The first Tourism Business Forum has been held to commemorate English Tourism Week.
Laura Campbell, Director of Operations for Explore Dartmouth explains: “We went down to the newly refurbished Belvedere room at the Dart Marina Hotel and Spa.
“We invited people in the industry from the area, business owners and tourism people to come along and we had some presentations along with an open floor where businesses could just get up and talk about what they were doing.
“It was really about connecting the local area and the industry so that we can all work together to support tourism in the area.
“It was a three-hour event with lots of people having good conversations and sharing lots of information.
Plenty was discussed including updates from England's Coast, which is a marketing initiative, the latest reports from Visit England, who do surveys on a regular basis, and an update from Danny, who leads Explore Dartmouth’s marketing.
Laura continued: “We're just about to launch a PR initiative to support the town.
“We had Southwest Data Hub who collect data so focused and we could actually drill down to Dartmouth level of information so we could share that information.
“We had a live online presentation from them.
“We had Sally Wigg from Recruitment TTW doing an update on changes in recruitment and employment coming up.
“She was telling us about the national insurance and the changes in minimum wage
but also stressing the value of investing in your staff.
“That is really where you need to focus and keep the good staff that you've got so that was a really interesting presentation.
“We had a digital section by a guy called Scott who runs Technosaurus and he was telling us all about how to use AI and the benefits it can make for your business.
“It’s an interesting tool if you're a bit low on resource and you want a little bit of help.
“His line was it does 80 per cent of the work in five per cent of the time, so the message is it's a tool but you need to check and use it properly.
“Harbour master Paul Britton gave us an update of some of the things that were going on in the river with the swimming, the clean water, the safe swimming spaces and also some of the pontoon changes.
“We had a short presentation from Living Options, an organisation that works with tourism and hospitality businesses, to help them be accessible then a roundup of some of the things going on with the Dartmouth hotels being built and a brief update of a street party and a tea dance planned to commemorate the 80th VE Day.”
Laura concluded with the takeaways: “There was a lot of information and resources that they could take away to help them build and strengthen their business, as well as we had a lot of people connecting and sharing details so that we could build the collaborations.
So we're going to do it again.”