New Website & Kiosk Make Colchester a Real Mousetrap!
VISITORS to Colchester will benefit from an all-new official tourism website and real-time information kiosk which were officially launched in January.As well as information on events, attractions and accommodation information, the new www.visitcolchester.com includes some great new features for visitors and locals alike. There is information on how accessible Colchester is for wheelchair users and parents with pushchairs, a new Tours & Stories area which features a video about Guided Tours in Colchester and a new themed approach to the wide variety of things that people can see and do in the area.
The launch took place at the VisitColchester Information Centre in Queen Street with the help of students from the Colchester English Studies Centre in Lexden Road.
Commenting on the new kiosk service, Fawzia Gumati, who comes from Libya and is studying for a six month period at the English Studies Centre said: "The kiosk is something very special that I have not seen anywhere else. It is marvellous." Fellow student Rene Bachmann from Paraguay agreed that it would be very useful for family and friends to use and to learn more about England.
"The current VisitColchester website was well received and welcomed more than 20,000 visitors every month" said Claire Taylor, the Council's Visitor Services Officer, "but we know that it's important to keep up with technological advances and customer expectations and that's why we have developed the new site which will be much more visible to search engines like Google."
Visitors and locals will also benefit from a new 24:7 live information kiosk which has been installed in the window at the VisitColchester Information Centre in Queen Street. The kiosk is intended to help visitors who arrive when the Centre is closed and it will also help local people looking for things to do and places to visit at any time.
Containing information such as late accommodation availability, places to eat and shop, what's on, a town centre map as well as local and emergency information, the kiosk will also showcase the video about Guided Tours of the town.
Claire adds: "We are increasingly living in a 24 hour culture, and people are expecting to find it easy to plan their leisure at a time convenient to them. The kiosk is a valuable addition to the variety of information services we provide from the Centre in Queen Street. In fact even while it has been tested it served more than 1400 visitors during December!"
These new developments form part of an ambitious plan to attract visitors to the area. The Visitor Services team are gearing up to attend a range of exhibitions around the Country and they'll be taking the new 2007 official Colchester Visitor Guide with them.
Commenting on the new improvements, Councillor Kevin Bentley, the Council's Portfolio Holder for Culture & Public Relations, said, "There are few destinations, especially in the East of England Region, which have had such sustained tourism growth over the past decade.
"In addition, the area has enormous tourism potential: Firstsite, the new Community Stadium, a new Roman Circus attraction and the wider St Botolph's regeneration all demonstrate our ambition and intention to sustain and grow visitor activity, to retain our current visitor base and capitalise on the Colchester area's potential, especially in relation to the 2012 Games and I am confident that these improvements in how information is provided will offer an excellent welcome to the anticipated 500,000 additional visitors a year that these developments will bring." ENDS January 2007