ABSTRACT
Glasgow's Merchant City (MC) has all the elements in place to be a significant and successful tourist area. From being a run down part of the city, considerable infrastructure investment has taken place over the last three decades to develop the Merchant City as a must visit' area. Merchant City has been identified as a key priority in the Glasgow Tourism Strategy, 2007 to 2016' which aims to deliver an additional 1 million visitors by 2016, with expected spending of over 1 billion per annum. Maximize the net economic impact of Merchant City tourism on Glasgow and Scotland generally. Develop actionable customer insights from offline visitor research, web analytics, and social media monitoring tools, customer/business feedback through the new website and MC online communities. Development, implementation and on-going management of a professional networking site for local businesses and partners. This was seen as being critical to achieving sustained growth in tourism numbers and spending through on-going industry collaboration.
