Following on from our dedicated members’ newsletter circulated on 25 January which outlined the opportunity to take part in our English Tourism Week 2019 activity, we now have a handful of cultural organisations signed up and are moving ahead with plans to run a short workshop in early March to further brief on the project. If you haven’t signed up yet but would like to please email andy.parkinson@marketingmanchester.com. Here is a reminder of the opportunity and why you should consider getting involved…
What is English Tourism Week?
Taking place in spring each, English Tourism Week aims to raise the profile of the industry and celebrate the value and quality of tourism in England. Run in association with VisitEngland, the week is owned by the destinations, visitor attractions, accommodation providers, and stakeholders who make the industry the success that it is! The campaign provides a vehicle to kick-start the summer tourism season and promote local tourism products.
This year’s event will take place from Saturday 30 March to Sunday 7 April.
Our plans for English Tourism Week 2019
To mark English Tourism Week, this year we want to harness the power of social media and celebrate our amazing cultural assets as we gear up for a major cultural transformation across Greater Manchester over the next three years.
Most Greater Manchester museums, galleries and cultural attractions have their own social media channels, including Facebook and Instagram, and our idea is to get them working together to cross-promote what each can offer visitors and residents in terms of rich cultural tourism experiences. To do this, we are asking museums, galleries and cultural tourism attraction across Greater Manchester to agree that on one day during English Tourism Week they will send their social media staff out to another attraction to create Instagram and Facebook Stories to post on their own channels.
The objective of the activity is simple: to celebrate cultural tourism and the wider strength of the tourism industry in Greater Manchester’s by using a free-of-charge tool that will allow all parties to tap into new audiences by exposing both sets of followers to attractions that they may not have been to before or want to revisit.
Supporting the activity, Marketing Manchester will manage organisation to ensure that each museums, galleries and cultural tourism attraction has the chance to both promote and be promoted, and we will also amplify the best posts by reposting on the Visit Manchester Instagram and Facebook channels (NB: all posts should include a tag for @visitmanchester and the campaign hashtags #EnglishTourismWeek19 and #MCRcultureswap to be considered for reposting).
Marketing Manchester will also deliver a short media workshop in March that all participating members will be invited to attend in order to receive best practice tips on to get the most out of the project, including a briefing from some local Instagrammers.
Interested in getting involved but not sure it’s right for your organisation?
Whilst this activity is mainly aimed at cultural organisations within Greater Manchester, we would love to also see our wider membership also get involved in the campaign by sending a staff member to create content at a nearby cultural attraction.
So, if you represent a bar, restaurant, hotel or other tourism member you can absolutely still get involved, attend the workshop and have the chance to have your content amplified on Visit Manchester social media channels.
Next steps
We hope that you will be interested in taking part in this campaign. This is a simple idea that we hope will have a significant impact on cultural tourism and help you all amplify your audiences, without spending any budget. If it is a success we will provisionally look to build on this in future years during English Tourism Week, taking a different theme each year. Please email andy.parkinson@marketingmanchester.com for further information.
Andy Parkinson
Senior Communications Manager
07714001544