Visit London strikes Gold (Sitegeist)
Following
the relaunch of its business tourism website this year, Visit
London has won the coveted Gold at the 2008 Meetings Industry Marketing
Awards (MIMA).
Kenza Darley
(21 Oct'08)
Visit London vied with business sites including The Brewery, Henley Business School and Mango Event Management to have visitlondon.com/business (pic above) take the MIMA on 16 October at the five-star Landmark London.
MIMA was created to raise the standards of marketing in the meetings and events industry and to recognise the innovation and talent of marketing professionals within the sector.
visitlondon.com/business won the MIMA Award for "Best Website" following its relaunch in April 2008 as the official event planner's digital portal for London. The site was redesigned to offer an advanced venues and services search, improved and enhanced supplier listings, a three-way proposal submitting process, a call-back request, an enhanced planning toolkit with downloadable resources, industry news and a London events calendar.
In the two months after its launch, the number of unique visits rose by 17% to 12,723 and the number of page views rose by 20% to 45,656.
Visit London Business Marketing Manager Séverine Ougier said: "This is great recognition by the meetings and events industry for the hard work of the Visit London digital and business tourism teams. In relaunching the website back in April we wanted to ensure event planners had all the right information and tools to find out more about our city, and ultimately choose London."
We surveyed hundreds of international and domestic event organisers, consulted key suppliers and industry partners, and benchmarked main competitor websites to really understand what a destination website should provide.
Integrating key findings into a big scope document, the project was delivered in-house, on time and budget. "It was very important to keep a close loop on the delivery of the project. Our in-house knowledge and resources were key to achieving our original objective of becoming London's number one resource for event planning. We're delighted with the win," concluded Ougier.