Welcome to our fortnightly e-bulletin packed with information about what the North East England Regional Tourism Team have been up to. This week we focus on UK campaign activity.

UK Marketing Activity »
International Marketing Activity »
Business Development Unit »
Visitor Services Unit »
Tourism North East online »

UK MARKETING ACTIVITY

Walking Campaign

This year’s Walking campaign has commenced and includes media inserts into national press and niche magazines as well as targeted online activity.  A brand new walking microsite was launched in March and includes exciting features such as ‘podscrolls’ - downloadable routes to your ipod or other mobile media player.  Click here to have a look at the walking insert which is appearing in publications such as Country Walking and Walk Magazine. If you have any queries on the walking campaign please contact Katherine Hodgson

Gardens Campaign

The Gardens campaign is well underway. Click here to have a look at the gardens insert which is appearing in targeted publications such as Gardener’s World and The Garden (RHS). A new gardens microsite supports the media campaign and provides an inspirational guide to the region’s gardens, events and latest news. If you have any queries on the gardens campaign please contact Katherine Hodgson

Cycling Campaign

As part of the cycling campaign two inserts have been produced, one aimed at leisure cyclists and one aimed at extreme cyclists. The inserts will play a major role in the campaign and will feature in national press such as The Guardian and Independent on Sunday as well as niche magazines such as Cycling Weekly and Mountain Bike UK. The inserts will direct people onto the campaign website www.visitnortheastengland.com/cycling.

View the leisure cyclists insert here »
View the extreme cyclists insert here »

For further information please contact Ross Cockton

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ACTIVITY

England’s North Country Italy campaign

North East England leads the way in a campaign to drive Italian visitors to the North of England this summer. The campaign runs from mid February until the end of May and uses Dunstanburgh Castle in Northumberland as the lead image throughout the marketing activity. Click here to view an example.

Activity includes outdoor posters in the Milan underground, magazine advertising, online banners, electronic direct mail and extensive PR activity including a launch attended by over 100 Italian press and trade contacts. The campaign has a dedicated campaign website www.inghilterradelnord.com

Since the launch of the campaign at the end of February the campaign site has received 38,000 unique visitors and a further 1,350 have clicked through to the North East England website.

For more information contact Marissa Buckingham

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BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT UNIT

Calling All Potential Award Entrants

St George’s Day saw the launch of the 2007 North East England Tourism Awards at Alnwick Castle.  Tourism businesses from accommodation providers to restaurants, from best family experience to business tourism venues can choose from 15 different categories. Winners can benefit from increased exposure and promotion, expert PR advice and for some, the potential to go forward to be short listed for the national finals, Enjoy England Awards for Excellence.

Entry forms and full details are available at www.tourismnortheast.co.uk or from Laura Lowrey. Closing date for applications is Monday 18 June so get your skates on and apply now.

Pink Booklet Online

Visit Britain’s trusted “Pink Booklet” has been updated and is now available online.  The Pink Booklet is designed to keep accommodation providers fully up to date with current legislation and regulation.  For more information select the link below.

http://www.pinkbooklet.co.uk

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VISITOR SERVICES UNIT

Attraction Information Collection

In the last issue of the e-bulletin we reported on the information collection programme for accommodation providers participating in the National Quality Assessment Scheme.

This week we focus on the region’s many attractions.  Information collection questionnaires will be issued to attractions at the end of May.  The information collected will be used to feed national and regional websites and to keep you informed of marketing initiatives and publications.  It is important that you complete and sign the questionnaire and return it as directed.  For more information contact your local data steward – details below.

Northumberland Tourism – Liz Askell (01670 794527)
Tourism Tyne & Wear – Emma Hallington (0191 243 8833)
County Durham Tourism – Margaret Statham (0191 383 7422)
visitTeesvalley - Cara Pringle (01642 264957)

However, if you have Desti.ne Frontdesk or Extranet you can update your information online.  For information on Frontdesk or Extranet please contact  Karen O'Donnell.

New Visitor Websites for North East England

The Tourism New Media team has recently developed a suite of new activity and attraction based websites for the region to coincide with key tourism marketing campaigns.  These sites have been developed using the Desti.ne Enterprise Content Management System and are powered by the Desti.ne product database.

Cycling:  www.visitnortheastenglandcom/cycling
Gardens:  www.visitnortheastengland.com/gardens
Walking:  www.visitnortheastengland.com/walking

The team has also developed two new Area Tourism Partnership visitor websites.

County Durham Tourism Partnership:  www.visitcountydurham.com
visitTeesvalley:  www.visitteesvalley.co.uk

These are the first of four ATP visitor information websites to go live with Tourism Tyne & Wear and Northumberland Tourism due to go live in June.

25% Increase in Site Visitors

In April the traffic to www.visitnortheastengland.com,  the regional visitor website, increased by 25% over last month’s figures.  The site welcomed over 40,000 unique visitors to the website with a total of 700613 pages viewed.  An estimated 76.8% of these visitors added the website to their personal favourite lists.  April also saw over 1400 brochures ordered through the website.

On the Horizon

The Tourism New Media team is currently developing a regional online business toolkit due to go live in October.  The website will be the ultimate resource for tourism businesses and will host a number of tourism industry firsts such as on-site speech enabled pages for enhanced accessibility.  The team is also working closely with a number of local authorities and partnerships to incorporate Desti.ne product searches onto their own websites.  This will ensure the consistency and quality of tourism product information in Desti.ne database can be shared across websites developed outside of the agency.  For more information please contact Jason Yip.

Desti.ne Frontdesk - Quarter of a Million Milestone!

Online bookings in the NorthEast have exceeded the quarter of a million pound mark.  From the launch of the Desti.ne Frontdesk offer in autumn of last year, the total value of online bookings for the Region has reached a staggering £318,200!

This reinforces continuing trends that more and more visitors want to book and pay for accommodation and attraction tickets on line. Desti.ne is at the forefront of meeting this increasing demand with ongoing development to make sure it will continue to do so.

Get Desti.ne Frontdesk, FrontDoor or FrontRow today.  Call Eviivo on: 0800 422 0088, or email: destinefrontdesk@eviivo.com.

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FIND OUT MORE

If you would like to find out more on tourism in the region, visit www.tourismnortheast.co.uk - a dedicated website for the tourism industry in North East England.

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