shop eat play | live
It has been an eventful but rewarding year for Worcester BID. The city has seen some remarkable events and developments throughout 2018 and we are thrilled to be at the heart of it all. The Worcester BID team have been working hard alongside several partners to ensure Worcester remains a safe, thriving and welcoming city through various projects and schemes. We thought we’d round off the year with some our highlights….
Great British High Street
Following our successful joint application, we were thrilled to be invited to London and formally recognised as one of top High Streets in GB. From 200 applications for the Great British High Street Awards, Worcester was one of the top 13 finalists.
The Social
We launched and produced 4 issues of the Worc Social. This lifestyle magazine which has featured 136 different BID businesses over the last twelve months is distributed to thousands of homes and businesses, as well as further afield via social media.
The Food Festival
We once again organised the Worc Food Fest and this year saw a huge 38,115 increase in footfall from the same event in 2017.
Visit Worcester
Working in partnership with the city council we launched the Visit Worcester website which now features almost 100 businesses. As part of this partnership, Worcester BID is responsible for the Visit Worcester social media channels and over the last nine months we have seen enormous increases in engagement and followers. Visit Worcester’s Instagram has increased from under 1000 followers to 1530, Facebook now has 2,100 followers compared to 1,200 this time last year, and twitter has increased from under 3,000 to 4,200. Besides this, Instagram takeovers are now reaching an average of between 3,000 and 4,000 views per business and Facebook engagement per month has increased from 293, to 1,500.
Worcester BID Awards
The Worcester BID Customer Service Assessments were relaunched alongside the inaugural BID Awards, which collectively featured 60 businesses.
Little Book of Independents
We created Worcesters ‘Little Book of Independents’, a guide to Worcester BID’s independent businesses which was distributed throughout the Victorian Fayre and across the city. We will continue to distribute to parties we meet arriving by coach and train over the next twelve months.
CityNet
CityNet, our Business Crime Reduction Partnership now has an enhanced offer which includes an interactive app for our members. This has seen our safer city community grow considerably with over 130 members.
Worcester Cares
Worcester BID, partnership with different agencies launched the Worcester Cares initiative, a text donation service where specific donations are split between the different organisations caring for the homeless in the city.
Lobbying and Business Representation
We represented businesses interests during various happenings throughout the year, including the heavy snow periods, the Severn Trent work on The Shambles and the EDL march.
Footfall
The number of businesses receiving out footfall data grew this year by an exceptional 514%!
Cost-saving
We launched our cost savings initiative with Meercat Associates and other partners. This scheme can save businesses money on several bills including utilities and insurance. 66 businesses are currently in talks to make the most of this offer!
So what is to come?
Worcester BID are excited for the year ahead. We will be bringing Nightsafe under the CityNet umbrella and launching Worcester’s Best Bar None scheme. We will also be rolling out the CityNet app to every single CityNet member.
We’re also excited to announce that Worcester BID will be complimenting Visit Worcester’s social media campaigns by introducing changeable flags across the cities lampposts promoting the cities seasons and events.
These are just a few of the exciting projects Worcester BID will launch in the new year. Alongside this, we will continue to build on 2018’s projects, reaching a much larger audience and having greater positive impact on the city.
All of these projects are available to every single Worcester BID member so please get in contact with the Worcester BID team if any of these interests you!
The team at Worcester BID would like to thank you again for your passion, support and hard work this year and wish you all a Merry Christmas. We can’t wait to work with you again in the new year!
