The national tourism agency, responsible for marketing Britain worldwide & developing Britain’s visitor economy. A non-departmental public body, funded by the Department for Culture, Media & Sport, we work with partners in the UK & overseas to ensure that Britain is marketed in an inspirational & relevant way around the world. Our partners include government agencies such as UKTI, airlines & operators, global brands such as Samsung as well as the official tourism bodies for London, England, Scotland & Wales. In 2012/2013 our grant-in-aid from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is £24.6 million. Our international network is active in those markets and cities that deliver approximately three quarters of inbound tourism spend. This global footprint enables us to provide analysis and advice on the issues facing potential visitors and the barriers to inbound tourism growth. We also provide research; market intelligence and analysis to inform the British tourism industry
The overseas network: Is a unique asset: 21 offices overseas approximately three-quarters of inbound spend Provides us with valuable contacts with local tourism businesses – gives us a competitive advantage Vital for gaining market intelligence – understanding and acting on motivations to travel to Britain
We launched the first phase of the image campaign in February 2012, focusing on 14 cities in nine countries - Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan and the US - to maximise its impact. In this way an audience of 90m people could be reached via high impact outdoor advertising as well as print, TV and online
Out of home
Following the research from the first burst of activity the creative has been refreshed and media chosen and we are not live in our key markets with our post games TV , digital activity with Yahoo and print with National Geographic. This phase will run until March 2013.
When we speak about the Youth Audience this includes Digital Natives, those born after 1995. These digital natives have been on the internet for all of their lives and expect instant gratification meaning they want an always on service. Technology is at the heart of what they do. They are data junkies and are happy to create content which forms part of the solution.
VisitBritain is a leading tourist board in social and digital media, with over 1 million highly-engaged Facebook and Weibo fans. We have been acclaimed as the most influential tourist board on Twitter. During the Olympic period we operated a chasing the sun always on social media program. Australia handed over to London who handed over to LA.
Facebook page – LOVE UK over 833,000 “likes” and rated the #2 Travel brand in the UK behind Expedia. VisitBritain were the first tourist board to run Facebook places – more blurb Love Wall – Track what inspires people
9 million views of our Celebrity Video in 2011 Hub of our video content Global reach – Japanese version of the Judy Dench video
Superblog with a reach of over 500,000 through 20 global superbloggers Amplifies engaging content and introduces viewers to our GREAT Celebrity invite video’s, destination and partner content.
Flickr is a source of 90% of the imagery on VisitBritain.com, giving digital adopters and natives a ownership of the VisitBritain community. Yahoo! relationship allows us to link Flickr with our LoveUK apps and feed images through to mobile
We have a global partnership with Yahoo!, one of the world's most visited homepages, to ensure Britain content is viewed at least 5 million times on the Yahoo! network, as well as encouraging at least 3.5 million click throughs to our online platforms.
To ensure we are interacting with the youth audience we are are always looking at new ways of serving up Britain content in the form of Apps or game experiences. This is our latest offering which went live this week to coincide with the launch of the new Bond move Skyfall. It puts the gamer right into the action and...... Phil can you flesh out
Occasional we get appraoched by brands and most recently we have been approached by Sony Music to work with them on the launch of One Direction’s new single release in Norway. This is an example of how we are reaching out to the youth audience and serving up Britain inspiration when they least expect it.