What we do
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We are positioning Britain as a dynamic, sustainable and inclusive destination, and prioritising regional and seasonal dispersal to drive productivity.
In international markets, we are deepening our relationships with local stakeholders, the media and public diplomacy partners – and working with the travel trade to ensure that Britain is sold in their programmes. Alongside this, we continue to strengthen English tourism by leading and enabling a sustainable and resilient visitor economy.
Read on for more information about our work and activities.
Our marketing and campaigns
We want Britain to be the destination of choice for travellers. Our global campaigns aim to inspire international leisure visitors, thereby increasing incremental visitor spend for the tourism and leisure industry and the British economy.
Our objective is to position Britain as a welcoming, dynamic and diverse destination in order to entice our best prospect customers to visit Britain this year. Below you can learn about our ‘Experience Seeker’ target audiences, and find our helpful pen portraits for your own marketing activities.
As a key GREAT Britain campaign partner, we play a central role in the UK Government’s ambitious international campaign to encourage the world to visit, do business, invest and study in the UK. As the tourism partner, VisitBritain has a demand-building strategy centred around three key strands of work:
1) Telling our brand story
Curating Britain’s image as a welcoming, dynamic and diverse destination, through industry collaboration to maximise the impact of government investment and attract additional funding.
2) Reaching our customers
Using innovative, creative and data-led marketing in Britain’s most valuable inbound markets, and collaborating with His Majesty’s Government on priority government themes. Our innovative campaigns are supported by continual inspiration on our digital and social channels (visitbritain.com and @lovegreatbritain), our global earned media programme, strong partnerships with the industry and strategic business-to-business work.
3) Engaging our partners
Supporting the industry to rebuild by prioritising the interventions that will increase value for Britain, and providing UK suppliers with routes to market, access to data and insights, and tools to deliver the Great Britain Brand Story.
Our international campaigns, along with our domestic campaigns as VisitEngland, are underpinned by close partnerships with VisitScotland, Visit Wales, London & Partners and Tourism Northern Ireland, ensuring our marketing is joined-up and focused on responsible growth across seasonal and regional spread, spend and sustainability.
Understanding our customer segments
Experience Seeker Pen Portraits
Our Experience Seeker Pen Portraits use the latest data and insights from the Motivations, Influences, Decisions and Sustainability (MIDAS) research. These pen portraits tell us in a very quick snapshot why Experience Seekers (formerly known as the ‘Buzzseekers’) are a high value segment to VisitBritain. They provide key indicators which help identify this target audience and demonstrate what makes them unique including key demographics, top sources of inspiration, holiday motivations, desires and behaviours.
Download our Pen Portraits to learn about our ‘Experience Seeker’ target audiences, understand the customer journey from inspiration to booking, and learn how we classify audiences into segments for effective marketing activities.
Gain insights into our target audience that may be helpful for your own marketing activities:
Global Experience Seeker Pen Portrait.pdf
View the full findings
Market Experience Seeker Pen Portraits.pdf
View the full findings
Our work with the travel trade
VisitBritain/Duncan Soar
We work directly with the travel trade to maximise the quality, profitability and reach of Britain programmes.
VisitBritain facilitates connections by organising and attending sales missions, trade shows and other events that build new and nurture existing relationships between British businesses and the international travel trade.
We also produce tools and resources tailored for international markets, to enable our trade partners to sell Britain better.
Our work with the media
VisitBritain/Sam Barker
We offer a range of support to media from the latest tourism statistics, research and insights, to arranging press trips and sharing royalty-free assets. We share destination and product information alongside corporate news on our media hub and through regular newsletters.
Leading English tourism
It is VisitEngland’s role to lead England’s visitor economy to be resilient, sustainable and worldclass. To achieve this, we have created a new structure for destination management organisations (DMOs) following the recommendations of the DMO review in 2021. We are delivering Local Visitor Economy Partnerships (LVEPs) and Destination Development Partnerships (DDPs), unlocking benefits to local visitor economies and structuring our engagement with DMOs.
The England Business Advice Hub helps grow and upskill the sector, especially SMEs, with valuable advice, resources and training to tourism businesses and destinations. We provide leadership and best practice on accessible and sustainable tourism and build digital skills to ensure England’s many tourism businesses are internationally competitive. VisitEngland champions quality and excellence with its quality schemes and Awards for Excellence programme.
We work closely with industry to promote the VisitEngland brand, inspiring visitors to book their next trip and supporting the travel trade to drive bookings to every region of England, all year round. We are also helping English destinations to win more international business events by coordinating sales missions at international exhibitions and connecting with business events planners and decision-makers.
Download the latest VisitEngland business plan (PDF 243 KB) and discover our key initiatives below:
VisitBritain/Eric Nathan
Working with destinations
We support the strategic development of destination organisations – striving to build strong relationships to enable productive destination management, and grow our support offer by sharing expertise and best practice.
VisitBritain
MeetEngland
England has a world-class business events offering, and MeetEngland is the official body responsible for promoting this sector. It works in partnership with venues, convention bureaus and destination organisations to win international business events, and provides platforms and tools for the industry.
Business support
We curate the England Business Advice Hub, an online resource for SMEs providing guidance on growing their business – improving accessibility, sustainability and more. We also produce the Pink Book, your guide to the legislation that affects accommodation and attraction providers.
VisitBritain/TAG
Quality schemes and accolades
We offer trusted star ratings and accreditation to businesses via the VisitEngland Quality Scheme, as independent proof that they provide a consistently high calibre of service, standards and experience. The scheme also hosts the ROSE Awards and VisitEngland Visitor Attraction Accolade, which recognise excellence in the nation’s accommodation and tourism products.
VisitBritain/Daniela Luquini
Awards
We host the VisitEngland Awards for Excellence, a national contest which celebrates outstanding tourism products, services and personnel – including the Tourism Superstar category, in partnership with The Mirror.
VisitBritain/Graham Staples
Taking England to the World
As part of our industry-wide support offering, we run the ‘Taking England to the World’ trade education programme, which assists SMEs promoting their products and destinations globally. We devise practical workshops, expert toolkits and essential advice to prepare and equip them for selling internationally.
Read more about our free training programme for businesses in England
VisitBritain/Simon Anderson/Royal Pavilion//Nutkhut
English Tourism Week
We are proud to lead the annual English Tourism Week campaign, which champions our vibrant sector and showcases the quality, range and value of English tourism. It highlights the valuable and vast contribution that the sector makes to the UK economy, and engages key stakeholders including government, MPs and ministers.
Our work with business events
EICC, Edinburgh
One of our priorities is to grow the valuable business events sector by promoting its world-class destinations and venues, and driving more targeted international business events into Britain and England.
Our business events team – representing both Britain and England – works in partnership across the British nations to support international business development and promotion in this sector. We offer expert and impartial support to associations, corporations and meeting and incentive travel planners to choose Britain and England for their international business events.
VisitBritain leads on the Business Events Growth Programme, part of the UK Government’s commitment to grow the business events sector. Our bid support and enhancement grants enable cities to attract and create new international business events by boosting city bids.
The International Delegate Growth Fund supports cities and organisers to grow the international attendance of events that align with the UK Government’s priority sectors. The business events team also works with destinations, venues and event suppliers across the nations, providing sales platforms and educational resources to help build their business pipelines, upskill and share best practice on important industry trends.
Driving global sales and distribution
The VisitBritain Shop is our official online e-commerce site, the first-stop shop for booking London and UK transport tickets, airport transfers, must-see attractions, theatre, immersive tours and a wide range of new and exciting experiences across the UK.
Linking with our international marketing, the VisitBritain shop is accessible to customers and travel trade partners all over the world – offering live availability, transactions in multiple currencies and languages and instant booking confirmation. As part of our continuous engagement with the travel trade, we also provide exclusive discounts and instant commission for partners and publishers alike thanks to our affiliate scheme.
Tourism Exchange GB (TXGB) is the technology behind the majority of the products available on the VisitBritain Shop. This partnership enables tourism businesses to seamlessly share live availability and pricing, which in turn improves the overall consumer journey.
TXGB is a digital platform that brings together tourism businesses to drive sales and boost productivity, by connecting the market in a new and unique way. Each pillar of the tourism sector can now more easily connect and unlock unique benefits, bringing together tourism businesses, booking systems and distribution channels in one central marketplace.
TXGB is working with thousands of tourism businesses in over 100 destinations to enable new routes to market, driving trade up and costs down. By digitally enabling businesses across the UK, TXGB gives them access to a variety of distribution channels alongside regional and national campaigns. Together with its partners, TXGB is helping to increase the range and reach of bookable products online, increasing value, volume and dispersal of visitors.
Supporting industry and advising Government
VisitBritain/VisitEngland has a statutory duty to advise the Government on tourism policy. We monitor the political landscape to inform internal strategic decisions and ensure that political stakeholders understand and value both the work of VisitBritain/VisitEngland and the wider visitor economy.
To inform this advice, we collaborate and share knowledge with our research team, civil servants, MPs and industry to build evidence on issues at the heart of Britain’s competitiveness as a global tourism destination and to remove barriers to the growth of the visitor economy. We monitor policy areas including visas, regional spread, VAT Retail Export Scheme (VAT RES) and sustainability.
We host the British Tourism Industry Group (BTIG), a stakeholder group bringing together senior industry representatives and bodies to discuss policy issues relevant to the industry. Ad-hoc working groups may also be established when working on specific policy areas to bring the best practice and expertise together.
We support English Tourism Week, where MPs are encouraged to champion the visitor economy in England by visiting tourism businesses in their constituency.
World-class insights
Our domestic and inbound tourism data combined with our expertise in the sector allow us to offer valuable insights, trends and performance analysis. We provide the tourism industry with the research and insights they need to set up, maintain and grow their business. Our resources enable marketing that is inspirational and relevant, alongside better targeted product development.