About

Summary

Melton Borough Council wanted to develop a co-ordinated approach to the sustainable development and growth of the area to help it attract visitors, investment and contribute to business retention, retention and attraction of talent whilst encouraging people to live in the area. To achieve this, they needed to create a place story and brand for Melton Borough, a Destination Management Plan (DMP) and a visual language and visual identity plus a toolkit to communicate this narrative. They put a strong focus on the engagement of stakeholders in this journey and recognised that ‘partnership working’ offers the best route to promote the area and that everyone needs to be part of creating and then using the new place story and identity.

The Melton Story and Destination Management Plan provided the direction for a strategic, innovative and joined up approach to Melton’s future development.

Our Approach

Acorn, working with Thinkingplace, adopted a three-stage approach to this work. The first stage was to provide an in-depth analysis of Melton to provide the context for the place story and development plan. This took into account the regional and local strategic context; the international, national, regional and local tourism trends; Melton’s economy and its visitor offer by analysing visitor accommodation, attractions and shopping, food and drink outlets, the events calendar, walking and cycling routes; its online marketing analysis; visitor profile and target markets. The engagement process included more than 50 stakeholder interviews, four focus groups, three workshops, an online survey and stakeholder feedback workshop. 

For the second stage of the process, we developed a place story and brand for Melton Borough which involved developing a visual language and identity toolkit. The third stage produced a Destination Management Plan including actions for how to maximise investment, regeneration, tourism and civic pride. 

Outcome

The Destination Management Plan was a working document, created through the input of a large number of stakeholders from across Melton Borough, and managed by the Place Board, who by work together to retain its vibrancy and energy to build Melton’s local and sub-regional role. 

The DMP pulled together the findings from the research and engagement process and identified the specific actions required to deliver the place branding themes and story. It set out the: 

• Strategic content of Melton’s development as a destination to ensure it supports the LEP and BID’s wider strategic objectives 
• Vision, place story and development themes 
• Organisational structure and responsibilities for delivering the DMP 
• Opportunities and challenges for Melton’s development 
• Market opportunity
• Priority products for development
• Business clusters and cross-sector linkages that could create differentiated experiences for visitors and maximise town centre and rural opportunities to create employment and attract start-ups 
• Focus for public sector investment priorities for the public realm, visitor services, signage, information, interpretation and events
• Monitoring systems required to track the performance of destination Melton and generate the evidence for future investment 
• Action Plan that prioritised the actions; identified the lead delivery organisation, the timeframe and potential funding source.