And why it is so Important to Businesses in Blackpool!! There is a lot of competition out there don’t you know!!
Sunday, 29 November 2009
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
Sunday, 20 September 2009
Wednesday, 19 August 2009
Blackpool Pleasure Beach Wristbands Adults Save £10 Children Save £5
Blackpool Pleasure Beach Wristbands
Adults Save £10
Children Save £5
Offer Ends 31st August 2009
Book Online Here
If you are staying over and want to sample more of Blackpool’s Offering then check out our unbeatable accomodation prices here:
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
After the Fire Comes the Demolition
The Grand Hotel/Holiday Flats Paris Casino..
Pictures of the Cranes and close ups of the damage incurred. Most of the frontage from Station Road/Lytham Road side now lays in ruins in the street below..
The Grand Hotel/Holiday Flats Fire The Morning After
More Dramatic Pics as the smell of ash and burnt wood hung heavy in the air in South Shore..
Grand Hotel/Holidays Flats Fire South Shore
Some Dramatic Pics Taken on the night of the Fire from my Rooftop...
200 Metres away Upwind Thankfully........
Thursday, 16 July 2009
Roy Chubby Brown Live in Concert at the Opera House Blackpool Winter Gardens Summer 2009
Roy Chubby Brown Live in Concert at the Opera House Blackpool Winter Gardens Summer 2009
Ken Webster presents a Truly Explosive Experience this Summer at the Horseshoe Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
Ken Webster presents a Truly Explosive Experience this Summer at the Horseshoe Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
Wednesday, 8 July 2009
The Original Blackpool Mecca Revival Reunion @ The Metropole Hotel Ballroom on Saturday 5th September 2009.
The Original Blackpool Mecca Revival Reunion @ The Metropole Hotel Ballroom on Saturday 5th September 2009.
Monday, 6 July 2009
Thursday, 25 June 2009
Pleasure Beach Wristbands BOGOF this Week Only
Must Have Information for your Guests is Available Moorbank House B&B Blackpool
Can TripAdvisor reviews really be trusted?
In Depth Article from the USA and our take on it here.
A Must Read for Accomodation providers........
Wednesday, 17 June 2009
Great Online Offers with Free Wristbands this Sunday at Blackpool Pleasure Beach
Read all About it Here
Isn't this how a Blog should be used?
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
Parking at Blackpool Airport
Parking at Blackpool Airport
Parking at airports these days is not cheap. Heathrow for example the UK’s premier airport charges over £15 a day even provincial traditional holiday departure airports like Manchester or Gatwick can charge up to £8 a day so.......Continued Here
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
Web Tracking Scripts and How They Can Assist the Blackpool Accomodation Industry
Read all about this one here
Friday, 29 May 2009
Blackpool and it’s Bumper Bank Holiday Weekend
Even got a mention in the Daily Telegraph which given the.....
Catch the rest of the article over at our new home which is here
Wednesday, 27 May 2009
This Blog is Being Pressed
To Wordpress to be more precise.
A number of reasons we have done this but fear not there is absolutely nothing wrong with blogger and this particular platform. Anyway the new address is below as we hope you will save it and join us in our new home.
A lot to be said for blogger and the fact it is owned by google means the posts upon it get indexed very quickly. Indexed means read by the web bots (short for robots or another term used is spiders) which are automated progams (who liked the Matrix movie) which crawl the web indexing it's content.
That way when someone searches for aunt sally's brilliant bisquit recipe provided there is a web page with those terms upon it then it will feature high in the rankings. It need not actually have the recipe simply those words as google and the others are not that clever to figure out the content exactly.
The trick is where there are 2000 odd pages listing aunt sallys bisquit recipe then google and the others have to try and figure out which one will return exactly what the searcher is looking for.
Then comes into play a a whole new ball game the contender pages are ranked against each other with the relevancy and number of inbound links counted to establish which page is more important than the others.
Anyway Wordpress is a blogging tool for the little more advanced and has a lot more bells and whistles that allow the content to be SEO'd.
Search Engine Optimization is what that stands for and it sounds awfully technical doesn't it well I will post about that again in the future amongst the more topical stuff going on in South Shore and try and break it down into easly understandable chunks.
Anyway some time on Thursday evening I will point the url for this site straight at the new one but I don't think the blog posts will feed through automatically unless you subscribe over at wordpress.
Anyway I am off over there now to write about the busy Bank Holiday Weekend we had..
If anyone has any problems they are most welcome to email me. pararct@gmail.com
Apologies for the spelling errors I can't figure out if this has a spell checker?
Thursday, 21 May 2009
Blogging Networking and SERP
We are now a week on from the excellent presentations given on photography and Blogging at the Stay Blackpool members day at the New President Hotel.
I suppose the first question asked about blogging is well why do I need one and what can it do for me and now having had a little time over the last week or so I have read up on the subject and feel a little more qualified to expand on the great answer that Jane gave in her presentation.
Networking well what it is exactly? Networking doesn't happen overnight but it is a gradual process on building up contacts through the blogging experience where you have people read your site content and you read others, it may or maybe not the case that natural business prospects come about as part of this process. Clearly Jane has used her floristry skills business where she caters for weddings and other hi profile events to create content for her site(s) which is both interesting and very readable. She has also mastered the ability to populate content with sufficient relevant pictures to keep the reader visually entertained and 'glued to the text on the page'.
I mentioned natural business prospects.... I am sure Jane would agree that these do not jump out at you from the page or the contributions made to that page but with a little thought, opportunities may and will indeed arise.
Now to the other important benefit of blogging. There is one big player when it comes to searching the internet and that is Google. Yes of course there are others like Yahoo and Ask Jeeves just to name a few but over 90% of search traffic goes through Google.
SERP, it forms part of the title and I will now tell you what it stands for, Search Engine Results Page. It is the page of results returned by Google or Yahoo for a given search term.
Google ranks where it will put your particular site if it is relevant to the search term on a number of factors some of which they keep very close to their chests. One that is known about is traffic. The more traffic you can direct to your site or blog it stands to reason the further up the results page you will fall. One thing amongst all others stands out in the way Google works this out and it is relevancy. Exactly what does this mean well if I was looking for details on Blackpool Trams I want to read content on Blackpool Trams, but if that was written by an accommodation provider and I was thinking of coming to Blackpool and the article was hosted on a providers site well you can see where this is going!!
We use a tracking script on both our blog and business web site supplied by these people. If you visit the site you will see they offer the code for a free version which can be inserted very easily onto the code of a home page giving visitor statistics. We have a paid subscription which costs 5 Euro's a month but provides invaluable information on who is landing on our web sites and more importantly the search terms and the referring web sites they use and come from. This alone allows us to target advertising spend and calculate a return on investment from various options.
This particular blog has only been in existence for no more than a month but already it is getting hits from high up on the Google SERPS for such terms as Blackpool Trams and Lioness cubs, even the names of the contractors used in the Tram article are bringing in generic traffic from Google.
Now this may not yet be generating business but the potential is very definitely there for it to do so in the future and don’t forget Google measures the amount of traffic going to your site or blog and even if you are getting hits for what you may see as unimportant search terms such as lioness cubs the potential is there to push you further up the ratings on the more lucrative searches relative to your business.
Clearly there are the key search terms that whatever your line of business you want to score high upon, the trouble is these are often the same terms that have a lot of competition, ‘florist in Blackpool' for a Company like Jane's or Hotel or B&B in Blackpool for an accommodation provider are such examples.
That competition is very fierce and after all there are only 10 spots on the first page of google but it can be overcome the only thing that needs to be invested from those that want to try this are time, relevant and quality content for blogs and the ability to recognise that these things do not happen overnight.
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
Blackpol Town Centre Goes Wi Fi
Blackpool has just created a series of Wi-Fi hotzones around the town centre to meet the growing demand for Wi-Fi access. Expanding numbers of people now own devices such as laptop computers, netbooks and the ever popular iPhone and other media players whose applications consume a lot of bandwidth so are looking to access Wi-Fi wherever they can.
The provision of Wi Fi in the accommodation sector of B&B's and Guesthouses in Blackpool in 2009 is as important as the provision of private facilities in 1975ish and all should encompass the technology at the very least in a public room such as a bar or lounge if it cannot be provided across the property.
£150,000 is being invested in the Wireless Blackpool project which will offer Wi-Fi at over a dozen sites, including the Winter Gardens, Church Street, Victoria Street, Birley Street, Corporation Street and the areas around the North Station and Central Car Park. Additional Sites will be added in due course
Wi-Fi access isn’t completely free of charge though, apart from a few certain city websites designed to help visitors find locations and events in Blackpool.
However, a voucher scheme will operate in the summer which will allow businesses such as Cafe’s and pubs along with conference venues to give customers unlimited access to the web for designated periods of time.
Don't forget a very popular pub chain with spoons in the name are currently offering free wi fi on their own premises. There is at least one in Blackpool currently with hopefully more to come in the future if the Council get their act together.
Blackpool Zoo Lioness has first cubs for 25 Years!
Here are two of the three lioness cubs born in Blackpool Zoo on the 9th April 2009, the first for 25 years.They are now on view to the public, but have not yet met their dad or the rest of the pride as they need to be inoculated.
It’s Big Cat Week at Blackpool Zoo this half-term from Saturday 23rd to Sunday 31st May. There will be a number of exciting activities taking place next to the zoo’s Big Cat House from 11am to 5pm each day. Including face painting, badge making, an interesting display of big cat artefacts and competitions. So if your visiting Blackpool this holiday a visit to the zoo should be on your list of things to do, I will certainly be taking my family, I can't believe we have been here two years now and still haven't been to the zoo.
Don't forget to visit the zoo's other baby, although he's now six months old, and that's the first ever Giraffe born at the zoo called Timber.
Saturday, 16 May 2009
My Stunning flowers
Just had to post a picture of these stunning flowers from Kathleens Flower Design in Lytham Road.
Although my reception area is only the small they really do create a focal point.
Saturday, 9 May 2009
New Tram System at Last
The Blackpool Gazette reported this week that Bombardier (primerily a Canadian military hardware firm) has won the contract to supply 20 state of the art Trams.
Blackpool current fleet of trams is shall we say 'from another era' and to be honest are seen and ridden upon by visitors to the town for novelty value. Sure they perform the function they are designed for but the maintance costs must be astranomic and as for sourcing parts well lets not go there.
This news came a few weeks after plans were announced that a consultation exercise would be undertaken to build a huge tram storage and maintainace shed on the dunes close to squires gate terminal (this is the Southernmost end of the track line which runs north to Fleetwood).
This site is directly opposite a number of residential houses which as you can imagine were not best pleased when they learnt they stood to lose the view of the Irish sea.
Anyway the emphasis on the plan was it was at consultation nothing has been agreed so far.
But that said it seems the contract for the supply of the vehicles is in place and this morning I have discovered another contract has been agreed. Bam Nuttall have won the contract to upgrade Blackpools track infrastructure whilst Volker Fitzpatrick will build the new Tram Shed..
I suspect there will be some unhappy bunnies in Squires Gate this morning when the news becomes public as it seems the project is 'full steam ahead' consultation or not..
In all honesty the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and Blackpool is crying out for investment into its transport infrastructure. The scheme is to be welcomed as would any announcment to improve the service to the town by maybe reinstating some old tram lines.
Back to Bombardier they are a very competent firm and have been the prefferred supplier over the last 30 years in a number of MOD contracts for UK military hardware.
I was so impressed with one such vehicle a motorcycle I sourced one when I left the army from an auction sale. This is the one pictured above and it served me well for many years. It became more difficult sourcing 2 star petrol for it which many it had to be consigned to be sold for parts.
I only wish I was able to put the photo down here but that is one aspect of this site I have yet toget to grips with.
Thursday, 7 May 2009
Do Blackpool Police Owe us an Explanation
Yet another shot in Blackpool's foot from the local bobbies.Seems they stormed into the party at the Young Farmers AGM over the weekend closing it down early due it seems to a suspicion of underage alcohol consumption.
As a result the Young Farmers have decided they do not want to return to Blackpool in 2010 and will in fact be going to Torquay.
I fully support the action by all members of the community and indeed the civil power in cracking down on one of society's evils (and one a real problem in Blackpool) but was not the closing down of this party a little overkill?
No doubt they used some abstact section of anti terror legislation in to facilliate this?
The onus on upholding the law in respect to underage sales lies with the alcohol seller. They are the ones that stand to be prosecuted and face sanctions such as the withdrawal of the licence the seller. If the staff at the venue hasd broken the law then plenty of provision exists to prosecute them directly and or the Winter Gardens management as has been the case recently at Tesco in Whitegate Drive.
Anyway I feel this story will have some legs today and will appear in The Gazette no doubt with some popular comments.
I wonder how much income has been taken from Blackpool economy in 2010 by the heavy handed antics of our bobbies?
Monday, 4 May 2009
Dune Grass Destined for the Promenade
I started this blog as a simple project in an effort to experiment improving the SERP of my own web site. Clearly this has advantages in pushing a businesses listing further up search engines results pages and is an art in it's own right.
Those that are good at it and have the relevent expereince and a devout understanding of the alogerithm that google uses are able to command substantial fees, it's a definite learning curve and one I am slowly coming to terms with anyway I digress.
Thanks to the kind comments of Peter (I assume it's you?) over at Stay Blackpool I now feel a little obligated in making some further contributions.
Right I think this might be the first announcement of this part of the regeneration project locally? I have not yet seen it mentioned in the Gazette or indeed on any other of the Blackpool blog sites however invariably I can be wrong and I apologise in advance if this is the case.
An update has been announced to what will grace the promenade at the Tower headland which it seems may have a secret code word parade 5.
Five 30m towering blades of dune grass - inspired by local flora - will sway back and forth in the wind and light up at night.
Alongside these giant sculptures, two huge 12m long seesaws, each capable of holding a family, will be installed to instill a sense of fun and make the area a destination in its own right.
Other features will be giant pebble seats, special lighting bollards, bike racks, litter bins and signs and specialised planting to add colour and life.
So yet another 21st Century addition to help Blackpool pull itself up from it's bootstraps!!
The promenade regen project around South pier and headign north towards central is largely finished and I spotted them laying down the flower beds a few days ago. It gives us a snapshot of how impressive the whole shebang will look once the diggers and builders and JCB's have all finished.
The photo is an artists impression of the Dune Grass and the source of the story is here
Saturday, 2 May 2009
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Big Hoo Haa today up in Hornby Road (Central Area) about the council granting planning permission for a new budget hotel.
The local hoteliers are up in arms and creating about it all over the place. They seem to be blaming the chap at Stay Blackpool who oversees the Trade Association for not speaking up loudly enough at the planning meeting?
In a previous job I researched a lot of planning law and the criteria used by Local Authorities when they grant and or deny local permission. It would seem in this case the grounds to deny were simply not there. The project promises re-generation for a run down area and will provide employment. To deny would have likely meant the project going to appeal which would have lumbered the council with heavy legal costs in defending a practically undefensible position?
Anyway after all that they now say the project may not go ahead as the crdit crunch may have dried up finance for it.
The local hoteliers are up in arms and creating about it all over the place. They seem to be blaming the chap at Stay Blackpool who oversees the Trade Association for not speaking up loudly enough at the planning meeting?
In a previous job I researched a lot of planning law and the criteria used by Local Authorities when they grant and or deny local permission. It would seem in this case the grounds to deny were simply not there. The project promises re-generation for a run down area and will provide employment. To deny would have likely meant the project going to appeal which would have lumbered the council with heavy legal costs in defending a practically undefensible position?
Anyway after all that they now say the project may not go ahead as the crdit crunch may have dried up finance for it.
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