New VisitColchester Website

Colchester's Tourism Team launches New Tourism Website

 

Local tourism businesses and visitors alike will benefit from an all-new official tourism website which officially launched today 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.

 

The new site now has a more modern design and features Google Translate on every page which enables the site to be translated into 52 languages. The old site featured a simple welcome to Colchester in just 10 languages. This feature should assist people planning to come to the area during the Olympic/Paralympic Games in 2012.

 

Also featuring throughout the site is the ability to combine events, attractions and accommodation bookings so that people can build their own short break much more easily than before.

 

This combined with the new e-shop which launched late last year as well as links to the Facebook, Twitter and Trip Advisor social networking sites means that Colchester is prepared for 2012 to maximise any benefits for local tourism businesses from what's being called the first ‘Digital Games' in 2012. The new developments also recognise that 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 site was endorsed by the Deputy Chair of the Colchester Partnership for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games last week. Col. Tom Fleetwood, Garrison Commander and Deputy Chair of the group said: "This is a superb website which meets the needs of all those who we would wish to attract to Colchester both for the Olympics and the Paralympic Games and of course at other times of the year. Well done to the Colchester tourism team!"

 

"The previous VisitColchester website was well received and welcomed an average of 100,000 users 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 also be much more visible to search engines like Google."

 

The website is managed by the team at the VisitColchester Information Centre in Queen Street who are very much aware that information services are not just for visitors. Studies show that over 30% of the centre's customers are local people seeking ideas for things to do and places to visit, especially over the school holidays and for visiting friends and relatives. Local people also use the Centre to help plan short breaks and trips elsewhere in Britain and there's every reason to believe that locals are also using the website.

 

These new developments form part of plans to attract visitors to the area. The Visitor Services team are currently attending a range of exhibitions around the Country and they'll be taking the new 2011 official Colchester Visitor Guide with them.

 

The site features information about 54 places to stay locally, 376 venues and 121 events which rise dramatically to well over 300 as the weather improves. The site is updated daily by local tourism businesses as well as the tourism team so it is very reliable.

 

Commenting on the new improvements, Councillor Nick Barlow, the Council's Portfolio Holder for Economic Development, Tourism and Culture, said, "There are few destinations, especially in the East of England Region, which have had such sustained tourism growth over the past decade. The Colchester 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 growth in tourism that these developments will bring."

 

Tourism was worth £216.8m to the economy of Colchester Borough in 2009; that's a 243% rise on the 1993 figure of £63.1m. It supports more than 6000 jobs in the Borough which also attracted some 4.5m visitor trips in 2009.