Since this article was published some changes have been made to the Marlborough area’s presence on VisitWilthsire – inlcuding the addition of a page on Savernake Forest.
When Wiltshire Council stopped funding the county’s Tourist Information Centres (TICs) in 2011 – including Marlborough’s and Avebury’s (which used to get between 25,000 and 35,000 visitors a year), they replaced them with one organisation: VisitWiltshire.
As one of its web appearances says: “We’re the official people for tourism in the beautiful county of Wiltshire.”
VisitWiltshire, which is based in Salisbury, comes under the umbrella of the Council’s Enterprise Wiltshire initiative: “VisitWiltshire’s priority is to grow the Visitor Economy by raising awareness of Wiltshire as a destination.” They have commissioned several reports on the county’s tourism which is worth £1.4 billion a year to Wiltshire and Swindon and supports 28,000 jobs.
One of the reports notes: “In the five years between 2006 and 2010 Wiltshire slipped from 13th to 30th (out of 45) fastest growing English destinations in terms of visitor spend.” It claims the situation has improved since 2011, but gives no figures to back up that claim.
The recent ‘Wiltshire & Swindon Destination Management & Development Plan 2015-2020’ by the Blue Sail consultancy for VisitWiltshire says that with the appropriate investment, the plan could bring 3,600-4,750 additional jobs to the visitor economy by 2020.
Some of this investment is ‘big ticket’ stuff – £14 million to take the Kennet & Avon Canal into Melksham and £50,000 for a mobile observatory to encourage star gazing. None of it is specific to the Marlborough area – but they do want more weekend buses to link Marlborough with Avebury and better train services through the Vale of Pewsey.
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VisitWiltshire have recently re-launched their website making it more user-friendly for smart phones and tablets. It carries the slogan ‘Time for…Wiltshire’. But the new brand idea is to emphasise the ‘Timeless’ character of the county.
As you can tell from the link buttons at the top of the home page, this site is about Wiltshire and about Salisbury – and Salisbury with its own sub-site and slogan (‘Salisbury – it’s about time’) is paramount.
The VisitWiltshire website has great depth, but does the content live up to the design and its aims? Has it been designed to maintain ‘currency’ – to keep up with changes? What does it do for the Marlborough area?
Tourism in the Marlborough area is seen as an important part of the local economy and as such it is specifically mentioned in the Wiltshire Core Strategy as a factor when it comes to making development decisions.
VisitWiltshire’s public face is its website which they say has a global audience of one million people a year.
It is difficult to describe the intricate pathways through this new website that a tourist looking for information about Marlborough can take. But here, as a way of looking at what the website is trying to do, are some Marlborough-centric ‘page impressions’.
You search for Marlborough. The first puzzle is that the description of the town is the last item on the list – ways to spend your money come first.
When you do get there you get a photo of the High Street, the town council’s phone number and 211 words. There is a strip of photos of Marlborough – a slim selection two of which feature The Sun Inn which became The Marlborough over two years ago.
Those 211 words include a good sentence on The Merchant’s House. There is a misleading and out-of-date sentence about the Marlborough Mound (which does not explain to tourists that it is on private land and cannot be visited – nor does it mention that it has now been proved to be Silbury’s ‘little sister’.)
It also has this weird sentence: “The town displays the confidence from times past, yet today remains vibrant and progressive with its own chic café culture.”
You also see a number of categories for ‘WHAT’S NEARBY’: Activity, Attraction, Accommodation, Event, Shopping, Eating Out. Selecting the Activity panel shows: Pewsey Vale Riding Centre, Manningford Trout Fishery, Basset Down Golf Club (8.74 miles away) and Upavon Golf Club (8.86 miles away.)
If a tourist was looking for the nearest ‘nearby’ golf club to their hotel room in Marlborough High Street they would surely want to know about the very much nearer Marlborough Golf Club and the almost as near Ogbourne Downs Golf Club. Why are those two golf clubs not mentioned?
The criteria for choosing what look like random mentions of places to visit, eat and drink at and stay in, will not be apparent to the would-be tourist browsing the site. As we explain in the next article – it is all about the money VisitWiltshire charges.
It is too complex to go into all the WHAT’S NEARBY levels for Marlborough, but going to the WHAT’S NEARBY ‘Eating Out’ section we have The Bow Belles Cafe, The Three Horseshoes (4.87 miles away in Burbage) and The Bruce Arms (4.96 miles away in Easton Royal) and also a ‘Marlborough Food and Drink’ heading.
With a click that last heading gets you to The Harrow at Little Bedwyn, The Zaika Inn (the London Road Indian restaurant) and The Crown Inn (with no phone number) – with no mention at all of any High Street places to eat and drink.
We should also note that under ‘Eating Out’ in Pewsey we are invited to try Thompson’s Wine Bar and Deli – which closed nearly a year ago. It also lists The Red Lion in East Chisenbury which, brilliant as it undoubtedly is, is deemed to be worth a description twice as long as that for the whole of Marlborough town.
What happens when tourists, who may have heard of the charms of Savernake Forest, search for it on the VisitWiltshire website? Up come seven ‘Accommodation’ places (including a holiday let cottage in ‘nearby’ Shalbourne.) Under ‘Attractions’ in these search results we just have Crofton Beam Engines.
But would-be tourists get no information at all about Savernake Forest itself: nothing about its amazing history, its wonderful ancient trees or details of where they can walk and where they can park their cars. How can that have come about?
Silbury Hill gets pretty short shrift and raises unexplained doubts about radio-carbon dating: “Radio-Carbon dating suggests that Silbury Hill was built around 2400 BC.” The entry does tell visiting tourists that they are not allowed to climb on the Hill. But it fails to mention that there is a useful car park – one that will prevent them risking life or limb if they try and park on the side of the A4.
The Silbury Hill entry does not say that the West Kennett Long Barrow is nearby – nor does it encourage tourists to imagine the Roman town that stood across the A4 opposite Silbury Hill.
We hope our tourist does not look for VisitWiltshire on Google as a strip of very good photographs pops up – they like strips of photos at VisitWiltshire. This one includes a photo of Silbury Hill, which is captioned as ‘Overton Hill’. That will confuse them.
Searching for West Kennet to see what the website says about the Long Barrow, we find that its ‘Eating Out’ section takes you to The Bridge Inn, Horton Road, Devizes and amongst the nearby ‘Accommodation’ is Great Ashley Farm which is north west of Bradford on Avon. This seems to be encouraging tourists to leave the area forthwith.
The second part of Marlborough News Online’s article about VisitWiltshire can be found here.
We should add that Marlborough News Online’s own visitingMarlborough section is still a work in process. But nobody needs to pay to be part of it. So if you want your B&B or café or caravan site to feature on the site, just drop us an email with all the necessary details and contact data: info@marlboroughnewsonline.co.uk
Tourism and the Marlborough Area: Part 2 – how does VisitWiltshire work?
