The Bath Business Improvement District (Bath BID) launched their Smart City Data Project this month.
This initiative has been developed in response to requests from the Bath BID Levy Payers who seek a fuller understanding of the profile of visitors in the city. The project will provide insight for businesses about the people who live, work and visit Bath city centre.
The original brief was developed by Bath BID working with a team of key city organisation including B&NES Council, Bath Rugby, Visit Bath, SouthGate Bath and the Counter Terrorism Unit within Avon & Somerset Constabulary.
The information is collected on behalf of the project by specialist consultants Movement Strategies who are providing a range of datasets to inform city centre decision-making.
Trends and profiles are provided to the project about how the city is being used by visitors, residents, students and workers. Data is not provided on an individual basis, but as aggregated trends. The trend information is helpful in planning marketing for businesses and organisations such as Bath BID who use the information to understand the city’s performance and support Bath to be resilient in the face of a changing high street environment.
The type of information available includes:
- Age and gender
- Hobbies and interests
- Spending power
- Home location
- Work location
- Spend in the different types of businesses e.g. attractions, shops, hospitality
- Visit frequency
- Perceptions of Bath through ‘social listening’
This information supplements the footfall and sales data that the Bath BID sources from Springboard.
Reports on the city’s trends will be made available to BID levy payers to support them in their business and marketing decisions.
Allison Herbert, Chief Executive of the Bath BID, said: “We are delighted to be at the forefront of providing ‘big data’ insights to our business members in Bath. We look forward to sharing the results of the information gathering with our partners and business colleagues and hope this new project will form the basis of a new and improved understanding of the city which will bring success to Bath organisations and benefit Bath’s high street.”
