The Winchester-Clark County Tourism Commission has launched a mobile Android app, allowing anyone with an Android-powered phone to find community information at the touch of a fingertip.
The app, identical to the iPhone app the panel launched about two years ago, was made available on June 15. Both apps are called Tour Winchester, and list local events, shopping and dining venues, hotels, attractions, recreation, agritourism, tours and regular community updates. The Android app, like the iPhone app, is free to download.
“It is wonderful. As somebody that lives in Winchester, I use it all the time because you can pull it up, it gives you a description of the business, hours of operation, phone number, website if they have one and their address,” said Nancy Turner, executive director of the Tourism Commission. “And it’s always a physical address so you press that address and it maps wherever you are to that location.”
The Tourism Commission staff is also working on upgrades to the mobile version of tourwinchester.com, and it should be implemented within the next week, Turner said.
The Android app and the mobile site upgrades, Turner said, give visitors easier access to information about the community.
“I have the iPhone, I love it, I love my app, but the Android is growing and growing and growing,” she said.
Turner said about 800 people have downloaded the iPhone app since it launched.
Those include users in the U.S., but also in other countries, including Great Britain, China, France, South Korea, Germany, Thailand, Turkey and Kuwait.
“They call them arm-chair tourists,” Turner explained. “It’s just crazy to think of the people who, while they may never travel here, are still getting the information.”
Effective marketing tools can bring in the most unexpected tourists, Turner said.
“Last fall, this young couple came in and I was like, ‘What brings you to Winchester?’ and they had our brochure. And they were like, ‘We found your brochure in Cleveland, Ohio, and you’ve got an iPhone app, and you know you’ve really marketed so well that we drove down here,’” Turner said. “And I was like, ‘Where are you from?’
“‘California.’ And they were just a carefree, 20s couple that wanted to travel. And because we had an iPhone app and a nice brochure that talked about our cell phone tours, they were intrigued enough to come down here. And not only were they intrigued, they were so excited about coming here.”
Contact Katie Perkowski at kperkowski@winchestersun.com or follow her on Twitter, @TheSunKatie.
