Press releases

Marketing Birmingham is to introduce a new visitor experience strategy, designed to ‘bring the Birmingham experience to the visitor’.  This will involve a greater focus on proactively deploying mobile visitor information stands at high profile events in the city centre, and at venues such as the Town Hall, New St Station, Moor St, NIA, and the city’s Universities as well as an increased focus on the visitor experience digitally via online activity.  

Mobile stands have been trialled throughout  2010, and have already enjoyed successful appearances at Taste of Birmingham, Autumn Fair and further afield in Stratford upon Avon.  Consequently, demand is now growing for the Visit Birmingham presence in the form of a bespoke mobile stand, and the visitor experience team have been able to secure over 20 weeks worth of bookings since the start of the trial.   For example, there will be a visitor experience stand at the Frankfurt Christmas Market, providing tourism information and Birmingham merchandise alongside discount vouchers for city attractions for visiting coach parties.

Emma Gray, Director of Marketing Services at Marketing Birmingham, said:

“The new strategy within the visitor experience offer has been tested over the course of 2010 as we looked to increase our presence at high-profile events across the city and wider region.  We have had some fantastic feedback from visitors to the mobile stands, with repeat bookings a regular occurrence.  

With the development of New Street Gateway, we were keen to establish a long-term strategy that would ensure we capitalised on the opportunities available in the next five years, and so the decision was made to expand the mobile offering and reduce our static site presence with a view to securing space in the New St Gateway development in the long-term.”

The strategy will see a continued presence at the Rotunda and Birmingham Airport visitor centres, with a reduced presence at the New Street centre, which will end its lease from 17 October.   Birmingham City Council, the owners of the New St site, are currently in negotiations over its future use, however, it will contain a computerised visitor information point as part of its new format.  This will also enable further flexibility in securing a static visitor experience site within the New St Gateway development

Any requests for booking information and guidelines regarding the provision of a mobile stand presence at Champion and Member events should be made to Jennifer Young, Head of Visitor Experience email: Jennifer.young@marketingbirmingham.com