National marketing campaign for Nottinghamshire boosts local visitor economy

MEDIA RELEASE: 12 August 2014

A marketing campaign by Experience Nottinghamshire has achieved more than £10m in value for tourism in the county, according to campaign analysis released today by national tourism body VisitEngland.

The Experience Nottinghamshire campaign was part of a VisitEngland led project funded by the Government’s Regional Growth Fund (RGF) and titled ‘Growing Tourism Locally’. The project aims to inspire UK residents to holiday at home, and to create more jobs in the sector nationally.

Nottingham and Nottinghamshire is one of 14 destinations in England to have received funding via the VisitEngland project, and the results for Year 2 of the project look at activity which took place in Spring/Summer 2013. The Nottinghamshire marketing promotion focused on the tourism themes of beer, cycling, dance and Robin Hood.

Year 2 of the national marketing campaign for Experience Nottinghamshire was funded by RGF money supplemented by the organisation’s own marketing budget, and achieved £10,361,290 in incremental visitor spend, which equates to 191.9 full time jobs in the county.  This is more than double the result in Year 1.

Chief Executive of Experience Nottinghamshire Jennifer Spencer said: “I’m very proud of the team for achieving this fantastic result. Our three-year target for the project from VisitEngland was to create the equivalent of 136 additional jobs for the local visitor economy, and we have more than surpassed this already in Year 2 alone. The result goes to show that our partnership work to promote Nottinghamshire as a destination is really paying off.”

Partners working with Experience Nottinghamshire on the campaign included Raleigh, CAMRA, Youth Dance England, Dance4 and a number of other local tourism businesses.

Tourism Minister Helen Grant said: “The tourism industry is making a huge contribution to economic growth and job creation. These fantastic results show the government’s investment in the industry is helping to generate additional tourism spend and creating thousands of new jobs across the country.”

Plans for Year 3 of the marketing campaign are currently being developed. Year 1 of the campaign included highly visible advertisements for Nottinghamshire in locations such as London Underground stations and train platforms around the country. www.experiencenottinghamshire.com