire schedule of tutorials and workshops online, even moving the focus of their sessions to cover things like mask-making and improving the lighting on your Zoom calls – all the more relevant than ever in this new normal. 

Visitor sentiment research undertaken by BVA BDRC (consumer insight consultancy) and the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions confirms the pent-up demand for days out experiences. At the same time, the findings show that there are equally significant numbers of visitors who have no intention of returning to their pre-Covid-19 behaviour yet, especially in regard to visiting indoor venues. The outdoors inevitably appeals. Day-trippers are rushing back to coastal and rural locations, whilst city centres are eerily empty. Seasonal destinations and venues are also rushing to salvage what is left of the summer season but sustainable, resilient and now ‘safe’ tourism isn’t built on such foundations. Together with tourism partners, the heritage sector has a major part to play in rethinking the model to make sure that visitor levels are controlled, that the experience is rewarding, reassuring and responsible – for operators as well as visitors. Anything less will do long-term damage to the positioning and perception of heritage tourism with key markets.

We have identified four priority areas for the heritage sector to address to ensure its recovery planning also maximises its long-term value for heritage tourism:

Focus on place and localism

It will be a long time before international visitors return to anywhere near pre-Covid-19 levels. The traditional growth-driven tourism model of more visits, more visitors and more spending has become more at odds with powerful voices calling for the sector to become more environmentally sustainable. It’s not long at all since some of the world’s best known heritage-rich destinations (such as Amsterdam, Venice and Barcelona), desperately looked to radical regulations and visitor dispersal mechanisms to mitigate overtourism. Even in the UK we have all experienced the peak-season misery of shuffling around overcrowded museums and galleries, especially in London or in destination hotspots like Stonehenge, Bath or York. But are you and your local partners brave enough to switch to a model focused on value rather than volume? Now is the time. Our current work with Visit Flanders is about developing heritage-led tourism experiences which tap directly into its landmark Travel to Tomorrow ambition. A model that focuses on sustainable and resilient tourism with local, social value and low-carbon transition, can provide impactful and memorable experiences that also support local economies. Co-designing the reopening of heritage venues and destinations in partnership with local residents, testing and piloting to address fears and anxieties will go a long way towards rebuilding local community confidence and shaping future visitor welcome.   

Partnerships and collaborations

Many destinations are investing in place brand development, not to be confused with poorly conceived logos, straplines and short-term campaigns, but an in-depth approach to understanding a place’s values and how they relate to local residents, businesses, students, investors – and visitors. York is a great example of a city known for its extraordinary heritage. Yet it’s also a city with a strong independent spirit, technologically innovative and deeply socially progressive. Its new, values-based place narrative which we helped develop, undertaking extensive consultation with over 6,000 residents and visitors, is now ready for rollout. Rollout isn’t about a campaign but about all city partners adopting and communicating the values through what they do and how they do it. It’s about building a better city for the future – and it’s arguably at its most influential in a shared crisis. For The York Festival of Ideas, York’s museums sector delivered a public lecture – Locked Down but Not Locked Out sharing ideas with local residents affected by the impact on tourism to encourage understanding, ownership and engagement. 

Ticketing and online bookability

If you do not have an online booking or reservation system in place, no doubt you are trying to navigate various technological solutions to manage your reduced capacity and control visitor flows. Everyone from the small independent to the National Trust has had to make changes to how people book and access their properties. You do not need to spend a fortune on a ticketing system, nor do you have to resort to online solutions that don’t provide you with access to your consumer data. Look to the travel & experiences sector for your solution – it is easier than you think (and considerably cheaper).

By choosing booking systems like Bokun, FareHarbor, Checkfront, or Rezgo that are built with visitor experiences and online distribution in mind, you can easily manage information about your products, set up complex schedules, and automatically ‘close out’ inventory based on the availability of key staff or equipment. While they’re often called ‘online’ booking systems, these systems don’t just power your website — they also support bookings over the phone, by email, or in-person, as well as by your approved affiliates, agents, or resellers. The best systems also include sophisticated channel manager software that automatically synchronises your availability and pricing information with channels such as Viator, GetYourGuide, Booking.com, Expedia, or Google, while allowing you to switch those channels on or off as desired. Using a single ‘connected’ system to power all your distribution is not only far more efficient — reducing the need for manual processing of bookings, cancellations, changes, and invoices by as much as 80% — but also gives you a real-time view of your inventory and powerful insights into how each of your distribution channels are performing.

Fáílte Ireland commissioned us to write the National Online Distribution Strategy for Visitor Experiences and is now fast-tracking its work programme with hundreds of tourism suppliers (including heritage attractions) to improve their online visibility and bookability. 

Digital engagement with visitors for the long-term

International brands that had already invested heavily in their digital offer pre-Covid-19, such as Historic Royal Palaces, were quick to repurpose existing digital content and create new content exploring their venues, collections and stories. For those that had not prioritised digital engagement and marketing before lockdown, it’s been a rude awakening. But it’s not all about content, social media, PR or new technology (e.g. VR/AR). Unless you have your basic digital housekeeping in place – conversion goals, tracking, metrics and monitoring – you’ll have little idea whether what you’re doing is meeting your objectives. Take advantage of the free digital skills training available right now, including the Government’s Digital Boost programme, Heritage Digital from the Heritage Alliance and Arts Marketing Association’s Digital Heritage Lab (both funded as part of NLHF’s Digital Skills for Heritage Campaign), Coach by digital marketing expert Chris Unitt and Arts Council England’s Digital Tech Champions.

Conclusion

Most of the heritage sector is understandably focused on survival. It can be extremely tough to think about where you might be in 6-months’ time, let alone 3-5 years. But you’re not alone. 

Destinations really are more than the sum of their parts. With increasingly limited resources, the need to step outside your comfort zone to collaborate with a wider range of local partners is becoming simply essential. Bringing local residents and visitors closer together needs to be at the forefront of your thinking, rather than seeing them as opposite ends of the heritage tourism spectrum. There is a real opportunity now to rebuild relationships with local markets to create better and more distinctive visitor offers. But that will only work if you invest resources into developing your understanding of your local markets and learn how to engage and communicate with them more effectively.

So are we really just trying to adjust to the ‘new normal’, find the ‘old normal’ or should we be focused on a more resilient heritage tourism economy built on more sustainable practices? We vote for the latter.

This article was originally commissioned by and published on the National Lottery Heritage Fund website in an edited version on 9 July 2020.