Posts Tagged ‘ Chester Zoo ’

Chester has decided to style itself as an “open-air city” now that people can move around a little more freely.

Blackpool Pleasure Beach is offering a discount or Father’s Day tomorrow, Kenya has received a clear rating from the FCO and we are as bad as the Germans. Welcome to the smaller stoires of the week.

Last week, Visit Chester & Cheshire held their annual tourism awards. There were 15 categories and Tatton Park won the award for best visitor attraction of the year. It isn’t the first time it has been successful, this being the third time this century. Receiving over 750,000 visitors each year, some of the reasons for its likely success are that it combines 50 acres of gardens, (out of 1,000 in all) a mansion, a park and it is easy to get to from two motorways. They also have a large number of events operating throughout the year and you can see those by looking at CD-Traveller’s event pages.
Of course, they weren’t the only winners. The award for the best tourism experience went to the shark dive at the Blue Planet Aquarium near Ellesmere Port. Sharks have never been one of my favourite things so I am one of the exceptions since the Aquarium even gets large numbers voting in its favourite shark category. (Bella the Black Tip Reef Shark won last years with 3,000 plus votes!)

Two recent surveys, one by Visit England and the other by the foreign exchange bureaux company, First Rate both claim to be able to reveal what visitors to our shores want to see. Unfortunately the two say different things. the findings from Visit England are based on visitor entry numbers and since places like Trafalgar Square and Tower Bridge are free to walk around (unless you want to go into Tower Bridge), visits aren’t counted.