Lorraine Bremner McBride: Looking forward to helping boost our business sector
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Firstly I’d like to say a big thank you to all our staff, our city centre businesses and the many others who have wished me good luck or who have given me such a warm welcome as I settle into my new post as the new director of Inverness City Centre BID.
It has been a busy and interesting couple of weeks and I am already very impressed by all that Inverness City Centre BID currently provide to help improve the area.
The BID coach ambassador service for example, operates every day to meet and greet visitors arriving in the city by coach.
To assist them with having a day as an “honorary” Highlander all visitors are also provided with a free BID map of the city centre to help them get around and make the most of their time here.
It is estimated that the team of ambassadors will have greeted and helped circa 120,000 visitors by the end of this summer tourist season.
Elsewhere, BID also manages the floral displays, controls on an ongoing basis the city centre seagull population, manages the food and drink guide, operates the City Centre Task Team and Safe Inverness initiatives, and undertakes a full calendar of exciting events and promotions such as the recent eye-catching classic car show.
BID also facilitates the popular Business Awards and Best Bar None Awards as well as being on hand day and daily to deal with a wide range of queries on a variety of topics from individual businesses.
I aim to build and expand our current events programme.
And I am especially looking forward to engaging with and getting the views, ideas and feedback of our city centre businesses and other stakeholders.
The best way to ascertain what our businesses want or need is, in my view, simply to ask them.
As custodians of the city centre this current generation of businesses will be able to make a real difference as to how the city centre develops and the best way to do this both collectively and collaboratively is via BID.
It is our members’ vision and priorities that I aim to as far as possible make into a reality.
Inverness is such a great city and I am grateful for the opportunity.
