BLACKPOOL businesses have soared to national success with their booming Centrepoint customer loyalty card.

Now they are urging smaller shops to share in the bonanza. Blackpool Town Centre Forum, representing shops and companies throughout the town, launched the card only last November.

Yet by April it was outstripping similar loyalty card schemes, in which shoppers earn points every time they make a purchase. In Centrepoint's case, the points are exchanged for discounts on electricity, gas or phone bills, or gift-tokens.

Town centre manager Nigel Hanson reported to the Forum executive board: "The programme continues to outstrip the performance of other national programmes with over £2.4 million of customer-spend having been registered using the card by the end of April.

"This involved 157,300 separate transactions on over 12,000 cards over the 225 participating businesses."

However, the bulk of card-use was at the town's big supermarkets, and the Forum would like a much wider range of outlets to take part.

The Forum plans a survey of participating businesses to find out their views on the benefits, hoping to provide the basis of a wider marketing scheme.

Hesketh IT, which operates the scheme, has now launched similar programmes in East Lancashire (covering Blackburn, Darwen, Burnley, Accrington and Clitheroe) and Sefton (covering Maghull, Southport, Crosby, Bootle and Formby), with the Bolton programme due to be launched shortly.

For details of how to join, contact the Forum office on 292486.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.