Discover England’s Great Walking Trails
Project brief:
A project to promote 7 of England’s Great Walking Trails and increase the number of visitors from Germany and the Netherlands through bookable walking holidays at greatenglishtrails.com
This national project was coordinated by Marketing Peak District and Derbyshire and overseen by Visit England as part of the Discover England Fund, a government initiative to increase visits from overseas. It followed on from a pilot project led by the South West Coast Path, where Alex of Green-Measures Media was formerly managing communications.
The project team required a tourism marketing and media relations professional to deliver elements of its promotional campaign.
Response:
The first phase of the brief was to identify and engage with businesses to take part in the Discover England’s Great Walking Trails Project. In collaboraion with National Trail Officers along each of the 7 trails and Destination Marketing Organisations, we developed a database and communicated through a series of e-newsletters to inform them about the project, ensuring GDPR compliance in signing them up to receive further information.
The next phase was to develop itineraries for a series of press and familiarisation visits for tour operators. A series of trips were organised with Green-Measures Media coordinating all the arrangements to host journalists and trade visits.
Outcome:
Training delivered to businesses to support tourism initiative.
Media coverage received in Germany and the Netherlands to promote the walking itineraries.
Overseas tour operators are now working with UK based businesses along the National Trails to welcome more walkers from Germany and the Netherlands.
Testimonial from project managers, Beth Hogben and Rachel Gillis:
“We have consistently received positive feedback from press/fam visit participants who said that the itineraries really helped them to experience the local area in a short amount of time and were very impressed by how smoothly everything ran on their visit.”