This site has been set up by Rene and Pamela Looper of Tuminds Ltd and former owners of the Cluny Bank Hotel in Forres. The technology powering GreaterSpeyside.com, called TouristSite, has been developed by David Sim and Geoff Wilcock of Open Brolly. TouristSite provides the tools and services to promote the skills, assets and facilities of an area or clusters of tourism related businesses.

Background

After spending seven years at the forefront of tourism in the hotel business we now have the time to fulfil our desire to promote the beautiful Moray & Speyside area by creating opportunities to develop partnerships in tourism and by providing tourism businesses with key information and statistics.

During our seven years spent running a hotel we frequently found it time consuming, and sometimes impossible, to advise our guests on activities or events they could visit in the area. Tourist Information Centres were helpful, but often we got to hear of events after they had taken place. The well-known visitor attractions such as castles, whisky distilleries and shopping centres were always recommended, but local activities, special events and small business initiatives were unknown to both visitors and even most accommodation providers.

We also found a distinct lack of research into tourism in Moray. For instance, many key statistics such as the number of tourism related businesses was unknown. So although most small businesses recognised the need to share such information and work together towards our common goal, it was too expensive for them to do so individually. These businesses need an accessible tourism database so they can readily develop and improve working partnerships.

Aims and Objectives

• to promote Speyside and the Moray Coast as an all-round year-round destination.

• to deliver comprehensive and up-to-date tourist information on what the area has to offer, making it easy for visitors to find everything they need to plan their trip to this area.

• to help you find opportunities, contacts and partners within the toursim sector

• to encourage best practice and create benchmarking and networking opportunities

• aim to improve the use of IT in hospitality businesses

• ultimately to increase visitor numbers to the are and increase the length of stay
  

Key Activities - What we do

• we make it easy for visitors and people working in tourism to know what is on in the area by:
  - aiming to list all events in the area on the website
  - listing all nearby events, attractions etc with every entry on the website
  - sending out a weekly events newsletter to all registered accommodation providers, attractions,
  TICs and newsletter subscribers
  - providing a live feed to list local events on your own website in the style of your website

• we actively look for business opportunities and ways to help visitors find what they are looking for, and pass it on to appropriate registered businesses by email and post it on the section 'Opportunities' on this site

• we collate and analyse site statistics, key word use and carry out research and surveys

• we actively encourage visitors to give feedback by building one to one relationships

• we offer IT advise and support to small businesses

Please contact us with your feedback – we’d love to hear from you.