VisitBritain launches Countryside campaign
I was told by a Barrister today that there is a distinction between tourists and people who travel to rural Lincolnshire to buy antiques. The former are interested in landscape and the latter in retail. All of which left me wishing I had asked why the antiques shoppers didn’t just buy online or encourage Tesco to set up a click and collect service. Notwithstanding my personal experience I do acknowledge that our wonderful landscapes are a key part of our unique rural offer to tourists. This article tells us:
The North York Moors, the Scottish Highlands and the Pembrokeshire Coast will soon be competing with the likes of the Bavarian Alps and the Grand Canyon in a new campaign from VisitBritain to grow international visits and spend to Britain’s countryside. The campaign will position Britain’s countryside as a place to enjoy modern culture, top quality food and world-class accommodation in a beautiful landscape, with the story told by third party enthusiasts.
Today VisitBritain launches its three-year ‘Countryside is GREAT’ campaign designed to grow international visits and spend across the country. VisitBritain’s ambition is to have generated extra visitor spend of £70 million which would see the creation of 1,296 new jobs by 2018.
Britain’s ‘natural beauty’ has been overlooked compared to other international destinations. Britain is currently ranked an overall 20th out of 50 countries for being ‘rich in natural beauty’ in the 2014 Anholt-Gfk Nation Brand Index. In a separate bespoke wave of the study commissioned by VisitBritain, our natural beauty was consistently positioned behind the likes of America, Australia and Canada. However, in the last four years VisitBritain’s GREAT campaign has taken significant strides in boosting perceptions in some of the UK’s key tourism markets. Britain’s highest 2014 ranking for ‘natural beauty’ – fifth place – came from India, followed by ninth place from China and twelfth from Australia. The largest improvement was from Brazil, moving up ten places to 29th in a year.