Once popular with the Victorians as a holiday resort, it was also the starting point for the steam packets for the Continent in the days of the Grand Tour.

In the recent past, Gravesend was a convenient site for heavy industry - such as cement works and paper mills - and of course with the Port of London Authority headquarters in the town, locals are still very much aware of the vibrancy and importance of the working river close by.
However, although many visitors still come to Gravesend for a day out, it was felt that it was time for a major rethink: the town had untapped potential.

As part of the town centre regeneration programme, a new, purpose-built visitor centre replaced the small old out-of-the-way TIC, and a profound visitor and tourist strategy was evolved.

"We have three significant aspects to consider, all of which are helping to make our aspirations much higher."

"First, the new Bluewater Shopping Centre is reputed to be the biggest and best shopping mall in Europe, and so we can capitalise on that to encourage visitors to stay locally and enjoy the area as well as their shopping trip."

"Secondly, the new international railway station at Ebbsfleet, when completed, will be only 20 minutes from London and two hours from Paris. This will be important in raising our profile and will also create a huge potential pool of visitors."

"The third phase is that the Government has a stated policy of building homes: one area where this can be done is on the so-called brownfield sites, such as Gravesend's former industrial areas."

"The local plan provides for 30,000 homes to be built in the area, almost doubling the accommodation locally from our present 37,000 homes."

"So there are lots of reasons for Gravesend to become a focus of interest, and we intend to manage the potential carefully to make sure that it develops in the best possible way for our environment."

With that in mind, Gravesend has appointed a Heritage Quarter Manager, who will run the TOWNCENTRIC Visitor Centre, raising the profile in terms of visitor interest and arranging trips for special interest groups such as parties of retired people and schoolchildren.

Targetted local walks are to be arranged, and TOWNCENTRIC is in discussions with local attractions to set up guided half-day walks around the town, beginning with an audio-visual presentation and ending with a traditional Shrimp Supper.

The team is also in discussions with Bluewater Shopping Centre and accommodation providers to arrange a suitable package which will include seeing local attractions, such as the grave of Princess Pocohontas, wife of Captain John Smith, who is buried in the churchyard facing TOWNCENTRIC, and Fort Gardens, which mirrors Tilbury on the north bank of the river and still has the gun emplacements which were put there to defend London from invasion by sea.

With all these major plans in mind, Gravesend clearly needed to install a comprehensive destination management system, and so, having acquired the necessary funding, the decision was taken to create a multi-purpose visitor centre - TOWNCENTRIC - with all the latest high-tech systems.

Although other suppliers were considered, the natural choice of systems provider was CTV, with its specially-written destination management programmes and its complete dedication and flexibility to the needs of tourism managers: discussions with CTV were opened early in 1999 and the installations were completed in September, just after building work was complete.

To manage Gravesend's TOWNCENTRIC, CTV has installed a TIM Destination Management Suite and TIM Marketing Suite, plus the VisitIT people counter, EPOS tills and the new multi-media PAT, the Public Access Terminal.

Said S. Sangha; "CTV has built us a comprehensive package, and we have worked together very closely to customise this to our needs."

"We're the first site to have the new multi-media version of the Public Access Terminal (PAT) and we're looking forward to a number of system amendments, such as a way of recording the number of out-of-hours 'hits', so that we can establish whether we need to vary the TOWNCENTRIC opening hours, or if we need to tailor the information on the system."

"We want to develop TOWNCENTRIC more and more by pushing ourselves to the limit, and it's good to work with CTV to take things a step further all the time."

"We're very lucky here: we've got a team that's willing to try - so we'll keep going , guns blazing"