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Visitor Elves
Kelly Ballard
59 episodes
6 months ago
Welcome to the Visitor Elves podcast, where I take you behind the scenes of tourism, hospitality, culture, and events in and around the West of England and Wales.

Each episode dives into the stories, insights, challenges, and victories of inspiring people and businesses shaping the industry. Our stories resonate far beyond our region, connecting listeners worldwide.

The Visitor Elves community brings together partners, future employees, suppliers, and peers across the UK, making it a must-listen for anyone in the industry!

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Marketing
Places & Travel,
Business,
Society & Culture,
Documentary
RSS
All content for Visitor Elves is the property of Kelly Ballard and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
Welcome to the Visitor Elves podcast, where I take you behind the scenes of tourism, hospitality, culture, and events in and around the West of England and Wales.

Each episode dives into the stories, insights, challenges, and victories of inspiring people and businesses shaping the industry. Our stories resonate far beyond our region, connecting listeners worldwide.

The Visitor Elves community brings together partners, future employees, suppliers, and peers across the UK, making it a must-listen for anyone in the industry!

Show more...
Marketing
Places & Travel,
Business,
Society & Culture,
Documentary
Episodes (20/59)
Visitor Elves
EP 58 What a film or TV location can do for your destination or business with Seren Welch
6 months ago
1 hour 1 minute 55 seconds

Visitor Elves
EP 57 Carnival, Creativity, and Citizen-Led Change: An Inspiring Conversation with LaToyah McAllister-Jones, CEO of St Pauls Carnival and Trustee of Bristol Old Vic.
8 months ago
49 minutes 10 seconds

Visitor Elves
EP 56 The Digital Marketing Secrets Behind Visit West’s Success
9 months ago
1 hour 19 minutes 21 seconds

Visitor Elves
EP 55 The changing face of Bristol’s city centre, students and Bristol Light Festival
9 months ago
1 hour 4 minutes 7 seconds

Visitor Elves
EP 54 10-steps to creating your marketing strategy for your visitor attraction, experience or hospitality venue in 2025
10 months ago
42 minutes 32 seconds

Visitor Elves
Ep 53 Clare Reddington on skipping school, creativity and financial resilience at Bristol's Watershed.
11 months ago
56 minutes 35 seconds

Visitor Elves
Ep 52 Unpacking Ski Travel: How Online Ski Company Heidi is Redefining the Slopes, with CEO Marcus Blunt
Send us a textIn a recent chat, Kelly caught up with Marcus Blunt, co-founder and CEO of Heidi, an online ski travel company based in Bristol that’s been making waves in the industry since launching in 2018. This year, they even made it onto The Times 100 list of fastest-growing companies in the UK.Marcus and his brother Alexander started Heidi to fix the headaches they faced when booking ski holidays, wanting to create an easier way for skiers to customise their trips. Despite tough tim...
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11 months ago
47 minutes 6 seconds

Visitor Elves
EP 51 🏛️ From Forgotten to Fabulous: The Gloucester Food Dock Story with co-owner Sarah Mansfield
Send us a textIn this episode, I'm back in Gloucester exploring the fascinating world of urban regeneration and historic building redevelopment with Sarah Mansfield Co-owner of L&R Group and visionary behind Gloucester Food Dock. Sarah shares her journey from running luxury trains to transforming heritage spaces, focusing on her latest project, Gloucester Food Dock. We chatted about:Sarah's background in leisure, tourism and urban redevelopment including the development of Milsom Pla...
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1 year ago
52 minutes 39 seconds

Visitor Elves
EP 50 – Increase your corporate bookings in 2025 with Helen Applin Head of Business Events, Visit West
Send us a textAre you looking to grow your corporate bookings in 2025? Business events like meetings, conferences, and team-building activities are key revenue sources, especially during off-peak times in the visitor economy.In this episode, Kelly chats with Helen Applin, Head of Business Events at Visit West, about the MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Exhibitions) market opportunities in the Bristol, Bath, and North Somerset area. Many businesses miss out on opportunities ...
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1 year ago
43 minutes 57 seconds

Visitor Elves
EP49 Behind the Scenes of Wales' AA Hotel of the Year 2024: Success Strategies from The Parkgate Hotel’s Damien Martin
Send us a textIn this episode of I chatted with Damien Martin, General Manager of award-winning The Parkgate Hotel in Cardiff. Just a year after opening its doors in 2021, The Parkgate Hotel scooped the prestigious AA Hotel of the Year for Wales title. Damien gives us an inside look at the hotel’s success and shares what it takes to run a standout hospitality business. One of the hotel's big highlights is its restaurant, The Sorting Room, which has earned two AA Rosettes...
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1 year ago
46 minutes 1 second

Visitor Elves
EP 48 Unlocking the Secrets of Effective Content Marketing with Charlotte Laing, The Content Emporium
Send us a textWelcome to today’s episode! I’m super excited to chat with Charlotte Laing, the amazing founder of The Content Emporium. Her agency is thriving, with a team of 46 talented people, and they’re doing fantastic work for clients, including 20 shopping centres across the UK.Who’s This Episode For?If you’re creating content for businesses, especially in the visitor economy (think shopping centres, town or city centres), this one’s for you. Charlotte’s sharing some great tips and...
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1 year ago
51 minutes 5 seconds

Visitor Elves
EP 47 Visit West Food & Drink Forum Sept 2024
Send us a textWelcome to Series 4 of The Visitor Elves Podcast!We’re back, and I couldn’t be more excited to kick off Series 4 of the Visitor Elves podcast. Whether you’re a long-time listener (you’re a total rockstar!) or it’s your first time tuning in, I’m thrilled to have you here. We’re two years in, with 46 episodes and over 4,200 downloads—so what’s next? This series is packed with insightful guests, actionable tips, and real stories from those on the frontlines of tourism, h...
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1 year ago
24 minutes 52 seconds

Visitor Elves
EP. 46 Lorraine Jarvie - General Manager of Royal Crescent Hotel, Bath, talks luxury hotel management and Bridgerton
Send us a textIn my final episode of Series 3, I have a special guest, the wonderful and oh-so-stylish Lorraine Jarvie, General Manager of the Royal Crescent Hotel in Bath. This hotel has a five-star (red) rating and is one of the top 2% in the country. With 40 bedrooms and 140 staff (180 during busy periods), the Royal Crescent is not only one of the West's most impressive hotels, it is also one of the ultimate jobs in the UK for a hotel manager. In our conversation, we tal...
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1 year ago
43 minutes

Visitor Elves
EP. 45 Making Bristol city centre a more sustainable and enjoyable place to visit with Tom Swithinbank from Bristol BIDs
Send us a textWelcome to this week's podcast, where I’m going behind the scenes of Bristol City Centre and talking to Tom Swithinbank. Tom's work involves helping businesses become more sustainable and making the city a more appealing place to visit. Tom works for Visit West, specifically for the Business Improvement Districts, which support around 1,200 businesses in the city centre.In this episode, we talk about: How Tom’s work contributes to the Bristol City Council’s ambitious target...
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1 year ago
47 minutes 54 seconds

Visitor Elves
EP 44 From Boomtown to Wake the Tiger - How this festival organiser created a successful visitor attraction in the heart of Bristol
Send us a textIn today's episode, my conversation with Graham MacVoy, Managing Director of the visitor attraction Wake the Tiger in Bristol, truly blew my mind. Wake the Tiger is the permanent 'baby' created by the team running the unique Boomtown festival. The pandemic has much to answer for, but it gave Graham and his directors the headspace to provide a more permanent base for their creative ideas, so the 'amazement park' Wake the Tiger was created and opened in 2022. &nbs...
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1 year ago
52 minutes 26 seconds

Visitor Elves
43: Vicki Jones talks about setting up her award-winning Glampsite and YouTube channel 'Tractors and Cream' in Somerset
Send us a textIn today’s podcast, I’m heading to the Somerset levels to chat with Vicki Jones, owner of the award-winning Tractors & Cream glampsite. Vicki and her husband Bryan worked in the hotel trade before they decided to upsticks and create their own hospitality business. After feeling the pain of putting up the yurts each year, they decided to invest in these fantastic architectural geodomes. Their beautiful site, with five domes and a large event dome, is extreme...
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1 year ago
51 minutes 37 seconds

Visitor Elves
EP 42 Ticketing system frustrations? Make yours work more effectively for you with Sarah Bagg
Send us a textIn this episode, I had the pleasure of chatting with Sarah Bagg, founder of ReWork Consulting, about getting the best ticketing or booking system to support your business needs. As a marketer, I've worked with several solutions, and I've noticed that most of them lack the automated link from email to CRM system. As a result, it's challenging to execute smart marketing strategies without manual intervention. This can be frustrating and time-consuming. It restric...
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1 year ago
19 minutes 38 seconds

Visitor Elves
EP 41 How working with the overseas travel trade could really help your business, with Jon Chamberlain and Mike Newman
Send us a textIn this podcast episode, we focus on increasing bookings from inbound travellers or overseas tourists through the travel trade. My guests are Jon Chamberlain, Head of Marketing for VisitWest, and Mike Newman of B2Me Tourism Marketing. Jon has been working for 11 years to promote Bristol, Bath, and the surrounding areas as a European leisure destination. Mike helps destinations and businesses prepare their offers for the travel trade and represents them at shows worldwide.&n...
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1 year ago
1 hour 17 minutes 23 seconds

Visitor Elves
EP 40 - The state of the domestic group market in 2024, with Steve Reed Tourism
Send us a textToday's Marketing Insights is all about the 'groups' market. For many years, the domestic group travel or coach tour industry has been an important part of the UK’s tourism industry. Groups have historically been guaranteed business for many tourism organisations, with up to 50 people on a coach coming often during week day and shoulder periods. However, because of the pandemic, hundreds of coach companies, many of them well established, went out of busines...
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1 year ago
28 minutes 21 seconds

Visitor Elves
EP 39 Easy tips for mastering your email marketing with Sarah Orchard - Marketing Insight
Send us a textToday’s episode is all about email marketing and the simple things you can do to make it work more effectively to drive bookings. Joining me on the show is Sarah Orchard of Get Fully Booked. Sarah runs a marketing programme that helps small independent accommodation businesses improve their marketing and increase their direct bookings. Sarah was also my very first guest on the podcast back in 2022. In that episode, she spoke about her luxury treehouse, Hudnalls...
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1 year ago
33 minutes 45 seconds

Visitor Elves
Welcome to the Visitor Elves podcast, where I take you behind the scenes of tourism, hospitality, culture, and events in and around the West of England and Wales.

Each episode dives into the stories, insights, challenges, and victories of inspiring people and businesses shaping the industry. Our stories resonate far beyond our region, connecting listeners worldwide.

The Visitor Elves community brings together partners, future employees, suppliers, and peers across the UK, making it a must-listen for anyone in the industry!