I first heard about HIE Tourism Webinars a while back, when delivering a Small Business Tourism Marketing Workshop as part of the Aberdeen City and Shire Tourism conference back in March.
HIE, that is Highlands and Islands Enterprise, are a Scottish Government agency based in the beautiful town of Inverness, and they look after economic and community development in the Highlands and Islands. They have a great number of digital initiatives and support for businesses, and one of these are a series of webinars for tourism businesses.
And I'm a guest speaker at the next one - next week Tue 10th, titled, 'Is my website working?'
HIE Tourism Webinars
The webinars started in 2012 and are a partnership initiative (involving Tourism Intelligence Scotland, Scottish Enterprise, VisitScotland and The Scottish Tourism Alliance), and there have been 3 series so far. Series one focused on key tourism products and activities (such as Walking, Golf, and Adventure), and how to market your tourism business based on research and consumer insights. Here's an overview over webinar series 1-3.
The latest one, series 4, is themed 'Digital' and is for
anyone involved in tourism in Scotland including community groups and tourism related businesses, who want to look at how to make the most of online opportunities.
The webinars take place from 10th - 18th June 2014 (next week), run for 45 minutes in the morning, and the running order is follows:
- Is my website working? <--- I'm guest speaking at this one and it'll be an intro to Google Analytics
- Is digital marketing a DIY job?
- Managing your online reputation
- Future trends for the digital tourist
There are a couple of guest speakers for each of them and other than the first webinar (which is about how to measure your website success using Google Analytics), the second one looks very interesting. After all, the most common observation and feedback from smaller businesses is that they simply don't have the resource to do what is supposed to be 'free' marketing (i.e. social / digital). Here are all 4 of the Tourism webinars - Digital series.
In fact, I'm quite excited to be going to Inverness for the recording of the HIE Tourism webinars next week. I have a friend (ex colleague) who lives up there, and she'll show me some of the nightlife - such as the (apparently excellent!) Hootenanny, a multi-award winning pub & live-music venue, where we'll take in good food and live music. I can' t wait!