Viewpoint The digital magazine of CUMBRIA TOURISM
Summer 2024
New smart travel planner for visitors
All systems go for our latest campaign With the cost-of-living squeezing budgets and fierce competition out there, we know we need to work harder than ever as a destination to attract visitors and spend. To help us stand out against the competition, CT has developed a fresh new destination campaign, called Let’s Go, to inspire new and regular audiences. It was incredibly well received at the recent Yorkshire Show and takes up the mantle from the award-winning #theplacetobe campaign. We will be rolling out ‘Let’s Go’ across a wide range marketing channels as we build towards autumn and winter. We’re also carrying out an extensive online visitor survey to examine motivations to visit, places visited, spend levels, satisfaction rates, intention to visit,
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and much more. All the insights will help directly inform and shape how the campaign develops. Look out for news of a member webinar in early autumn, focusing on how to target visitors in the quieter winter months and offering practical support to get involved in the campaign when it’s officially unveiled in October. Plus we’re teaming up with our Strategic Partner LocaliQ to create a 30-page destination supplement for newspapers across the North West.
We’ve launched a new online travel planner funded by the European Space Agency, to help visitors plan their trip in the most efficient way. CT is at the forefront of this pilot project, using the latest satellite technology powered by You.Smart.Thing, which enables businesses to send out personalised travel plans to customers before they visit and notify them of travel updates. Visitors can search venues and places to visit across the county and are given personalised journey routes to help them experience new places. Think of it as Google Maps Plus! CT’s Senior Digital Marketing Executive, Rob Cowley said: “This new technology will help improve the visitor experience by letting them create their own personalised travel plans for getting here and getting around. In turn, that promotes and supports sustainable and active travel, helping visitors choose the best lowcarbon options by mixing travel by train, bus, car, cycle, walking and so on. On a Cumbria-wide level, it means we are gathering important data about user travel trends which will help shape future destination planning too.” The travel planner is free to use and easy to embed on your own website. You can even add your EV charge points to the map and help increase the network. We’ve created individual ‘travel assistants’ for all members listed on visitlakedistrict.com. If you’ve chosen to embed the travel planner, visitors can then access the service on your own website. i Download our ‘Quick Start’ guide here and start using the travel planner as a tool in your marketing now. CT’s web team is on hand to help you at website@cumbriatourism.org.
i Let us know if you have strong hi-res imagery and/or video showcasing Cumbria as a year-round-destination which you are happy to share as part of the ‘Let’s Go’ campaign: campaigns@cumbriatourism.org
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