Another busy day!
What a week I’ve been having! And to end it all , a day full of meetings yesterday - but with a lot more satisfaction! After dashing up to the Potteries on personal business first thing, it was straight back to town for an 11.00 o’clock meeting in Granvilles. Here the Food and Drink Festival group was presented with the results of the Feed Back survey carried out by the independent market research company, New Horizon Ltd. They have polled shops and businesses; farmers’ market stall holders and exhibitors in the Gourmet Food Marquee about the 2007 Food and Drink Festival. And the results are quite amazing!
For example, 72% of town centre shops and businesses thought the Festival was ‘much better’ or ‘better’ than the previous year. 78% thought that the Festival had increased footfall past their premises and 94% felt that the Festival had raised the profile of Stone.
And it was a similar story from the Gourmet Food Marquee traders. These people exhibit at Festivals around the country so their opinions matter to us. So please forgive us if we all have large grins on our faces for a few days - 83% of these traders rated our Festival as ‘good’, ‘very good’, or ‘excellent’. And 96% want to come back again. I think we nearly got it right!
And the good news continued at a meeting in the afternoon when Jill Hood and I met two representatives from Staffordshire DMP. The initials stand for Destination Management Partnership and the organisation’s objectives are to promote and support Staffordshire as a tourist venue. Two of the DMP’s specific areas of interest are Food and Drink and Events and Festivals - so it’s hardly surprising that they are interested in what we’re doing with our Festival. It’s obvious that we are already ‘on their radar’ and I am very optimistic that we will be able to work with them to our obvious advantage.
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