Kindly sponsored by The Gresham Hotel , t
his month’s breakfast meeting started with a cheerful good morning from our president, Craig and a brief overview of the exciting goings on in the area at the moment, including Secret Carnival – We are Weymouth, Twins FX: Aliens at Nothe Fort Weymouth and upcoming MelWey Games.
We then had a quick once around the room with who you are, what you do and did you have a good bank holiday weekend. It was great to hear what everyone has been up to.
Following this, it was time to introduce our speaker, David Walsh, Economic Growth + Regeneration Manager for Dorset Council. David gave us some fantastic insight into the restarting of the visitor economy and also referred to the broader support being provided by Dorset Council for the W&P economy. David mentioned that Dorset Council have so far given out approx. £260 million in grants to support Dorset businesses affected by the pandemic. Did you know Dorset has a higher percentage of businesses that most other counties in the country and of those Dorset businesses, 96% are micro businesses.
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One of strategies for restarting the visitor economy is a pioneering revamp of the Visit Dorset website, this is will be launched in July and is based on a new model, one of the first of its type in Europe. The current site gets 2.6 million hits per year, the top search category is unsurprisingly for Durdle door however this is closely followed by Weymouth and Portland.
A copy of David’s presentation can be viewed here,
We are very grateful to David for coming along.
Following a quick Q+A with David and with no apparent “Any Other Business”, Craig brought this meeting to a close.
Our next meeting will hopefully be face to face (roadmap dependent) at the Ebike Cafe at Deheers on the 6th July 2021 details released soon….
If you would like to sponsor or host one of our events please get in touch info@wpchamber.co.uk
