Weather and website bring a Brighton boost

Brighton’s main tourism website has had record numbers of visitors in July.

Visitbrighton.com, run by the city council’s tourism arm, has had 225,000 unique visitors during the month – and achieved one million page hits for the first time.

VisitBrighton marketing manager John Carmichael said:  “July 2013 has broken all records for the number of visitors to www.visitbrighton.com in a single of month; with over 225,000 different people accessing the site in the month to date, amassing over one million page views.  This is more than a 25 per cent increase on site traffic in July 2012.  Most popular sections of the site over the last month include ‘What’s On’, ‘Things to Do’ and ‘Beach Life’.

Head of tourism Adam Bates said: “There is no doubt the warm weather has bought the visitors out in great numbers.  We’re estimating the city will have seen nearly a million visitors during July. Not only are these visitors from the UK but with large numbers of overseas visitors and students coming to study English, the city has felt very cosmopolitan.

“With many great events planned for August and September and with the hope of further good weather and a major party conference in September, we hope this will be a bumper year for local tourism businesses.”

Councillor in charge of tourism Geoffrey Bowden said:  “VisitBrighton works tirelessly to attract visitors to the city and they’re very good at it – the numbers speak for themselves.  The beaches and city centre shops and restaurants have been packed so the council and local businesses in the tourism sector must be doing something right.”

The council-run Volks Railway is also experiencing a bumper year with over 48,000 passengers in July alone - an increase of 34 per cent on the figure for last year.

A spokesman added:  “The seafront has seen a rise in visitors with packed beaches and bathing areas becoming a regular sight throughout July.  Anecdotally seafront businesses are reporting a rise in European visitors.”

In the meantime VisitBrighton has lined up extensive media coverage of the city. ARD, a German TV channel equivalent to the BBC, is coming early next week to film a special on tourism in Brighton. In the next week VisitBrighton is also hosting journalists from Australia, USA, Switzerland and the UK.