Whether it’s the beach, the harbour or the town, the natural beauty and history of St Ives have firmly established our town as one of the most popular destinations in Cornwall. The variety of shops, quality of the restaurants and diversity of galleries together with world-class beaches make St Ives truly unique.
www.visitstives.com is the ‘official’ destination website for the tow and a one-stop shop for everything St. Ives!!!
St Ives Tourism Association (SITA) and St Ives Business Improvement District (BID) have joined forces to provide a united online and physical marketing presence for the town. This website is not only the ‘official’ website for the town but also offers those businesses on it exposure via our high Google ranking and combined with additional exposure through the BID a presence on this website offers quality representation for the towns accommodation, businesses and attractions.
St Ives has the second highest visitor-related spend in the UK, topping £85m per annum.
The town has 540,000 day trippers and 220,000 staying visitors every year.
Overseas visitors bring in about £10m to the area whilst UK visitors account for £57m.
Tourism accounts for around 2,800 jobs in the area (including part-time and seasonal work).
Our aim is to provide the town with a high quality and sustainable marketing vehicle and to reach out to new customers with an excellent and professional online presence.
The partnership between BID and SITA is designed to maximise data sharing and minimise confusion in the mind of the consumer and streamline the flow of traffic to a single town website.
The website is for visitors to St Ives, to help them plan their trip and decide what to do once they are here. But most importantly it is also for you, the accommodation providers and business owners in the town.
The website includes:
Existing SITA members, as well as new members pay an annual joining fee, which brings with it a whole host of perks including access to the St Ives Gift Card initiative, access to marketing opportunities and business support to name but a few.
Unlike other major accommodation websites, there is absolutely no commission charged when clients book their accommodation through our website using the Freetobook booking engine, which is also free for the provider to install, giving a typical saving of 15% per booking compared with the big Online Travel Agencies.
You do not have to be a member of Freetobook to enjoy benefits from having a presence on this website. Your listing will include photos, text about your business, direct booking links to your website if you have one and a telephone number to increase your visibility and enable more people to book with you directly.
As a member you will also be given a text code for our ‘Stay Tonight’ and ‘Stay Next Week’ booking pages which allows you to add all of your last minute availability to our search so that visitors to the site can book with you direct. There is no additional charge for this service, it falls within annual membership costs and you can use this service as often as you wish.
SITA and BID will continue to promote St Ives across social media and other PR and marketing channels.
Businesses
BID levy payers will receive an automatic standard listing for their business as part of their BID subscription at no extra cost. If you have a business but are not a BID levy payer, you will need to join St Ives BID as a voluntary member or SITA as a member to receive a listing.
Additional advertising space in the form of website banners is available within the site at an additional cost.
You may have already started to notice the changes on this website as we have been quietly working away in the background to improve the visitor experience. Over the coming months the improvements will continue with new content and marketing added to the site.
We hope to make the St. Ives official website a ‘one stop shop’ to book accommodation, check out local businesses, find out what’s happening in and around St. Ives, view a calendar of events, read blogs end much more.
For the first time ever there will be marketing in the form of website banners available on this site for your business!
How much does it cost?
Advertising banners are spread out across the website with 2 advertising banners on the landing page and 1 banner on our other most popular pages. This is not only the official site for St Ives but also the ‘go to’ website for visitors to see what’s happening in St Ives, book events, and book accommodation. Advertising banners rotate so everyone gets the opportunity for their business to be seen on all pages.
Jan – April £200
April – June £400
July – Sept £400
Oct – Dec £200
Discounted to £1000 for a full year (Banners run April-April)
If you have your own banners already we can get them straight onto the website.
Spec – size 1220 x 200 – it can be jpg png or gif and must not exceed 200kb (will display as 610 x 100 – full-screen width on a mobile device – 60% of all views are on a mobile).
Alternatively in terms of production, if you don’t have your own banner Meor Design can make the banners at £225 per banner with all content supplied by the client, ie images, text and a brief. The client will also need to supply the URL to link the banner to the client’s website.
If you are unsure if existing artwork will work please contact us for more information info@stivesbid.co.uk
*A MAXIMUM OF 20 BANNERS ARE AVAILABLE AND THEY WILL BE ALLOCATED ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS*
We want to ensure that St Ives remains one of the top tourist destinations in the UK. Every accommodation provider and business contributes to our success as a town and by joining you too can become part of our SITA and BID community network.
To get your website page looking its absolute best, we will talk you through what we will need from you:
Any questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
Email: info@stivesbid.co.uk
SITA and BID are both not-for-profit organisations. The website has been created in St Ives by local people; much of the background work done on this project is voluntary. All membership fees received are either reinvested in the website and/or St Ives events and contribute to keeping the town looking its best.