Latest updates on our activity: 28 August:
Educational visits:
We are delighted to be welcoming more than 40 top travel buyers, tour operators and trade media from Australia, Canada and India on educational visits to Birmingham and the West Midlands during the Games, in partnership with the West Midlands Growth Company. This is part of our wider programme of work through the Business and Tourism Programme.
UK House – Tourism Day 5 August:
The international buyers are also meeting to do business with British travel trade suppliers and destinations during the Games as part of a dedicated ‘Tourism Day’ on 5 August. The trade showcase, hosted by VisitBritain in partnership with the West Midlands Growth Company, is part of the programme of events at UK House, The Commonwealth Business Hub, led by the Department for International Trade. Britain’s ability to host world-class sporting events is in the global spotlight during the Games and the Tourism Day will see leading industry stakeholders come together to highlight the importance of major events to the visitor economy, harnessing opportunities to drive tourism across the nations and regions.
Focusing on diversity, the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games is the ‘Games for Everyone’, with Birmingham a truly global city, home to people from more than 180 countries.
Being held from 28 July to 8 August 2022, the Games will be the biggest sporting and cultural event ever held in Birmingham, with thousands of world class athletes, more than one million spectators, and an estimated global audience of 1.5 billion.
Alongside the sporting programme is a six-month cultural festival, the Birmingham 2022 Festival, underway from March, to celebrate creativity across the West Midlands. The Queen’s Baton Relay has also been travelling around the Commonwealth, including a historic stop in Dubai, UAE, in February as part of UK National Day at Dubai Expo, and the UK before arriving in Birmingham for the Opening Ceremony on 28 July. It also travelled to our key markets of Australia, Canada and India, where we welcomed the arrival of the Baton, leveraging the event to build awareness of the West Midlands and Britain with key tourism partners including airlines, tour operators and travel agents and consumer and trade media.
The UK Government has funded a £24 million, three year, Business and Tourism Programme (BATP). Focusing on tourism, trade and investment, the programme, being delivered by a range of national and regional partners including VisitBritain, is supporting in cementing the region, and Britain, as a globally sought after location to visit, invest and live.
VisitBritain has circa £2 million funding from the BATP for a two-year programme, working with the West Midlands Growth Company, to promote and boost awareness of the West Midland’s tourism offer in Australia, Canada and India. The focus is converting the inspiration to visit in to bookings and to encourage visitors to explore more and stay longer, stimulating spend in the tourism sector in the lead-up to the Games and beyond.
Activity across these markets is ranging from content partnerships with media to training and engagement with in-market travel trade to boost awareness of the region’s tourism offer, as well as activity across both our business-to-business and business-to-consumer channels. Also, by using key milestone events in-market, for example The Queen’s Baton Relay events, countdown milestones ‘One Year to Go’ celebrated in July 2021, ‘100 Days to Go’ on 19 April and 50 Days to Go on 8 June, working with Government partners, stakeholders, travel trade and media, we are ensuring the widest reach.
Pan-campaign markets
We’ve launched a dedicated hub on our consumer websites in Australia, Canada and India (as well as a hub on our global site) using the Games as a hook boosting awareness/building familiarity, and educating audiences ready to convert to book travel during and post-Games.
Our ‘Welcome to Another Side of Britain’ global marketing campaign is also harnessing the Games alongside this year’s other landmark events including HM The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and the ground breaking series of ‘Unboxed’ creative events across the UK.
We are delivering a wide range of activity as part of BATP, see some highlights broken down by market in the drop downs.