The past 12 months has been a busy and positive time for Newquay Business Improvement District (BID) who has been working tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure the town meets its four key priority areas. These are: ‘Destination Newquay’ (marketing Newquay as an exciting, vibrant place to live, work and visit all year round), supporting funding and creating events to increase footfall, brightening the town in terms of cleanliness and safety and improving and supporting business.
The Newquay BID team has evolved over the past 12 months and the BID board directors now consist of Andy Cole (Newquay Regeneration Forum), Jenny Briant (Fistral Beach), Nick Hayman (Fistral Beach Bar), Michelle Brown (The Headland Hotel), Cllr Ken Jones (representative of Newquay Town Council) and Rachel Craze (FreshPoint and the Mayor of Newquay). John Burbridge of Impact Light and Sound has been the BID chairman since September 2018.
As part of the ‘Destination Newquay’ priority area, press trips are essential for increasing the profile of the town and an essential marketing tool for businesses. Newquay BID in collaboration with Excess Energy Communications is continuing to target key journalists and digital influencers to Newquay, out of peak season, in order to reach key markets and audiences. This route has proved incredibly successful with the support of businesses that have lots of new and constantly evolving experiences and stories to share.
Through this approach, there has been a whole host of positive press in various major outlets, including The Times, The Sunday Times, BALANCE magazine, The Guardian, The Culture Trip and Flybe’s Flight Time magazine amongst many others, with reputable national publications lauding the town ‘The Cream of Cornwall’ and including quotes such as, ‘This town on Cornwall’s wind-and-wave-whipped North coast is reinventing itself.’
Newquay BID has also been working alongside Ice Cold Gorilla Creative Marketing (ICG) to strategically grow the Newquay BID consumer and B2B social media platforms, engaging with the right target audiences and reaching new demographics. With the strong links between Cornwall and Germany due mainly to the popularity of German romantic series, Rosamunde Pilcher, Newquay BID recently implemented a three month German social media campaign, targeting German flight routes into Newquay, engaging with potential German visitors to Newquay and ensuring that the town is on their radar as a fantastic place to visit year round.
In order to create a more vibrant town centre, the BID team has supported the following community events with funding and in kind support; St Pirans Day, Newquay Carnival, Newquay Fish Festival, Cornwall Pride, UK Bodysurfing Championships, Lowender Peran and Gorsedh Kernow. The BID, however, also organises and manages its own events throughout the year, ensuring a steady flow of footfall, enticing the right people from across Cornwall into the town and improving business trading. These include the Festive Festival, the Zombie Crawl, the Halloween Trail, the Christmas shop window competition and the Easter Trail.
Newquay Business Week 2018 sold over 800 tickets, across 25 sessions in five venues over five days in Newquay and saw a range of speakers cover various topics including tourism, marketing, branding, Cornish language, innovation, GDPR, Brexit, Intellectual Property, eco-tourism and sustainability.
To aesthetically improve the town, the BID has removed over 8,000 sq. ft. of graffiti from over 40 premises, conducted sticker removal from signs, ATMs, lampposts and bins, completed the wayfinding signage project and carried out an extensive decluttering project, working with Cormac and Newquay Town Council. In addition to this, the BID has installed 40 new hanging baskets, 21 new banners and a plethora of colourful new bunting. All of which ensured that the town was awarded Silver Gilt at the South West in Bloom Awards.
In order to improve and support businesses further, Newquay BID has lobbied Cornwall Council to keep reduced winter parking tariffs as well as free evening parking throughout summer months to encourage and boost the evening economy. Last year saw Newquay BID resolve issues with rubbish collections, street traders, scaffolding, highway issues, all of which were impacting on trade. Furthermore, the past 12 months has seen more partnership working with statutory agencies including Devon and Cornwall Police with regards to safety, night time economy, crime rates and Shop Watch, as well as with community groups on issues such as street cleaning and bins.
The BID has also continuously held regular workshop sessions for its member businesses to attend on areas including social media, GDPR, shoplifting prevention and counter terrorism. It has ensured to signpost members to various grant and match funding pots that may be available to them and provided assistance with writing bids. Monthly BID business forums have also been held, providing businesses with the opportunity to network, get updates and offer feedback to the BID team.
General Manager at The Hotel Bristol, Lukasz Wilczkowski said, “I recently attended Newquay BID’s AGM meeting which I found both beneficial and informative. Carla’s insightful presentation contained several innovative ideas. I feel very positive and happily surprised at all of the work that Newquay BID is planning and I really look forward to the next meeting.”
Nadia Coppen of The Shop Newquay and Jamies Pasty Shop said, “I recently attended the eye opening Newquay BID AGM meeting. It was fantastic to learn about how our money is being spent and how positive all of the endeavours are for Newquay town. It was lovely to learn about the wonderful promotion that has been done in the past for the town and also the plans for the future. I am very much looking forward to coming to the next meeting to get to know everyone a bit more and am excited to hear about the next steps being taken for Newquay and how I can help.”
Newquay BID Chair, John Burbridge said, “We’re really pleased with how the past year has gone and on reflection we have achieved a lot. We’re particularly impressed with how engaging our BID led events have been and how well received they have been. For example, our Easter Trail this year was the biggest and best to date with 15 businesses getting involved and over 150 families participating. It was a hopping success! Similarly, our Halloween Trail saw 20 businesses participating and over 100 families taking part which is strong out of season and demonstrates the power of events to pull people into the high street.”
John continued, “We never rest on our laurels and are now looking forward into late 2019 and beyond, to improve the business landscape of the town and to further build upon its recent successes. We will be tweaking our approach, ramping up our event schedule, working more closely in partnerships with local councils on major redevelopment proposals for Newquay, including the Killacourt and Newquay Train Station and relaunching a number of effective initiatives including the Shopwatch platform. We’re also going to be holding more BID member forums so keep an eye out online for more details on where and when these will be held.”
It will also continue to work on press trips in collaboration with Excess Energy Communications with a fresh focus, implement a brand new ‘Destination Newquay’ marketing campaign via Cornwall Services digital advertising and will be working on making Newquay Business Week even bigger and better than ever before, with an increased number of speakers, more venues and a variety of new interactive workshops and sessions.
To sign up to the Newquay BID newsletter to get updates on regular projects and business opportunities, future expenditure forecasts and to find out when and where the BID business forums will take place going forward, please email: info@newquaybid.co.uk
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