Eastbourne joins in with English Tourism Week!

The UK’s sunniest place will be joining in the fun of English Tourism Week from 16 - 24 March, with some great offers and daily prizes to be won. 

Residents and visitors will be able to test their knowledge of tourism in Eastbourne by entering the competition each day on Facebook and Twitter for the chance to win a range of great prizes from concert tickets to fish and chips!

English tourism week was set up by VisitEngland and is a week long celebration of events from 16-24 March. The week will highlight all the fantastic things to do and see in England and Eastbourne.

Eastbourne and Tourism go hand in hand as 4.9 million visitors come to Eastbourne each year and spend an average of £261 million annually. Further more, £102 million is spent just by day visitors alone! Eastbourne thrives on tourism as it brings over 7000 jobs to Eastbourne and a whopping £346 million to the local economy.

Eastbourne was the first town to hire out quadricycles. To celebrate this and English tourism week, Ride and Joy are offering half price hiring on both weekends of English tourism week - 16/17 and 23/24 March. They can be found next to the open air tennis courts on Eastbourne seafront and are a fantastic way to see the delights of Eastbourne.

Also celebrating the week is The Grand Hotel. The hotel, named ‘Downton-by-Sea’, is a white palatial landmark on Eastbourne seafront and are offering a complimentary upgrade for anyone who books a bedroom and a complimentary glass of bucks fizz for anyone who books full afternoon tea from 16-24 March.

Visiteastbourne.com will also be getting involved in English tourism week, showing offers on their website and holding a week long quiz on social media sites, giving daily prizes! Prizes could include anything from fish and chips to Bandstand tickets.

For more information visit www.visiteastbourne.com, Facebook.com/visiteastbourne or Twitter.com/visiteastbourne.

Love Eastbourne? Love Twitter?



One of my own tweeted sunrise photos!

 Managing the VisitEastbourne twitter feed each day, I read hundreds, if not thousands, of tweets on a weekly basis from a variety of people and businesses who love Eastbourne! From posting dazzling photos of sunrises to recommending the best places for coffee - it's really inspiring to read tweets from those who are genuinely passionate about the town.

This got us thinking and we want to use that twitter and Eastbourne passion to put a call out to put together a network of people who love Eastbourne and love social media to act as virtual greeters and offer recommendations online for those planning visits to the town.

On our busy twitter feed, we regularly receive tweets from visitors planning a trip to our south coast destination and with visitors asking for tips on what to see and do in Eastbourne, we want to launch a network of virtual greeters to act as ambassadors for the town and share their own recommendations with visitors.

We want to launch the Virtual Greeter scheme in time for English Tourism Week from 10 – 18 March and are calling for anyone interested in becoming a virtual greeter to come along to the VisitEastbourne tweetup on 15 March and find out more.

The tweetup takes place from 4pm – 7.30pm at the Winter Garden’s Congress Suite and businesses and individuals can drop-in between those times. RSVP now! For those who are unable to make the tweetup but are interested in becoming a Virtual VisitEastbourne Greeter, they should send us a tweet on twitter!

Emma

Busy week for the Eastbourne Conference Sales Team

We have had a great week! We love what we do, so every week is a good week (well usually!) but this past week has been exceptional for the two of us in the Conference Sales Team. We have dealt with all the usual things such as answering enquiries about the Devonshire Park Centre, checking our diary for dates, putting several room hire proposals together and making quite a few sales calls but we've also done some extra things too!

It started with us attending a networking event at the York House Hotel on Tuesday. We met some great people, some we knew already as well as some new faces and managed to spread the word about the Eastbourne Conference Bureau and what we're all about.

Wednesday we were up early and on the 6.57 train to London for a day's training on 'Maximising Your Showrounds'. Between us we've done hundreds of showrounds and, due to our venue finding function, have also seen first hand how many of our Eastbourne venues do it. Therefore, we already have a fair amount of experience but felt there is always something new to learn. We had a great day as it confirmed that a lot of what we already do is best practice but we certainly picked up a lot of useful extra tips, so we felt completely invigorated and keen to put our new found skills into practice!

Thursday was the day of our first Tweetup, organised in partnership with our Visit Eastbourne and Convex Leisure colleagues. We had around 40 fellow tweeters come along to the Devonshire Park Centre and the room was absolutely buzzing with lots of Twitter talk, business deals being discussed as well as everyone just being social and getting to know each other better.

Then finally Friday was the day we got to put our new showround training into practice. We had spotted a potential client on Twitter, made contact, managed to generate interest in the Devonshire Park Centre as a possible venue for some of their events and Friday was the day they were coming to Eastbourne for the first time. It went really well and the training obviously paid off because they commented that it was one of the best showrounds they'd ever had. They said it was really well organised and before they left they asked us to check our diary for three potential dates in 2013, each for around 800 delegates! A great result!

Here's looking forward to this week now!

Jenny
Conference Sales

Thanks for your top tips at our first VisitEastbourne Tweetup!

Well last night we held our very first VisitEastbourne tweetup and I have to say, I think it went pretty well. If our sign-in sheet adds up correctly then it looks like we had 43 tweeps attend in total - fantastic! It was great to see some new faces and bring together a different network of people.

I have to thank Jenny @ConferenceEB for her help in arranging it and sorting out the venue, as well as Callum @ConvexLeisure who provided some delicious canapes and wine!

A board set up by @EastbourneCan asking what people would like to see in Eastbourne certainly seemed to attract quite a bit of interest and I'll be watching their blog with interest to see what comments they got.

Thanks for everyone's feedback on yesterday's tweetup - it's really useful to know what you thought and I think we'll definitely look to organise another VisitEastbourne tweetup in the new year.

Yesterday was also a chance for us to hear your top twitter tips. I'm forever reading different articles on good protocol for tweeting, best times to tweet, best tone to tweet etc. but it was really interesting to hear your twitter tips, which many of you posted at the event. So, here it is - a guide to twitter by Eastbourne tweeters...

@bamb_bamb - Tweet pics of your work but write about life

@eastsussexmusic - Make the story interesting and amusing (if you can)

@stephdoesrunnin - Tweet as if you're only talking to one person, others can be more likely to respond

@bournebreaks - Don't just try and sell!

@laptop_station - Retweet to help promote others, they will/should return the favour!

@David_Ruddle - Be consistent. Don't try and sell.

@Stella_Holman - Networking on twitter. Be interested in the other person.

@eccn_news - Have a sense of humour and always tweet like a human. (by the way, I can definitely vouch that @eccn_news had a great sense of humour!)

@121fs - Have a web browser favourites folder titled 'twitter'. Add in your links to twitter, bufferapp, Sky News, BBC News etc... Open all links early in the morning and load up your buffer app with stories to save you doing it during the day. Saves me hours!

@BlinkTankTweets - Create separate accounts for different sections of your business and follow relevant people.
@hey_tc - If you tweet a link always include a few of your own words.

And we have one more tip that we need claiming as the person forgot to label them with their twitter name!

Be yourself - even if you're a business, people will follow you anyway.

So there it is - a guide to twitter by you! Let me know what you think of these tips by sending us a tweet @VisitEastbourne and if you didn't contribute then tweet us your tip! Plus make sure you follow us to find out who has won the pair of tickets to Beyond the Barricade at the Congress Theatre on 9 December!

Thanks again to everyone for coming and here's to the next!

Emma

Promotions and E-Marketing Officer