Go GWA - boosting tourism through the Web

By Basheera Khan

The Gower Watersports Association has taken to the Web in a bid to actively market the Gower Peninsula to the rest of the UK and beyond. Its new website, Go GWA http://www.gogwa.com went live at the end of January, and aims to promote the accessibility and suitability of Gower to watersports enthusiasts outside of Wales.

The GWA is the brainchild of Simon Jayham of Gower Surfing Developments, one of the watersports providers driving small businesses in the area. Jayham was dissatisfied with the perceptions held in the tourism industry regarding the Gower as a holiday destination for watersports enthusiasts. With help of Norman Wholmes, of the Hot Dog Surf Shop, he began the process of setting up an association in the hope of challenging that status quo.

It was also hoped that an association of businesses could more successfully deal with local authorities and entities such as the Wales Tourist Board to find opportunities for promoting tourism and business interest in the Gower.

Jayham and Wholmes approached the Welsh Development Agency WDA with the concept, in the hope of securing some funding from the Welsh Assembly Government’s Rural Recovery Fund, established to help Welsh business recover from the economic downturn in the wake of the foot-and-mouth crisis.

The WDA supported the idea, and Wholmes and Jayham proceeded to gauge interest in an association among their peers in the Gower area. By April 2002, the Gower Watersports Association had been established and its members began assessing the best way forward in achieving its goals.

Of the funding that the GWA received from the Rural Recovery Fund, about 30,000 was earmarked for development of a website which would spearhead the GWA’s online marketing initiative.

Swansea’s CDSM Interactive Solutions won the tender to develop a suitable solution, not only because its offering was the most competitive in price and scope, says account manager Steve Finch, but also because of CDSM’s previous experience in developing regeneration portals.

Planning for success

As with any major Web development project, the crucial first step was to define the client’s needs and ambitions.

"We drew up a proposal and honed it down so that we could get a specification of what we were going to build, and we tried to approach it as facilities that the public would want. Often what happens in community-led website projects, is that there’s not enough focus on the target audience and the intended user of the site. It’s usually down to the preferences of the people who sit on the committee."

Finch worked closely with the GWA in first identifying the Association’s core values and their goals in terms of the website. The first phase of the six-month project were spent in gathering marketing information, creating a corporate identity and deciding on the facilities which the Association wanted to offer via the website.

One of the major challenges facing CDSM was the disparate level of IT and Internet experience among the GWA’s members. But as Finch says, their enthusiasm carried them through the process of identifying the target audience and their objectives and outcomes of the site.

This basic understanding is key to the ongoing success of the site, as it has been designed as a portal featuring multiple micro-sites devoted to each of the businesses within the GWA. The content on these micro-sites is maintained by the members themselves, so CDSM had to develop a content management system CMS which would be accessible to users at various proficiency levels.

In addition to ensuring the GWA members understood the website design from a conceptual level up, Finch worked on training individual members in the use of the CMS and the back-office database administration. Internet marketing consultant Nigel T. Packer was brought in to offer additional training from the content creation perspective, instructing GWA members in the principles of online marketing and writing for the Web.

A core team of designers, developers, a researcher and testing staff contributed to Go GWA, which features a wave predictor, beach and watersports guides, information on activities and events in the region, a forum to buy and sell equipment, and a number of other features

Looking to the future

The GWA’s mission is to promote the accessibility and suitability of Gower to watersports enthusiasts, to provide a platform to promote and assist its watersports providers, to develop general water safety and strengthen many facets of the tourism industry.

There is already considerable activity underway in terms of achieving these goals, as Wholmes explains.

"The website gave us an initial focus, and since then we’ve started branching out from that and looking at other things. Safety was one of the things we spoke about to start with, and we’ve been in discussion with the local council, to make sure that everyone who uses the beaches is aware of the issues they’ll meet up with."

The Association is also experiencing greater success in seeing its members’ issues taken more seriously by the authorities.

"I wrote a letter in February of last year to the chief of police, concerned about theft from cars in car-parks. I got an acknowledgement and that was all. I wrote again in September of last year, in the position of chairman of the Gower Watersports Association, and I’ve had policemen coming out of the woodwork in all directions [to address the issue]," says Wholmes.

Now that the website is live and ready to drive the online marketing campaign, says Wholmes, the GWA is gearing up to launch a traditional marketing plan. The strategy will target those local to the Gower Peninsula, as well as tourists outside of Wales.

As for the website itself, Wholmes comments, "We have members who know absolutely nothing about PCs, and it’s interesting to see how they’re working with the set-up that CDSM have put together.

"I’ve got to say that I was a little bit sceptical at the start, of whether a site was going to be produced that would benefit everyone. But CDSM has certainly pulled the stops out and given us something that even the most computer-illiterate can understand."

Wholmes, who is the current chairman of the GWA, says it has served an additional purpose of bringing related businesses in the area in contact with each other.
"Quite a few alliances have started to form from it, and we’re all using each other’s expertise to help give the tourist a better experience," he says.

Contacts

GWA
E-mail: info@gogwa.com
Web: http://www.gogwa.com

CDSM Interactive Solutions
Tel: 0870 904 1666
E-mail: info@cdsm.co.uk
Web: http://www.cdsm.co.uk