Over the years I have talked to various people about why Irvine never seems to be able to get the tourist side of the town right, it’s always had the pull of the local people and it’s attraction reaches Glasgow, but in recent years visitors to the area seem hard to see, while on the other hand Ayr seems to be doing ok.
The local council through various projects spent millions developments and improvement to the beach-park, the harbour, the dome thing that closed, even adding a band stand. Has a band ever played there?
But it seems to me that they’ve all forgot to do one thing, which is to tell people about it.
A few days ago I received an email to my browseayrshire.com from an OAP in Springside looking for a menu. I responded to the email mentioning that this site was only a review site and had no connection to any restaurants, but I thought I would get the details and try to help her out. Now she wants to book the Gables Restaurant for 18 people. Not a small request by any means, this would nearly fill the place and I’m sure the owners of the Gables would be grateful for the business.
So off I pop back onto Google to search for “Gables Restaurant Irvine” first up is my browsayrshire.com site which I expect to see as I’ve been doing SEO and online marketing for a while. After searching around I couldn’t find any website directly related to the Gables Restaurant. Having lived in Irvine I know that the Gables Restaurant is at the back of the Kings Arms Hotel, so I do a search for “Kings Arms Irvine” great I’ve found a website, but wait a second, it has message “no longer being hosted, If you are the owner, please contact us.” Great they don’t have a website.
So now I’m left with phoning them and trying to pass a fairly obsure email address over the phone so they can send the OAP from Springside the menu.
I then decide to have another look about for the other pubs and clubs in Irvine to see what the other websites look like.
Firstly the newly opened Pitchers Nightclub
So I search “Pitchers Nightclub Irvine” again no website
Then “The Clubhouse Irvine“, again no website
Same for:
“Viva Nightclub Irvine”
“The Harbour Lights Irvine”
“The Porthead Tavern Irvine”
No wonder tourist numbers are down if nobody can find any information about the place, I wonder how many of the above bars and restaurants think to themselves why is the Ship Inn and the Gailes doing so well, do you think it’s due to them having a website maybe.
Last week I went to the Solway coast for the weekend, after a quick search we had a list of pubs and restaurants for the weekend, we even found a mountain bike rental company and horse riding and our entertainment was sorted.
This summer there is going to be thousands of people visiting Irvine for the homecoming festival and yet still there’s no Irvine based website to tell people where to stay, how to get there, where to eat and drink, all it would take is for all the bars and restaurant owners to get together and put something together for this, I could do it in my sleep and it wouldn’t even cost each bar owner the price of a beer each day to get it up and running.
The Irvine bay regeneration company are working hard to get things started but it seems local businesses aren’t moving with the times and creating simple website to promote there business.
Think how many other bookings must be missed.
On another note the homecoming festival website doesn’t appear on Google when you search for “homecoming festival” maybe it’s the Irvine internet curse. Maybe next year the local councils and Visit Scotland should spent every penny they have in online marketing, after all that’s where the people are.
Recent Comments