Yorkshire on top of the World...AGAIN!
Published: 12th January 2012
The campaign to promote Yorkshire as a tourist destination has beaten some of the best travel brands on the planet for the second year running, winning a prestigious World Travel Award for the World's Leading Marketing Campaign.
It means in the past two years the county's destination management organisation has beaten a who's who of the travel industry to put Yorkshire on the global map.
Destinations and brands of the likes of Brazil, India, South Africa, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Etihad, Kuoni, Expedia, Visit London, Thomas Cook and Visit Scotland have all been beaten by the marketing campaign for Yorkshire which picked up the prestigious award at a ceremony in Doha last night.
Gary Verity, chief executive of Welcome to Yorkshire, said: "Yorkshire is a world beater and winning this award for the second year running proves it. We have gone head-to-head with some of the best brands with bigger budgets than us and come out on top again.
"The award is testament to the 25,000 brilliant businesses that make up Yorkshire's tourism industry; their quality ensures we are able to compete on a global scale with the best in the world. It also shows how far we have come in three years since Welcome to Yorkshire launched, that we now judge ourselves against the world's best and not just our competitors in the UK."
The back-to-back wins come after an impressive 2011 for the county. It continued to outperform its peers in independent research backed by the award winning marketing campaign, "Welcome to a whole lot more going on". For example the value of international trips taken to Yorkshire are 22% UP compared with a rise of just 3% nationally (International Passenger Survey).
25m people have seen the Welcome to Yorkshire marketing campaigns, just one strand of the high-profile promotion of the county, which also includes innovative use of social media, development of the award-winning yorkshire.com and regional, national and international media interest.
WORLD'S LEADING MARKETING CAMPAIGN FINALISTS, IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER:
Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority; Egyptian Tourist Authority, Embatur Brazil, Incredible India, South Africa Tourism, Spanish Institute of Tourism, Welcome to Yorkshire.
- Ends -
Editors' Notes:
• Welcome to Yorkshire is the official destination management organisation for Yorkshire, working to grow the county's visitor economy.
• Welcome to Yorkshire is funded by Yorkshire Forward, the Regional Development Agency charged with improving the Yorkshire and Humber economy, and Welcome to Yorkshire members.
• Key facts include:
• Tourism in Yorkshire is worth £7 billion annually
• The county's industry employs almost a quarter of a million people
• There are 216 million visits to Yorkshire each year
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For further information contact:
Dee Marshall - Head of Communications
Email: dmarshall@yorkshire.com
Direct Line: 0113 3223505
Mobile: 07950 325 901
Andy Denton - Press Officer
Email: adenton@yorkshire.com
Direct Line: 0113 322 3537
Mobile: 0785 5812094