Big Green Days Out

Two Sundays, two Big Green Days Out, at Chartwell last week, and Nymans today. The weather was a million times better today, but bothe places put on a good show. I was so impressed by the effort of the teams and the guest organisations.

But even taking account of the weather, Nymans put on the better show, and why? I think it boils down to investing in renting decent sized marquees. If it had rained today as much as it had at Chartwell, visitors to Nymans would still have been more comfortable, and better able to mill about the stands. The two marquees that Nymans hired also made a better job of making the day feel complete, together, a quality addition to the offer.

Foreign Vistors

I’m on my way to Bodiam Castle this morning to meet with a representative of a company that is researching where our visitors come from.

Some of our larger properties are not meeting there targets for gift aid admission, and one of the reasons why might be that more visitors that we thought are coming from overseas, and thus are not UK tax payers, able to sign their tax paid back to us.

So we’ve asked a company to sample a number of properties across the region over this year. At each property they will ask every visitor where they come from.

In time for this meeting they’ve sent interim results, and I must say they are quite surprising. We normally think of ourselves as off the tourist trail. Except for iconic properties, like Churhill’s home, Chartwell we imagine that the vast majority if our visitors are domestic. And so they are, but when we look at paying visitors, rather than members, we discover that foreign visitors account for, on average, 33% of our payers. And where to these visitors come from? So far 20% of our foreign visitors are from Germany.

I get a letter

I wrote my first letter in my new role today. It was in reply to a comment from a visitor to Polesden Lacey who want to note her approval that she could still buy a Short Guide there. I ought to explain: a Short Guide is a large format gatefold style leaflet, printed in two colours, which was an alternative to buying a full guidebook or Book of the House, as we call them. In the South East region we stopped offering Short Guides at our properties a couple of years ago. After an experiment, during which we withdrew Short Guides from sale for a month, and sales of Books of the House went up. But I was glad to see Short Guides go for another reason. They were dreadful! Over long, wordy and worthy documents, that were a pain to read in low light. Not inspiring at all, and not free. It meant that at most properties, the only free interpretation on offer was talking to volunteers. Now, I think talking to a real live person can’t be beat. But some people do prefer to read rather than engage in conversation. Why should they be penalised?
I took the opportunity to try out somethng new at Chartwell. Its a large print introduction to the house, which visitors can pick up as they enter, carry around with them and drop off as they leave. Nothing new there. But I took the opportunity to strip out most of the words, creating a confuse introduction to the house and rooms with a 1000 word limit. It high lights just a few objects around the house as “Don’t miss” items, and left questions unanswered to encourage conversations with volunteers and deeper investigation. We evaluated it at Chartwell and it was a big hit, accessible, interesting and FREE!

Since that experiment, we’ve produced others at Batemans and Clandon Park. I love them. I’d recommend them for every property. It’s a real challenge to set – can you interpret you property in just one thousand words?

But back to my letter. Polesden Lacey kept selling the short guide because there are lots of changes taking place there, including a new visitor reception and, just released a brand new guidebook in a format that we call a Colour Souvenir Guide. These are less heavy than the traditional book of the house, in EVERY sense. More colour pictures, less grey blocks of text. They are cheaper too. They’ve been around for a few years, but the format is getting better and better. We wanted to be sure that the content was right though, and not just a cut down version of the old guidebook. So I helped the property team create a Learning Plan. I locked a bunch of property staff, volunteers and regional advisors in a room for a day, and together we identified the most important things we wanted to say about Polesden Lacey. Then we organized those things into three Themes, with an over-arching main theme, that will inform all interpretation for the foreseeable future. We used these themes to lay out the guidebook, and to commision the author. And the result? The only guidebook that the property’s very experienced Area Manager has read from cover to cover. And to think of the hard time he gave me for taking everyone away from their day-jobs for the planning session.

So, I had to thank my correspondent for her kind words about the Short Guide, but also inform her it is no longer for sale.