The year of the staycation with The Explorer’s Road
We’ve been working with Newcastle Gateshead Initiative over the past few months to design and build a new website in the travel and tourism sector that helps you to plan the perfect road trip staycation.
The team at Newcastle Gateshead Initiative were heading up a project called The Explorer’s Road, a website that is packed with places to stay, places to eat and exciting places to visit from Edinburgh down to Hertford, and we are pleased to see that some of our other clients are featured on there too! The challenge given to Blumilk by Newcastle Gateshead Initiative was to design and build a brand new website that would be integrated with booking system TXGB, was easy to use and enabled travellers to plan their journey in detail.
Working with NewcastleGateshead Initiative, we guided the team through our scoping and discovery process; understanding The Explorer’s Road and fully scope out requirements and functionality for the website, before moving into our research phase to ensure the digital solution we were to recommend would stand out in the marketplace, looking in depth at travel and tourism competitors throughout the UK and to see what would appeal to the target audience. The original concept of The Explorer’s Road was to encourage foreign travel from mainland Europe to the UK, however, as the COVID-19 pandemic developed, the concept was adapted to attract nationals to explore some of amazing places we have here in the UK rather than looking to go abroad.
We designed a fully integrated map that enabled users to plan their route visually, adding places to visit, eat and stay to a downloadable itinerary. The itinerary would also give postcodes for satnavs, as well as including the distance between each of the planned activities. Suppliers around the country are able to upload details on their venues and towns, with photos and are provided with an easy template to follow to ensure the website stays cohesive.
The project has been a great success, the team at The Explorer’s Road were delighted with the website and the opportunities it gives to adding more to the route over time. Blumilk has a brilliant relationship with the team and we are now working on a joint venture with NGI and TXGB to create an open source plugin to connect TXGB to WordPress websites, therefore shortly, bookings can be made directly on The Explorer’s Road website.
Let us know if you use The Explorer’s Road to plan your staycation this year, we’d love to hear about your experience.
Read about how we can help you with the design and build of new website here.
