The North East Combined Authority-funded programme, ‘Step into Alnwick’, was designed to support and promote Alnwick town businesses during the winter months by optimising Alnwick’s winter appeal, targeting visitors to The Alnwick Garden Light Trail to aim to drive footfall into Alnwick town centre. The app has the ability to include bookable experiences and promotional offers such as in-store events, drink/dining pairing experiences and more, as an incentive for visitors to download the app, and to entice customers into traders’ stores and businesses. 

The development of the app was supported by Visit Northumberland’s marketing campaign, which saw more than 2.5k app downloads, 800k social media impressions as well as over 1 million digital ad impressions. Visit Northumberland also ran an influencer campaign, which involved five influencers from the region visiting Alnwick and using the app for themselves, sharing the experience with thousands of followers.     

Andrew Fox, chair of Visit Northumberland, said: “We are thrilled to be leading on this project for the second year running, and continuing to provide businesses with a free opportunity to promote their business to Alnwick’s visitors over the winter period and beyond, as well as featuring in our far-reaching digital marketing campaign. It is essential that we work with large attractions to ensure that visitors are also exploring their surrounding towns and villages and shopping and dining locally, and that is why projects such as this one are so important.” 

The programme is free to all businesses taking part. If a business has a bookable experience which can be sold through the visitnorthumberland.com channel and wishes to feature it on the app, it will be subject to 8% commission. Businesses will have the additional opportunity to incentivise visits to their business through exclusive deals or promotions via the app. 

Those who are interested and would like to know more, please contact Visit Northumberland who, along with the app developers, can answer any questions you might have and add your business to the app.

Please contact sarah.davidson@visitnorthumberland.com for more information.

Step into Alnwick is funded by the North East Combined Authority.