Smart Town tech to help retail centres

MENTER Môn’s Smart Towns team are looking to roll-out their tech to help support retail centres.

Funded by Gwynedd Council and Anglesey County Council, this project will see technologies which have been piloted by Welsh Government as part of the Year of Smart Towns, implemented in rural communities to help tackle issues from high street degeneration to anti-social behaviour.

Elen Foulkes and Kiki Rees-Stavros will be working closely with business owners, community stakeholders and members of town and county councils to create a specifically tailored action plan for each participating town, to drive forward the Smart agenda across Anglesey and Gwynedd.

Workshops will be provided, outlining opportunities such as using footfall data to make business decisions and targeted marketing campaigns to the town’s visitors. However, they stress the outcome of these workshops depends on the needs of the particular town with solutions ranging from IoT sensors and digital signage to virtual rewards platforms.

Elen Foulkes, senior project officer, said: “The possibilities are endless, the Year of Smart Towns has been piloting some groundbreaking technologies all over Wales, but now there is an opportunity to bring these solutions closer to home.

“We want to start the conversation, to find out what the problems are and to find Smart solutions.

“The beauty of the open access footfall data is that we will be able to measure how well these solutions are working.”

Project officer Kiki Rees-Stavros knows first-hand the challenges of starting a business in the area and is looking forward to helping other entrepreneurs make data driven business decisions.

She said: “There is so much trial and error involved when you start a business, but having access to data from the high street can cut out a lot of the guesswork.

“We’re also finding a lot of established businesses are having their assumptions challenged- towns that have traditionally had half days on Tuesdays or Wednesdays have found that actually, footfall wise, those are the busiest days.”

Workshop date: Aberdaron: 29th of May, 6pm Becws Islyn: www.eventbrite. co.uk/e/315227151897

Open access data: Patrwm.io