£250,000 Project to Attract Overseas Tourists to Lake District
Fionn Davenport, one of Ireland’s most renowned travel writers and broadcasters, has joined forces with Cumbria Tourism in a bid to attract more international visitors to World Heritage sites across the North of England.
Cumbria Tourism is leading the Northern World Heritage Collection, which is supported by the Government’s £40 million Discover England funding.
Fionn will head up a £250,000 project, which will place focus on the World Heritage sites across the North of England, including the Lake District. His role will include working with each of the sites over the next 6 months to help attract more American and Irish visitors to the region in the coming years.
How Will The Project Work?
The new marketing initiative aims to highlight the story behind the North of England’s culture, through the UNESCO World Heritage Sites across the region. This will equip Cumbrian businesses with the information they need to improve the way in which they target travellers from the US and Ireland through various marketing techniques.
Fionn will provide support and insight to the World Heritage sites on subjects such as business development, training, trade shows, alongside marketing, online content, film and PR.
The project will also involve working alongside tour operators and agents to help visitors book trips to multiple World Heritage sites quickly and easily.
Fionn has previous experience working in Discover England projects aimed at attracting visitors to areas across the UK, the first being in conjunction with Marketing Manchester, and more recently he was tasked with increasing the number of American visitors in the South of England.
The Lake District’s World Heritage Status
The Lake District has held it’s World Heritage status since 9th July 2017, and many businesses across the area have stated that they have seen positives come from gaining the status. According to the Lake District National Park website, 20% of businesses said that they had already seen a positive effect from the Lake District achieving World Heritage Site status from March 2018.
Along with this, 68% of businesses believe that the World Heritage Site status will have a positive impact on their business in the future, and this number looks set to rise in the coming years with the work being carried out by Cumbria Tourism and Fionn.
Windermere Marina Village’s Thoughts on the Project
We have nothing but confidence in the whole project; from the investment being made by the Government to Cumbria Tourism’s choosing Fionn to lead the project, the whole team at Windermere Marina Village are confident that this project will be a resounding success.
In 2017, 19.17 million tourists visited the Lake District according to STEAM 2017; Cumbria Tourism and we are hopeful that this number will continue to rise with the exciting work being carried out by Fionn and his team.
The focus on enabling the World Heritage sites to be confident when it comes to marketing is a fantastic move and will definitely encourage more tourists to visit the region from across the world, not just from America and Ireland.
Here at Windermere Marina Village, we are confident that the Lake District will begin to reap the benefits of Fionn’s work over the coming years. We look forward to providing the flood of new tourists with some of the very best self catering accommodation the Lake District has to offer.
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