VisitEngland plans eight campaigns for 2013 

VisitEngland, the national tourist body, has devised over-arching themes for its suite of campaigns for 2013.

VisitEngland

The campaigns will cover the four key themes of countryside, heritage, culture and coastal, and will run in partnership with regional destinations from all over England as well as national commercial organisations.

The tourism body plans to use radio, newspaper supplements, social media and PR to encourage Britons to take more holidays at home

The campaigns will be funded by £2million from the Government’s Regional Growth Fund (RGF), as previously announced, together with contributions from partners.

VisitEngland says that the themes were informed by research that found there was still a great lack of knowledge of the type of holidays on offer in England “and a thirst for local inspiration”.

This marketing activity is phase two of a three-year investment project ‘Growing Tourism Locally’ funded by £19.8million from the RGF. The aim is to generate £365million in additional tourism spend over the three year period and its forecast that the investment should help grow jobs in the tourism sector by 9,100 over the three years.

Business Minister Michael Fallon says: “I’m pleased to see that the Regional Growth Fund is supporting VisitEngland and its partners to boost tourism and create over 9,000 jobs over 3 years in our cultural and heritage-rich communities up and down the country. The world saw that we could put on a good show from hosting the Olympics and it is important that we capitalise on this in rebalancing the economy and building an aspiration nation.”

This year visitor numbers from overseas dipped 5 per cent due to the displacement effect of the London Olympics. However, total tourism-related spend jumped 9 per cent.

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