Tourism Marketing Update - 14.11.05
14th November 2005
Passionate People. Passionate Places Campaign wins Award at the World Travel Awards
The 'Passionate people. Passionate places' marketing campaign for North East England was last night named 'World's Leading Regional Marketing Campaign' at the World Travel Awards held at the Royal Opera House in London.
This is a tremendous achievement for the region, that was considered for the award alongside four others promoting Catalunya in Spain, Miami in Florida, Poitou-Charentes in France and Saxony Anhalt in Germany.
Winning this prestigious award is excellent news for North East England. Receiving international recognition for the campaign provides a significant boost to our drive to raise awareness of the variety, beauty and many great opportunities our region offers.
Through this award, many thousands of influential people from the world of international tourism have been exposed to our campaign and our region. We very much hope that they will now be encouraged to visit us and recommend that others experience the 'Passionate people' and 'Passionate places' of the region too.
Most importantly, this award is recognition of the widespread attention and high level of support that the campaign has attracted from across the region and further afield.
Autumn / Winter Campaign
This campaign launched in October has to date generated over 2,200 requests for the Special Offers leaflet and generated over 3,000 visitors to the dedicated website: www.visitnortheastengland.co.uk/offers. Activity to promote this campaign includes: 1.2 million A5 postcard inserts in Quality Nationals including Mail on Sunday; Sunday Express; Sunday Times magazine; The Guardian Weekend; Sunday Telegraph magazine; Daily Telegraph magazine and a range of specialist magazines; Emailer to over 23,000 individuals; online search activity; and, reader offers in over 30 regional titles targeting the North West, Yorkshire, Scotland and the North East.
Walking Campaign - Phase 2
Since its launch in August this year, we have had over 13,200 requests for the guide and over 80,000 unique visitors to the walking section of our website www.visitnortheastengland.co.uk/walking. We launched the online banner activity last week to drive more visitors to the website to order their copy of the guide.
Cycling Guide
Work started this week on the development of a new Cycling Guide. Working closely with Sustrans and regional partners, the regional tourism team has been identifying the key messages and routes to promote within the new Guide. The Guide will be launched in March 2006, supported by a strong national advertising campaign.
2006 Short Break and Holiday Guide
Advertising is up 20% in the 2006 Holiday and Short Breaks Guide from the 2005 Guide. The Guide is in the final stages of development and on track for launch in December 2005. The high impact campaign to support the launch of the new 2006 Guide has been developed and we are currently finalising the creatives.
International Activity
Meet the Media
A representative from the International Tourism Marketing Team at One North East attended the VisitBritain Annual PR Networking event at the Waldorf Hilton, London in October. This was an excellent opportunity to meet with VisitBritain's overseas press officers from around the world, and in particular those from our key markets, to gain an insight into how we can work more actively with international media to promote North East England as a first-choice destination. Key regional information has now been forwarded to each of the overseas media officers and marketing tool kits - with bespoke information for each market, are under development.
International Exhibitions
January 2006 will see the launch of the North East England brand in our target overseas markets and we are working with partners across the region to ensure we achieve maximum impact in all countries. North East England will be represented at the following trade and consumer exhibitions:
Vakantiebeurs, Netherlands - 10-15th January
Reiseliv, Norway - 12-15th January
Reiseklar, Norway - 20-22nd January
Dublin Holiday World - 26-29th January
ACTIEF Outdoors Show, Netherlands - 18-19th February
BIT, Milan - 18-21st February
ITB, Berlin - 8-12th March
In addition North East England Holiday and Short Breaks Guide will be distributed at exhibitions across the world including Sweden, America, Canada and Australasia.
American Airlines Planning Visit
This week Simon Mills, VisitBritain Consumer Marketing Manager for North America will be visiting the region. With many friends here, Simon is already a fantastic ambassador for North East England and his visit will take in some of the new developments that have taken place since his last visit. The main purpose of this visit will be to meet key representatives in the Agency and discuss plans for marketing activity aimed at driving visitors from North America to North East England when the new American Airlines flight is launched next May.
British Travel Trade Fayre
This event will be held in Birmingham on the 1st and 2nd March 2006. We are currently developing plans for the North East England stand and we will be contacting industry partners during November with details of how to get involved in this event.
Travel Trade
The new 2006 Groups Guide has been launched and has received positive feedback from partners and people within the industry. We are currently making final amends to the Education Guide that will be used to target over 2500 primary and secondary schools within a 2.5 hour drive time from the region, who are interested in learning about the region and our history.
As mentioned in previous bulletins the group roadshows have been very successful. The last of this years roadshow programme will be held at the Tower Thistle in London on 5th December. We still have a small number of exhibitor places available - please contact Denise Wigham on 0191 229 6845.
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