VisitBritain’s England marketing division is conducting a search for five new ‘faces’ of tourist information to star in a national advertising campaign.The organisation is inviting staff from the 225 tourist information centres in its new Enjoy England Official Partner Programme to nominate themselves or their colleagues for their in-depth tourism knowledge, professionalism, personality or just the ability to go the extra mile. Five winners from around England will be announced in August and will then feature in the campaign to encourage visitors to use tourist information centres when on holiday.
Laurence Bresh, Enjoy England general manager, says: “This campaign focuses on the people at the heart of England’s tourist information centres. With their intimate understanding of the local area as well as knowledge of other areas, they can be invaluable to visitors and to the continued health of our tourism industry. Our goal is to make them our champions – the gold medallists of English tourism.
“The Official Partner programme recognises customers’ increasing demand for and expectations of quality, accuracy and excellence. We want to ensure that wherever visitors see the new marque, they will find expert information and tonnes of holiday inspiration.”
Over the next month, the public will see the new Enjoy England Official Partner quality marque sign and window stickers appear at the tourist information centres in the programme alongside the existing ‘i’ logo. These centres will lead the way with access to national and international marketing (online, WAP and print advertising), an enhanced training programme for customer service and product knowledge, ‘mystery shopper’ assessments, business development toolkits and Enjoy England point-of-sale and campaign materials.
The programme was developed in the face of visitors today, who increasingly get their information about destinations, attractions, accommodation from a variety of sources. It is open to existing tourism information centres, as well as new outlets for information such as call centres, retailers and organisations that want to provide tourist information via the internet, mobile phones and kiosks at attractions. As well as meeting various new and current criteria, participants must meet the needs of regional information strategies to qualify.
For further information contact:
Elliott Frisby, Corporate PR Manager, VisitBritain on 020 8563 3035 or 07951 996241