Llandrindod Wells, Wellness and Digital Project

Llandrindod_Wellness_-_Case_Study.pdf

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Project description:

The Llandrindod Wells, Wellness and Digital Projects had three objectives.  The first one being ‘To ensure the town and its business benefit from the data collected by the towns WI-FI system’. The projects aim was to work with business and others to look at the interpretation, understanding, distribution and use of the anonymised data collected via the towns WI-FI. 

The second objective was ‘To ensure the town benefited from the Llandrindod Wellness place branding’.  

The aims were too work with community organisations, tourism and leisure businesses in the area to strengthen, develop and use the Llandrindod Wellness place brand to market the town. They also wished to explore the possibility of extending the brand to three other Powys ‘Wells’ towns (Builth Wells, Llanwrtyd Wells and Llangammarch Wells) to create a stronger identity for this area.  The final project objective was ‘To enhance the visitor experience at the Lake Park and ensure visitors can find the area’. 

The project aimed to achieves this objective by supporting other agencies to deliver the actions of the Llandrindod Lake Park Business Plan and the Town Gateways report.

 What will the project achieve?

The project will encourage enterprise and entrepreneurship by making the Presence Analytics data available to businesses and potential businesses and using that technology to gauge the effectiveness of business activity and events in the town. 

The project will capitalise on our natural and human resources by using the Wellness brand to work with a variety of sole traders in the therapeutic sector and bring them together with the tourism sector to produce new packages, events and offers attractive to visitors. 
The project will develop infrastructure to support a Wellness tourism offer which will exploit our wonderful countryside and fresh air which could extend to Powyss other Wells towns. 

The project will optimise collective strengths and assets to develop community solutions by creating two groups comprising local business people and others whose role will be exploit the digital data and the Wellness brand in activity appropriate to our town. 

The project will collaborate, co-operate, communicate and co-produce by encouraging businesses to produce new packages for the tourism sector made up of both existing and new products brought together and branded using the Wellness brand. By using the data to influence and change business behaviour.

Who are the project beneficiaries?

Communities and businesses of Llandrindod Wells; Builth Wells; Llanwrtyd Wells; Llangammarch Wells & Rhayader.

What was the result of your project? 

Lessons Learned:

The project came across many challenges, however they also found many solutions to these challenges. One challenge that the project came across was that they required a project officer with a diverse range of skills in tourism, marketing, applications and data collection technology. 

The project found it difficult to find an applicant who was competent in all of the areas required, so a solution to this was to use profession agencies where the project officer did not have the required skills.  

Whilst small business were willing to try new things and take part, the project found it a hard sell as they did not have clear and concrete evidence of their innovation.

The project officer knew that she needed to do something to engage and explain the project in a quick and effective manner. This was done through creating short films.

Objective one of the project had several challenges, one of the biggest challenges by far was finding a way to share the WI-FI data without sharing personal information and persuading the Local Authority that the chosen method would not result in difficulties for them.  One solution to this would be to use a data analyst company. 
The project decided to use ‘Presence Orb’ as this was the only technical solution available at the time.  By using this company it fulfilled the Local Authority requirements along with complying GDPR.  

Another challenge which the project came up against was that data, is not exciting! and getting people engaged in the data was hard work. The project created one minute videos of relevant data.  Members of the public were more engaged with this style of delivery as the information and data in the short videos clips were of a local matters and of relevance, such as visitors numbers.  The final hurdle in ensure the town and its business benefit from the data collected by the towns WI-FI system was trying to persuade business how best to use the trends or figures picked up from the WI’FI data. 

Unfortunately many did not take action on the data found and no solution to this hurdle was found. The data group was disbanded at the end of year one. Likewise with objective one of the project, objective two, ensuring the town benefited from the Llandrindod Wellness place branding also had challenges which again, solutions were found for. The project placed a bid for the ‘Tourism Product Innovation Funds’ which unfortunately got knocked out at the final round.  The project were reliant on a successful outcome and when this did not happen they lost momentum. The projects solution was to redirect project funds to shared activities, meaning al the town would benefit from making a promotional video with a wellness theme. In June 2019 Llangmmarch Wells, Llanwrtyd Wells, Rhayader and Builth Wells all had a promotional wellness video for their town, with Llandrindod Wells having two.  The videos were shared on social media with a fantastic amount of views.

One of the aims with the branding was to try and expand the Wellness branding to the three other ‘Wells’ towns within Powys along with Rhayader.  However on reflection the Project felt this was too big of a challenge and to much work to do in year two of the project. The Llandrindod Wellness group realised that they had limited time with the project officer and took ownership of the branding idea at an early stage. The Llandrindod Wellness Group became very productive with handing out Llandrindod Wellness window stickers and holding a Llandrindod Wellness Day.  The Llandrindod Wellness logo with its distinctive font, and hashtag have a high visibility within the town and business. The public survey on the Llandrindod Wellness day reviled 67% of people had seen the #LlandrindodWellness with 53% of people stating they had seen the Llandrindod Wellness film along with 56% stating they had seen the Wellness logo in town.   

In June 2019 the brand ‘Llandrindod Wellness’ can be seen all over the town, however the project found it difficult to engage with individual business at the start of their marketing campaign.  Each business felt that they had worked hard to create their own identity and struggled to understand how being part of the Llandrindod Wellness branding would help their business.  The project decided that the word ‘brand’ may in fact be the wrong terminology to use and that it should be called a movement.

Business felt that they could join a movement whilst keeping their existing brand.  When the project secured the backing of Tesco’s in Llandrindod Wells, other business started to see that you could be a stand out business as well as being part of the overall Llandrindod Wellness branding.  It was a case of where one leads, others start to follow. Llandrindod Wells in now heavily branded with the Llandrindod wellness branding, along with different events getting involved also.  

The third and finale objective within the project was to enhance the visitor experience at the Lake Park and ensure visitors can find the area. The project faced large barriers as this would be at a high cost to deliver. To deliver the Lake Park Business plan along with the Gateways report it would of cost around £7.5 million.  These actions were not deemed essential. There was never going to be a solution of finding £7.5 million, so the project successful supported Powys County Councils Regeneration team with applying for funds to deliver small parcels of work. Some of the Gateways Report was delivered using charitable funds. Local business, charities and organisations all helped to fund signage for two new Wellness Routes around the town.