How has the year been
With the end of year coming I thought it would be good to reflect on how the year has been for Martin Mere, and I am pleased to say it has been very successful. We have had about 172,000 visitors this year which is up about 15,000 from last year - mainly due to the opening of the canoe safari. The majority of this increase has been through more member visits (although we have had yet another successful year for membership as people are seeing the value) but we have managed to slightly increase the level of paying visitors compared to 2010 which in these tough times I am very pleased to do. We have also signed up approximately 1800 new members, which is about 300 more than in 2010. We have quite similar targets next year which I am very confident we can achieve, especially with opening the new play area.
The canoe safari has certainly been the highlight of the year, especially winning the tourism award for it and being Highly Commended with Best Large Visitor Attraction. We now have to submit for the national tourism awards before 6 January so the Marketing Manager will be cracking on with that over the next week. I think other highlights for me personally have been watching the beaver family on the webcam which has been hugely successful for us, being on Countryfile last January and meeting Adam Henson, the North West Bird Watching Festival when I got to meet David Lindo and the record number of Whooper Swans last January as it was a personal record for me to see them. I have also loved hearing about the fantastic work the Trust is doing to save the Spoon-billed Sandpiper as it is projects like that which remind me why I wanted to work for WWT in the first place.
We have also done some fantastic project work this year working with Electricity North West, Everton FC, Gullivers World, The Mileage Company, National Museums Liverpool, to name just a few and I hope these types of partnerships will continue for many years.
In terms of next year, there is a lot to look forward to: we will be opening a new adventure play area, the electric boat tours will start on the canoe safari, we will be building the compost toilets by the canoe safari and we are planning a new event - a North West Photogrpahy Festival which I think will be very successful for us, so plenty to keep us busy.
So I would like to wish you all the Best for the New Year. I will be popping in on 2 January and I will let you know who has won the autumn round of the photography competition.
