Hamworthy Outdoor Education Centre is a small local business providing outdoor education activities to children and adults.  We work with a very small marketing budget so, a chance for assistance from other local business and education partners in identifying cost effective ways of achieving our social media goals proved to be a massive boast to the centre. When we received some additional funding from the School Forum in 2009 it meant a new website could be created. But, we needed to improve on our use of social media and website engagement to our target audience which would result in increased sales of course places.  We would not have been able to access the level of expertise offered by Digital Destinations had it not been for the funding provided for this project

1. DIGITAL DESTINATIONS
Dr Philip Alford
Bournemouth University
www.digitalhub.co.uk
www.pinterest.com/digitaldest
www.slideshare.net/DigitalHub
ddp@bournemouth.ac.uk
@schooloftourism | @philipalford
#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 http://www.slideshare.net/DigitalHub
All business outcomes and blogs can be found at http://www.budigitalhub.co.uk/

4. The following presentation is the case study provided by Hamworthy
Outdoor Education Centre
Hamworthy Outdoor Education Centre; is a small local business providing
outdoor education activities to children and adults. We work with a very
small marketing budget so, a chance for assistance from other local business
and education partners in identifying cost effective ways of achieving our
social media goals proved to be a massive boast to the centre. When we
received some additional funding from the School Forum in 2009 it meant a
new website could be created. But, we needed to improve on our use of
social media and website engagement to our target audience which would
result in increased sales of course places. We would not have been able to
access the level of expertise offered by Digital Destinations had it not been
for the funding provided for this project

5. Digital Destinations
• “Prior to the Digital Destinations project staff at the centre had little digital marketing experience or
knowledge and were conducting a small amount of activity based on person learning. This isn’t an
element included in the marketing plan, as there is no staff time dedicated to this area of the business and
with little knowledge of the subject fear of trying something new and consuming large amounts of time in
doing so meant it was avoided.
• The cluster meetings enabled networking and sharing of best practice between business, which helped
with us learning Google Analytics abilities and potential outcomes from those who had experienced it.
These group meetings also enabled opportunities to collaborate with other businesses but again time was
reliant on staff time and in such a small company this opportunity was not maximised
• My attitudes towards social media have changed in the context of being more aware of their ability to
provide statistics and results that can be drilled down into, but I still feel if an organisation is going to do
marketing properly they need a dedicated employee with the knowledge, time to focus and skill set to
produce results.
• The future of the centre is uncertain and as such all marketing is on hold currently. It is hoped that we
would know the outcome before next season and be able to employee a member of staff to market the
centre.”
• I am afraid that, beyond this introductory paragraph, I have not been able to produce anything else at the
moment. The Centre has had its staff cut by 50% in the last few months, Gemma’s help has been removed
and I currently have a full teaching timetable plus some evenings and weekends.

6. For more information on DIGITAL DESTINATIONS contact:
Dr Philip Alford, Bournemouth University
ddp@bournemouth.ac.uk
@schooloftourism | @philipalford
#DDBU