Selling Hadrian's Wall

Hadrian's Wall stretches 72 miles from the Solway Coast in North Cumbria to Tyne and Wear on the East Coast. Building began in 122AD on the orders of the Emperor Hadrian. It was completed in 130AD. A World Heritage site, it is on the must-see list of most foreign tourists. A valuable tourism tool, then, for the counties of Cumbria and Northumberland across which it stretches. But how do you use such an attraction to increase business for the many shops, guesthouses and gift producers lying within ten miles of the wall? This was the task set Porter Brown by the Hadrian's Wall Partnership.

Under the title 'Hadrian Means Business', the partnership was tasked with a 5-year project to boost business for these outlets.

Project Officer Tamsin Beevor says: "I came into this completely fresh. It was a completely new project and I needed to know what visitors wanted which we weren't already providing. I could then use this information to ask businesses to provide what was needed."

The three tenders she considered proved to be completely different. She decided to go with Porter Brown.

"Their's was a very practical tender," says Tamsin. "It wasn't relying on a lot of paper research. It was getting to grips very quickly with the brief and coming back very quickly with practical ideas – not necessarily what we'd expected. It was very much going out and talking to the retailers and businesses. Some other consultants were more about taking the traditional tourism research route, examining lots of data. I think Porter Brown's approach was much better."

One survey involved interviews with 500 visitors to the Housestead's Roman Fort, one of the most popular visitor attractions on the Roman Wall. It was an exercise that has paid handsome dividends.
"The results have been very interesting," says Tamsin. "A lot of other organisations have been very interested in the survey and it's been widely quoted beyond the wall. It showed people did want to feel they were spending in a way that supported the local economy, business and the environment. It's given us a real excuse for drawing the various businesses together, to work together in a way they might not have wanted to do in the past."

A happy result, then, for Tamsin and the Hadrian Means Business Project. But what does she think of the personal skills of the two consultants she hired?

"Judith is particularly good at presenting a case and explaining things clearly."
"John has the ability to work outside the box and come at a problem from another angle, and both work very well together."