Shaftesbury can’t rest on its laurels. OK, we’ve had visitors from 89 countries and territories across the world but look at the map! We need to step up marketing to central Asia and Africa – and our efforts to woo visitors from the Indian sub-continent have frankly failed to get off the ground.
Large countries such as Cambodia, Croatia and Indonesia could all do with a bit of love. Still, visitors from Namibia, Brunei, Panama and Iran have all had the pleasure of Shaftesbury: let’s hope they’ve raved to all their friends.
How do we know this? It’s not sophisticated digital research, no app has been involved nor have Facebook profiles been raided. The answer is in the town’s Tourist Information Office (TIC) – look up, to where the walls meet the ceiling.
“The first person to come in when we opened about 10 years ago was from Canada, then we had Australia, New Zealand, Sweden and Japan,” says David Taylor, the TIC’s manager.