London Development Agency Visitor Planning Toolkit

The London Development Agency (LDA) has produced a visitor planning toolkit as part of its policy to encourage distribution of visitors to all parts of the capital.

The LDA asked TEAM to run a pilot plan for an area of East London and concurrently prepare the toolkit.

Said Niall Brolly of LDA, who commissioned the project: 'Visitor management is about getting the basics of a quality experience right - navigation, signage, welcome, and information. It's not necessarily about 'wow' factors.

'The toolkit was a genuinely useful project with inputs from tourism practitioners at the sharp end, and it is a free online resource which can make a real difference.'

The London Borough of Greenwich won a competition to be the subject of the project's main pilot, based on the rapidly emerging new assets of Woolwich, including its historic Royal Arsenal site.

Councillor Peter Brooks, Deputy Leader of Greenwich Council, said: 'I'm delighted Greenwich Council was given the opportunity to take part in this project, and help set out a framework for successful visitor planning toolkits.

'We won the pilot by showing strong local leadership for a project that will greatly benefit visitors of Greenwich, and help boost our local economy. By working with TEAM, stakeholders, and our other partners, the project has produced a plan with a renewed vision for the future of Woolwich as a key tourism destination.'

The LDA Visitor Planning Toolkit can be downloaded from the LDA website.

Visitor Management - the Benefits
The toolkit aims to help managers to:

• Contribute to the visitor's understanding and appreciation of the destination
• Reduce damage to sensitive areas
• Tackle issues that affect the quality of visitor experience and the quality of life of local people
• Attract and disperse visitors within the destination to spread the economic benefits
• Encourage more visitors to come at times when there is spare capacity
• Encourage visitors to the parts of the destination that are best able to handle them.

How to Draw Up a Plan
The toolkit shows how to get the planning process right, as well as what topics need to be tackled. It suggests a four-stage planning process:

1. Identify all the stakeholders and agree shared objectives
2. Conduct a 'where are we now' audit
3. In a stakeholders' workshop, use the shared objectives and audit to set out the vision for the future, agree the opportunities, and
4. pinpoint problems that need solving
5. Then hold action planning workshops to work out 'how are we going to get there?'

In stage 1, for example, the toolkit says that a sustainable visitor management plan has to satisfy the needs of four distinct stakeholder groups:

• Visitors
• The industry
• The community
• The environment

There may be conflict or differing priorities about visitor management among these four groups, which the visitor management planning process will need to expose and then settle. So, successful visitor management can only be achieved in partnership with the whole range of stakeholders in the destination.

These may include public-funded agencies, regeneration initiatives, town centre management bodies, local businesses and business associations, property developers, local residents’ associations and community groups, and the voluntary sector.

The Tasks
The toolkit then takes its users through the tasks:

• Understanding visitors' transport routes
• Identifying 'gateways' into the area
• Deciding what orientation and interpretation is needed
• How and where to provide a warm welcome and good first impressions
• Identifying what visitor facilities are required, such as relevant information for the market - tailored to the identified market segment and delivered before and during the visit.

Also underlined is the need for consistency between visitor services, marketing, research, training, and business support – and the importance of relating to overall objectives and target segments.

Visitor management involves infrastructure development, and because visitor flows need to fit capacity, it also includes some aspects of marketing – developing reasons for off-peak visits, for example by developing events or special promotions. And it means managing visitor flows once they are at the destination, creating orientation routes using information boards, maps, signage, the siting of facilities and landscaping.

The Toolkit Checklists - An Example
The toolkit has helpful checklists for each stage, designed to help planners to get the process right and then the thinking right:

At the action planning stage, for example, a sample checklist is given:

By courtesy of the London Development Agency, 2009.

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TEAM Associate, Peter Varlow moved into consultancy in 2005 after eight years' marketing experience at VisitBritain and the British Tourist Authority, six of those years in charge of the development of the award winning website.

He has hands-on experience in all aspects of conventional and online marketing, and key areas of customer care - customer contact standards; systems that support the CRM process; online and walk-in services; and 'Star' quality rating services.