DIGITAL DESTINATIONS.

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1 DIGITAL DESTINATIONS Dr Philip Alford Bournemouth University #DDBU

2 Digital Destinations project is an ESRC funded research project, delivered by Bournemouth University, with an overarching aim to: capture change in the adoption and use of digital technologies and to develop a strong, competitive local tourism economy. Through increased understanding and use of emerging digital technologies, visitor economy businesses will be in a position to increase their marketing and management effectiveness, and develop new products and services that will provide an enhanced experience for visitors to their destinations

3 The businesses benefited from 4 workshops which covered: Background to on line marketing Individual Business objectives Developing the strategy Measuring impact Reporting outcomes via case studies All course material can be found at All business outcomes and blogs can be found at

4 The following presentation is the case study provided by Remedy Oak Golf Club Remedy Oak Golf Club is an exclusive golf club founded in 2006 with a membership ceiling of just 400. Since opening the club has adopted a subtle marketing strategy choosing primarily to advertise in lifestyle and golf related publications. In 2012 the directors commissioned a new website for the club, wanting to replace the current site (which was 6 years old and had become outdated and ineffective,) with a unique site that would stand out from the clubs competitors. They also wanted to create and develop a presence on selected social media sites to enable them to engage and inform both current and potential customers of goings on at Remedy Oak and use the platforms as a way of gaining feedback from customers regarding their experiences at the club.

5 Remedy Oak Golf Club Digital Destination Project

6 BUSINESS OVERVIEW. Remedy Oak is Located in Woodlands Dorset. Founded in 2006 the course is privately owned by local businessman Bill Riddle who along with his son Daniel and renowned golf course architect John Jacobs designed the 7010 yard par 72 Championship course set within 256 acres of ancient woodland. With a membership ceiling of just 400 Remedy Oak provides a tranquil and peaceful environment for golfers to relax and enjoy their golf. When it matures it will be England's finest inland course. It s Special! Ewen Murray, Sky Sports.

7 Project Objectives. Objective Number 1 To Increase the critical mass of Twitter and Facebook followers to 750 on Twitter and 500 on Facebook prior to and for the purpose of facilitating the launch of Remedy Oak s new website Objective Number 2 To Improve the OVP Remedy Oak currently offers through its website and to use the content in conjunction with other mediums with the aim of improving the sites SEO

8 Progress. We developed a structured approach towards our activity on Twitter in order to improve continuity and ensure current and interesting content was being fed to followers.. In reality we found this hard to implement simply through workloads of key staff meaning they did not have the time required to dedicate themselves to updating feed in lines with the programme set out! Seek to use high profile contacts of the club to retweet selected tweets to their followers to try and help build our number of followers. Using our contacts we were able to obtain retweets from high profile Twitter users such as Matt Le Tissier and Mick Fitzgerald who both have 30,000+ followers.

9 Progress. Google Analytics was set up on current site in order to enable us to obtain details on how the old website was navigated and user trends. Our Analytics results has provided us with information that we were unaware of before and also highlighted issues we were already of. 21% of users accessing our website were using mobile devises or Tablets Over 50% of users are located in and around London The most viewed pages on the old site were the course and contact and membership pages 71% of our website traffic is direct traffic with 27% through search engines.

10 Results and Actions taken.... Objective 1 We have found our twitter following has been steadily growing despite the fact we were not able to maintain the content inputting schedule we had set up at the start of the project we have still picked up 400+ followers over the duration of the project. We have revised our content inputting programme to make it hopefully more realistic and manageable for us to be able to complete on a weekly basis. We have decided to focus on developing our Twitter feed at the moment and will look to implement a content plan for our Facebook page in the future.

11 Results and Actions taken.... Objective 2 Our new website has optimisation technology so can be viewed on all devices to suit the growing trends in how consumers access websites. When designing the new site we wanted to create a site that was very image led with just the key information visitors will require. We made the decision to invest in digital fly through of the course as the analytics showed most visitors to the site were looking for information regarding the course details. Having seen where the location from which our website is viewed we are now planning a marketing campaign in and around London for both membership and corporate day sales.

12 For more information on DIGITAL DESTINATIONS contact: Dr Philip Alford, #DDBU