The Jurassic Coast Trust is developing a new digital platform to inspire visitors with the area’s extraordinary World Heritage coastline and to promote sustainable tourism. Partnering with Simpleview, one of the world’s leading digital tourism service providers, the new platform will enable visitors to explore and discover the coast and to book accommodation and attractions to create their perfect Jurassic Coast experience.
The move comes after extensive planning work by JCT to develop a digital strategy, creating a global digital presence with rich conservation and heritage content for the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site, and simultaneously developing a destination marketing platform to financially sustain the organisation’s future.
The partnership with Simpleview will provide a world-leading digital platform, catapulting the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site to be comparable with other globally renowned WH Sites, and will also provide a solid foundation through which to generate income to develop the Trust’s charitable work and achieve the ambitions set out in the Site’s Partnership Plan.
The new platform will offer both a comprehensive destination management site and a complementary heritage-oriented site within the same URL, utilising the JCT’s existing jurassiccoast.link domain, which attracts over half a million unique users each year. Businesses are encouraged to join up to the new platform as partners, building on the success of the JCT’s current Business Partner Scheme which includes over 50 members.
The new platform will also see a significant investment in the Jurassic Coast’s existing Fossil Finder database, which will be improved with new imagery and extensive updates based on the West Dorset Fossil Collecting Code and Jurassic Coast Collection data.
Lucy Culkin, CEO of the JCT, says:
“The JCT team has been working on this development for the past two years and have carefully planned its full implementation to align our conservation and heritage responsibilities for the World Heritage Site with enhanced visitor management and sustainable tourism strategies. We believe this investment will enable the World Heritage Site and all it has to offer to be more accessible for global and local audiences; it will provide an enhanced experience for those visiting the coast, whether they intend to study, work, play or stay here.”
The new platform will be launched in September. Anyone interested in joining up to the new platform or finding out more information is encouraged to email the JCT at: [email protected]
