A new Food and Arts centre is due to open in Hythe High Street in December.

Sixteen new stalls/shops/workshops will be created offering arts/crafts/foodie people low cost retail space.

All enquiries, email ziggy1970@hotmail.co.uk

FOLKESTONE Town Centre Management (FTCM) has invited local businesses, entertainment providers and community organisations to help present next year’s events programme as an all-embracing Festival of Festivals. It would include the town’s traditional summer season festivals and carnivals as well as local celebrations to mark unique national events.

Branding the events programme as a three-month something-to-please-everyone festival, claims FTCM, would enhance the marketability of Folkestone as a leisure, recreation and shopping destination and create extra sales opportunities for commercial and other enterprises which cater for and entertain holiday and day visitors.

Says town centre manager John Barber: “Folkestone hosts hundreds of events, large and small, during the summer months. Our idea is to raise the town’s visibility by promoting them under one label – Folkestone Festival of Festivals is the provisional name – starting in 2012 which, with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the Olympic Games, is shaping up to be one of Britain’s most exciting years.

“Locally, the Multi-Cultural Festival, Green Fair, carnivals, regattas, entertainment, sporting, cultural and a diverse range of other events – including Jubilee and Olympic Games celebrations – will provide great opportunities for the kind of high-impact promotion which cohesion via an overall branding would offer.

“With organisers developing their own ideas, FTCM would act as the co-ordinator of Festival of Festival activities which would be promoted by our partner organisation, Discover Folkestone, Hythe and Romney Marsh. There has been enthusiastic response to our invitation and we will announce plans to take it forward shortly”.

For more information, telephone 01303 850522.

Media contact: John Barber – 01303 850522

Dear Friends in Music,

Our next lunchtime recital at St Leonard’s Church takes place on Tuesday 5 April at 12 noon when Lucy Williams (mezzo-soprano) and Sebastian Grand (piano), both graduates of the Royal Northern College of Music, perform a programme of songs entitled ‘Dreams, journeys and the sea’ and including works by Berlioz, Duparc, Elgar, Schubert, Richard Strauss and Vaughan Williams.

Tickets at £5 can be obtained at the door. (Admission free to those under 18 in full-time education.) The recital will be followed by ploughman’s lunches in the church from 1.00pm.

As a reminder, on Saturday 2 April at 7.30pm the Hythe Town Concert Band, Hythe Band of the Salvation Army and the Shepway Community Gospel Choir return to St Leonard’s Church for their annual combined concert. This will be followed by a retiring collection.

With all good wishes,

Brin Hughes

The National Childbirth Trust (NCT) Nearly New Sale will take place on Saturday 26th March 2011 and entrance will be from 10am (members) and 10.30 (non-members) and will be by voluntary donation in aid of the NCT charity projects locally and nationally.

The venue is Hythe Bay School, Cinque Ports Avenue, Hythe CT21 6HS.

On sale will be good quality baby, toddler, pre-school and maternity items.

Also on offer is great tea and cake! We look forward to meeting you!

THOUSANDS more staycationers, short breakers and day visitors have been coming our way. Millions of extra pounds and euros have been spent with traders who sell Shepway’s holiday, leisure and entertainment experiences. Everyone has benefited. More jobs have been created. These upbeat messages come from a just-published report - ‘Economic Impact of Tourism on the District of Shepway 2009’ - commissioned by Visit Kent.

Comparing 2009 with 2006, the year when a same-model survey was last carried out, it estimates that the overall economic benefit of tourism activity in Folkestone, Hythe and Romney Marsh rose by more than 11 per cent, contributing upwards of £219 million to the local economy.

Here are some detailed figures about 2009, with percentage pluses over those of 2006 in brackets:

Overnight trips: UK visitors - 392,000 (+ 5%); overseas visitors - 50,000 (+3%).
Value: £69 million (+ 4%).

Day trips: 3.6 million (+10%). Value: £115 million (+14%).
Income for local businesses generated by trip expenditure: Direct - £182.8 million;
supplier and income induced - £36.4 million (+ 11%).

Business turnover from tourism expenditure: Accommodation - £24.6 million; catering - £60.5 million; attractions/entertainment - £21.9 million; retail: £46.9 million.
Other trip-related expenditure including stays with friends and relatives: £11 million.

Tourism-related jobs supported: 4,300, representing 9.9% of employment in the district.

These statistics relate specifically to 2009, of course. The implications of variations from figures gathered three years earlier are being closely scrutinised. Of particular interest is the estimated growth in the volume and value of day trips relative to longer stays. (To find out how the estimates were calculated see ‘Squaring round figures’ further down).

Did the upward trend continue in 2010? Here, it’s useful to read the report alongside an interview-based visitor survey commissioned by Kent County Council carried out at more than fifty locations in the twelve districts of the county between July and September last year. As well as an overall picture, it provides district-by-district details of the profile and origin of visitors, where they stayed, what they did, how much they spent and what they thought about the district in which they were interviewed. Features which attracted visitors to Shepway are well noted.

To read the full documents log on to www.visitkentbusiness.co.uk and click the Research and Development button.

Now for the £219 million question: What about 2011 and beyond?

With notable exceptions, most visitor-dependent businesses seem to regard last year’s trading as reasonable in economic circumstances which have caused customers to watch their wallets considerably more carefully. Pressed for a forecast, though, many venture cautious optimism that they can fare as well in 2011.

Encouragingly, as the ‘Tons more www trips’ item signals, there is no lack of interest in what’s on offer in Folkestone, Hythe and Romney Marsh. This issue also reports some of the many ways we are steering interest into decision-to-visit, thereby helping to keep up the momentum of recent trends.

Chris Kirkham, manager, Discover Folkestone, Hythe & Romney Marsh

Squaring round numbers

THE 2009 economic impact report was prepared by the research unit of Tourism South East (TSE), using a standard method of measuring tourism activity (the Cambridge Model). Curious about how the precisely-stated figures were arrived at?

The methodology had three components: existing information about local accommodation stock and occupancy rates, population, employment, wage rates, visits to attractions, inbound trips, etc; information about visitor trips and spending at regional/county level derived from national survey sources; use of multipliers derived from business surveys in England to estimate actual and full-time equivalent jobs generated by visitor spending.

To calculate the Shepway figures, TSE applied locally sourced information to regional estimates derived from the following national surveys:

• UK Tourism; International Passenger; UK Day Visits; Visits to Attractions; New Earnings;

• Census of Employment; Census of Population; Labour Force.

A standard formula was used to translate visitor numbers and spending into economic impact terms.

The sophistication of estimates based on the Cambridge Model, the report points out, depends on the availability of detailed and reliable local information to supplement other inputs.

Nevertheless, it provides useful indications of business performance in specific years as well as information about other destinations.

Tons more www trips

OVERALL, the number of January-to-December 2010 requests from information-seekers soared well above those recorded in the corresponding period of 2009.
E-mails and letters: 3,924 (+3%). Telephone calls: 10,221 (-15%). Website hits: 5,681,269 (+18%); unique visits: 536,276, a near-threefold increase.
Figures for the last two months – December and January – have continued the generally upward trend, and, reflecting the experience of other tourism organisations, with thousands more contacts via www.discoverfolkestone.co.uk and somewhat fewer by telephone, post and e-mail.

Requests for information are coming from all parts of Britain, notably from areas adjacent to motorways. In recent weeks, Germany has jumped above France, Belgium and Holland as sources of information requests from Eurozone countries, and there have been increases in numbers from Australia.

Focus on festivals

FOR top-line carnivals, family funfests, live entertainment, exhibitions and cultural events, Folkestone, Hythe and Romney Marsh are the places to be this summer. That’s the message of the media campaign we launched last month to promote the most exciting calendar of Shepway ‘happenings’ for years.

The line-up includes the return of the Folkestone Triennial (June 25-September 25), Britain’s biggest exhibition of public art. (Last held in 2008, it attracted 100,000 visitors). Live events organised by the new Folkestone Fringe will run throughout the three months.

The Folkestone summer season also includes the Multi-Cultural Festival (June 9-12), Green Eco-Fair (July 1 and 2) and Oldtimer Rally (August Bank Holiday weekend). Charivari Day and Folkestone Harbour Festival will be back in July, the HG Wells Festival in September, and, in the same month, Euro-Militaire, the world’s biggest military model exhibition, and, for live music fans, the Skabour Festival.

Hythe welcomes its biennial Venetian Fete on Wednesday, August 17. Lydd Club Day carnival is to be staged in June. New Romney Country Fayre will be in July.

More than 1,500 events – ranging from live entertainment in hotels, restaurants, pubs and clubs to band and classical concerts, art exhibitions, flower shows and sporting occasions -are already listed on www.discoverfolkestone.co.uk With more organisers due to announce their plans during the next few weeks, the tally is expected to more than double by Easter.

There’s always something interesting going on Folkestone, Hythe and Romney Marsh – that’s the way we always tell it. Certainly, there’ll be plenty to attract visitors and entertain residents this year.

Flying the flag

DRAWING visitors from across south east and southern England, the Group and Day Visits Fair organised by Sussex Top Attractions at Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, is one of the most cost-efficient annual events we participate in. Last week’s show was no exception. Our stand was busy throughout the four hours the fair was open. Conversations with representatives of clubs, societies and associations indicated strong intentions to organise visits in coming months.

Our next appearance will be at the fourth Kent Travel & Leisure Show at Dover Cruise Terminal on Sunday, March 13, organised by KoS Media. Last year’s event attracted more than 4,000 visitors looking for ideas for days out and short breaks.

Plans are under discussion for DFHRM participation, independently or with public sector and commercial partners, in more showcase events during the year.
Folkestone in Paralympics 2012 video

MAKING a video to show disabled visitors to the Games places within easy distance of the London venue, an Australian film crew whose presenter is himself physically impaired, was in Folkestone last week.

Our thanks to the Burlington Hotel, Quarterhouse and Shepway District Council for assistance with hosting arrangements.

Pitches to the travel trade

FOR the second year running DFHRM has been first to respond to an invitation to contribute to a series of editorial features in Coach Monthly magazine arranged by the British Resorts & Destinations Association. Our piece is due to be appearing in an early issue.

Response to a Folkestone, Hythe and Romney Marsh editorial and advertisement section in the Visit Kent Travel Trade Guide published in January in association with Group Travel magazine is still being counted.
Sign up for good deals

VISIT KENT is inviting tourism suppliers to sign up to a Fair Prices Charter which assures visitors to the county during this year’s Open Golf championship and the 2012 Olympics that the services they offer are reasonably priced. For information:  http://www.visitkentbusiness.co.uk/index/research-development/business-advice/fair-pricing-and-practice-charter/

Last but not least . . .

Visitors to the recent Shepway Careers Fair at the Leas Cliff Hall showed much interest in learning about the local tourism, hospitality and leisure industry – not just as a source of part-time, seasonal or stop-gap jobs but for its potential to provide progressively fulfilling and rewarding careers. It was a pleasure to meet so many positive young people. We wish them well – with the hope that Shepway’s expanding visitor business will provide many of them with an opportunity to achieve their aspirations locally.

DISCOVER FOLKESTONE, HYTHE & ROMNEY MARSH, 20 BOUVERIE PLACE SHOPPING CENTRE, FOLKESTONE CT20 1AU
Tel: 01303 258594 # E-mail: cckirkham@gmail.com # Website: www.discoverfolkestone.co.uk

Talented young Russian pianist Svyatoslav Antipov, currently studying at the Royal Academy of Music, will give a lunchtime recital in St Leonard’s Church on Thursday 24 February at 12noon – see attached flyer. His programme will comprise:

Czerny - Variations on a theme by Rode, Op.33
Chopin - Etudes: Op.10, No.2 and Op.25, No.6
Chopin - Variations on Mozart’s Là ci darem la mano, Op.2
Ravel - Miroirs (“Reflections”): Oiseaux tristes (“Sad birds”) & Une barque sur l’océan (“A boat on the ocean”)
Ginastera - Sonata No.1, Op.22.

Tickets at £5 on sale at Brandon’s Music Shop, 55 High Street, Hythe, tel 01303 263108, or can be obtained at the door. (Admission free to those under 18 in full-time education.) The recital will be followed by ploughman’s lunches in the church from 1.00pm.

Please also note in your diaries that, as a complete contrast, The Barbershop Belles, described as “an eclectic, fun, all-female vocal quartet”, will provide an entertaining evening of accompanied and a cappella songs spanning opera, musical theatre, jazz and pop on Saturday 12 March at 7.30pm. The four singers are all recent graduate or post-graduate students from Trinity College of Music and have begun their promising careers in opera and as soloists with choral societies and professional ensembles. More details will be provided nearer the date.

To assist you to plan your future concert-going, the Friends of St Leonard’s Church 2011 Concert Brochure will be published later this month.

With all good wishes,

Brin Hughes