Background:

The city breaks market is very important to Scottish tourism, accounting for 3.7 million tourist trips per annum (39% of all tourism trips) and £971 million of spend (48% of tourist trip expenditure). Source UKTS (2005).

With continued growth in the short break, or 'city break' markets, lifestyle changes resulting in shorter and more frequent breaks, plus an increase in low cost access to Scotland, there is a clear opportunity to encourage even more tourists to take a city break in one of Scotland’s 6 cities.

A Scottish city holiday is often driven by a range of activities/interests that together form a ‘city break’. Such activities/interests include museums and galleries, visitor attractions, history and heritage, architecture, shopping, performing arts, events and festivals, restaurants, bars and nightclubs. Access to countryside and coast may provide an important motivation, particularly to those cities where the ‘urban’ offer is restricted. Stays in cities where the hinterland forms an important element of the city stay could be refereed to as ‘city based’ breaks.

City Breaks Website:

We communicate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year through our city breaks website. The site was launched in 2004 and, following consumer research findings, we re-designed and re-launched it at the beginning of September 2006, with key improvements focusing on website navigation, signposting particular features of the website and giving the site a contemporary, clean and accessible feel. The internet has revolutionised the planning and booking of city breaks. It has rapidly established itself as the preferred method for city break planning and booking, enabling consumers to be more spontaneous, to tailor-make their city break to meet their needs, and to quickly share information and ideas on potential city breaks with friends. Our city breaks website, www.visitscotland.com/citybreaks, is therefore a crucial communications tool and we aim to establish it as the definitive planning tool for a Scottish City Break.

The aim of all our communications is to encourage consumers to visit the website. From there, we seek to provide them with information and inspiration to encourage them to book a city break and to register on the website in order to receive regular communications and a copy of our 6 Cities guide. The website provides consumers with the possibility of booking accommodation via the main visitscotland.com site as well as taking advantage of an ever-growing number of entertainment special offers. These act as a further persuader to book as well as providing added value on a visit. All our marketing communications (from direct mail to electronic newsletters, from search engine advertising to Search Engine Optimisation, from PR to micro-sites) aim to encourage consumers to visit the website.

Public Relations:

The citybreaks brand has a dedicated PR resource. The citybreaks Senior PR Executive is responsible for devising and implementing a year-round programme of PR activity to promote the product portfolio to all media throughout the UK & Ireland, ensuring a consistent approach with the overarching citybreaks brand strategy. The PR manager helps to achieve this through a combination of methods including press releases, press trips, press launches/media hospitality, competitions and general media relations. For more information on the PR teams at VisitScotland, go to visitscotland.org's media centre.

Campaigns:

Spring City Breaks Campaign:

To establish www.visitscotland.com/citybreaks as the definitive planning and booking tool for Scottish city breaks, we need to behave as a travel and lifestyle magazine and refresh content on a regular basis.  To ensure content is always relevant, engaging and current we will update the content on a quarterly/themed basis which will drive repeat visits and the content will facilitate newsletter content to incentivise registration.

The theme for Spring 2007 is “fresh” – positioning Scotland’s cities as exciting destinations for a spring break where the consumer can experience something new and dust off the cobwebs of winter.  The aim is to stimulate shoulder season accommodation bookings by positioning Scotland’s 6 cities as exciting and compelling places to visit for a spring break; supported by a fresh and energetic feel to the enhanced look of the site.  The themes will be updated quarterly with plans for Summer to incorporate a contemporary feel.

An electronic direct mail was also distributed to our existing online database, focusing on forthcoming events with additional calls to action inviting click throughs to enter a competition and order our guides.

One such guide and indeed our principal fulfilment piece is The List, The Guide to Scotland's 6 Cities, a 138-page guide to all of Scotland’s 6 cities, worth £4.95. This 1/3rd of A4 portrait booklet is packed full of comprehensive and up to date information on nearly 400 restaurants, cafes, bars, pubs, clubs, shops, hotels, attractions, outdoor escapes and adventure sport in and around Scotland’s great diverse cities. This high quality piece was published in April 2006. It is offered free of charge to anyone who registers on our city breaks website.

City Winter:

The City Winter campaign has been devised to stimulate off-season accommodation bookings. With City Winter, we communicate that our 6 cities have a huge amount to offer visitors throughout the winter months of November, December and January.

We will promote fantastic lead-in prices and deals and reflect key winter themes on the citybreaks website, in particular events; retail experiences; eating and drinking and pampering in city spas. Relevant winter content will be included on the citybreaks website from the end of October 2007 and various communications tools including search engine advertising (paid for placements), electronic newsletters and an electronic direct mail will lead consumers into the citybreaks website where they can find the relevant content.

Electronic Newsletters and eDirect Mails:

We have developed a programme of electronic newsletters throughout the year. These are planned regular retention communications intended to build brand loyalty by delivering a mixture of relevant news and offers. Each newsletter will carry four main themes, for example, the Spring 07 e-newsletter will have a fresh spring focus whilst summer will have a contemporary edge. The electronic newsletters are sent out to a database of subscribers four times a year ( week 2 in April 07, week 1 in July 07, week 4 in September 07 and week 2 in January 08).

E-newsletters are supplemented with a number of tactical electronic direct mails (eDMs). The eDMs contain marketing messages with a clear call to action designed to encourage the recipient to respond and they are sent out at certain key periods eg the beginning of September (targeting the post summer holiday blues) and towards the end of November (last minute Christmas shopping break opportunities).

City Shopping:

Research has indicated that a third of visitors to Scotland cite shopping as the main reason for their trip. In addition, over 83% of visitors shop whilst on holiday in Scotland. Accordingly, as part of its city break campaign, VisitScotland has developed a focus on the city shopping offering across Scotland’s six cities, aimed at raising the profile of this element of the city break experience.

Scotland’s 6 cities have a strong retail offering and the City Shopping campaign is aimed at raising the profile of this element of the overall City Break experience. We have done this through development of City Shopping content within the City Breaks niche website, so that each of the 6 cities (Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness and Stirling) give the consumer highlights on the range on offer to shoppers: specialist, high street, designer & boutique, hidden gems, out of town and shopping centres.

In addition to the web content, two Shopping Guides for Edinburgh and Glasgow were created. Glasgow born fashion designer, Jonathan Saunders, designed the covers of the guides and inside these guides, visitors can discover a range of shopping within these cities to suit all tastes and pockets. The guide also gives some ideas on where to stop off for some well earned lunch or something to drink by highlighting a range of bars, cafés and restaurants along the way.

To support this activity, VisitScotland ran a month-long campaign with www.handbag.com involving banners and promotional boxes, driving consumers to a competition page. In October 2006, an advertisement appeared in Heat magazine offering readers the chance to order a free guide and enter a competition to win a shopping break in Glasgow.

Marketing Opportunities:

Why not get involved and post a special offer on www.visitscotland.com/citybreaks.

More information on this year's opportunities are available or from your local Business Relationship Manager

You can also email: jillian.swankie@visitscotland.com Group Product Manager - Cities and Culture.