The fittingly named ‘Room with a View’ at the Moonfleet Manor Hotel was the venue for a major announcement of interest to businesses throughout the Weymouth and Portland borough.

Thursday December 3rd saw established marketing organisation, ‘The Best of Weymouth and Portland’ form a partnership with the free to market community newspaper ‘View From’ in a joint marketing initiative which will provide greater exposure for the business members of The Best Of and therefore showcase their businesses to a larger public audience.

The audience of local business men and women, along with the Mayor of Weymouth and Portland Anne Kenwood and double Olympic sailing gold medallist Sarah Ayton OBE, listened attentively as Julie Wilson, proprietor of The Best Of Weymouth and Portland and Philip Evans, Chief Executive of View From, announced the new liaison.

Julie later told reporters, 'I am delighted to form this alliance with Philip and his team at View From.  They are an experienced team who have achieved so much in the area in a relatively short time.  This is hugely exciting for the community and especially for our member businesses here at thebestof as we are now able to offer them even more exposure through View From with cross promotion between the two media.'

Cross promotion and discounted media are just two of the major benefits to The Best Of members.  By January 2010 ten thousand copies of the Weymouth edition will be distributed from eighty different outlets and a new ‘slip edition’ for Portland will also come on stream.

Further titles are published in Dorchester, Bridport, Lyme Regis and Beaminster all within a thirty-five minute drive of Weymouth and all now attracting greater numbers seeking to purchase in the Weymouth area, be it in the business to business sector or public consumers.

At the launch party, View From publisher, Philip Evans commented, ‘The development of the View From Weymouth title breaks the media monopoly in the borough and along with our other titles provides the most cost effective advertising package in Dorset. We are the only weekly newspaper group covering all the towns in south and west Dorset and now the partnership with The Best Of Weymouth and Portland provides us with the opportunity to provide our ‘second to none’ customer service to an even greater number of businesses and convey more good news to our increasing readership’.

Here's a link to the current Weymouth edition of View From which covered the evening and the alliance.  thebestof features on the front cover, pages 6, 7 & 13.