A new website for visitors to the city, as well as Birmingham’s own residents, has been
launched today, heralded as one of the UK’s leading interactive destination websites.
Marketing Birmingham, already recognised for its innovative use of destination marketing
tools, has launched www.visitbirmingham.com, designed to show off the city fast
becoming one of Europe’s most dynamic destinations.
The new website visitbirmingham.com is one of the first destination websites in the UK to
introduce a ‘shopping cart’ system. Known in the industry as ‘Dynamic Packaging’,
visitbirmingham.com allows visitors to tailormake their own weekend breaks choosing
from a full range of foodie, fashion, indulgence and sporting activities. Visitors can add to
their online shopping cart choosing other products specific to that weekend such as their
preferred hotel, attraction tickets or guide book.
For visitors already in the city centre, hungry, thirsty, sleepy or looking for somewhere to
dance the night away, they can access the mobile version of the site at
www.visitbirmingham.mobi using their phone or PDA. The mobile website has been
specially optimised to make it quick and easy to search the visitbirmingham.com database
of hotels, restaurants, bars, events and visitor attractions. There is also useful information
about travel and maps, all available for free on any mobile phone with an internet
connection.
Dave Hodgson, marketing director, Marketing Birmingham said: “The beauty of this new
site is that it gives visitors a flexibility which hasn’t been available before. Previously,
visitors were not able to mix and match packages. From today, if a visitor chooses to see
a football match at Aston Villa or Birmingham City, but their partner would prefer to spend
the weekend on a personal shopping break at Harvey Nichols or Selfridges, they can now
book the two activities separately and their hotel room together.”
The new site also includes ‘My brochure’, a new element of the site for visitors to put
together a bespoke brochure for their visit to the city. When planning a trip on the site,
web users can pick out hotels from Malmaison to nitenite, choose from a diverse range of
world cuisine restaurants and pick events from Taste of Birmingham to this year’s
European Athletics Indoor Championships, then add them all to their own ‘brochure’. This
will be kept online for future visits to the site, can be printed out or emailed to a friend.
visitbirmingham.com is also designed to showcase Marketing Birmingham’s lifestyle
campaigns, with dedicated pages for the city’s fashion brands, fine food and world cuisine,
major sporting events and arts and culture, all reflecting the cosmopolitan nature of the
city. The site will include dedicated sections on accommodation, activities, events and
nightlife as well as travel and maps, merchandise, city news and Marketing Birmingham’s
own Birmingham Convention Bureau.
Visitors to the site can also now book tickets to events and attractions online. For people
who like to be kept updated with news on the city and new content, the site now includes
an RSS Feed, for use with Internet Explorer 7.0 with its native support for RSS (1).
The new website also sees the phasing out of Marketing Birmingham’s old websites
beinbirmingham.com, birminghamshortbreaks.com and birminghamgroupvisits.com. Dave
Hodgson added: “Our old sites served their purpose extremely well in the past, but this is
a new era for Birmingham and for destination marketing. Website users want all the
information in one place, a one stop shop. People don’t have time to dip in and out of
different sites and visitbirmingham.com is a true reflection of all the secrets in the city, all
on one website.”
Over the next few months, Marketing Birmingham will be announcing new additions to the
site including podcasts, more city news, new publications and multi media content such as
videos and animation as well as adding theatre tickets to products which can be booked
online.
To celebrate the new site, visitbirmingham.com features two online competitions, open to
visitors to the city and residents. For a chance to win tickets to see Footloose at
Birmingham’s Hippodrome Theatre on Saturday 24 February including an overnight stay at
the Radisson SAS Birmingham and dinner at the hotel’s Filini Restaurant, or tickets to
the quarter finals of the Yonex All England Open Badminton Championships on 9 March go
to www.visitbirmingham.com.
1 Native support: the feature is a fully integrated part of the software and it does not require any plug-ins or add-ons to work
ENDS
For further press information, images or availability for media visits, contact:
Trudi Dunlop, PR manager, Marketing Birmingham
tel: 0121 202 5001 or email us.
Notes to editors:
This project is part funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)
Download new_website_en (.pdf 28.57 KB)
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