2008-09 Leisure Marketing Plan

• 2008-09 UK Leisure Marketing Plan
• 2008-09 Overseas Leisure Marketing Plan
• 2008-09 Leisure Marketing Objectives
• Market Summary

2008-09 Leisure Marketing Plan

The information on this page outlines the 2008-09 Leisure Marketing Plan. This plan has been developed in consultation with the partner marketing group, which contains representatives from each key tourism industry group in the city.

A provisional budget of £135,000 has been allocated for 2008-09. Your partnership fee is invested directly in this Marketing plan. As we don't know yet how many partners are joining us for 2008/09 this budget is still to be confirmed. Our plans are organised in priority order, and can be reduced in number, weight and scope to fit the budget.

2008-09 UK Leisure Marketing Plan

1. Sponsorship of Enjoy England City Guide in the Guardian

• Enjoy England is the national body responsible for promoting domestic tourism
• We will sponsor their A5 52 page city break guide published in the Guardian newspaper (360,000 circulation)
• This will include cover branding, 8 pages of features, coverage in other features, 1 page of advertising and wider involvement in Enjoy England's city breaks campaign
• Timing: September 2008
• Cost: £30,000
• Objective: Capture 10,000 new emails through competition linked with campaign.

What will this do for you?

• Drive more visitors to your pages and websites through visitbrighton.com
• Position Brighton as the UK's best city break to our core target audience, Cosmopolitans. This will encourage more Cosmopolitans to visit Brighton and consequently visit you.

2. UK PR

• PR is an essential tool for destination marketing. It is also a very cost-effective way of gaining promotion in the media
• We will continue to work with a travel specialist PR agency to develop media features to promote Brighton as a free-thinking city
• Particular focus on London media in 2008 - 09
• Cost: £18,000 + £5000 for hosting media (includes accommodation, travel, food and drink etc)
• Objective: To generate £900,000 of additional domestic media coverage for Brighton in 2007-8.
  What will this do for you?
• Additional media coverage of Brighton will encourage more people to choose Brighton for a short break
• Coverage will help drive customers to visitbrighton.com and then to your partner pages and websites

3. Search Engine Optimisation

• The most cost-effective way to drive traffic to www.visitbrighton.com and your partner pages
• www.visitbrighton.com is optimised so that it features in the first few listings when any potential visitor searches for Brighton tourist information on a search engine
• Cost: £13,500
• Objective: Increase visits through natural search listings by 600,000 visits or equivalent at an average cost per click of 2p

What will this do for you?

• Drive more visitors to your pages and websites through visitbrighton.com.

4. Monthly 'Brighton Latest' Online Newsletters

• Repeat customers are the most important source of business
• Email is the most cost-effective way to communicate with these customers
• We currently have 25,000 email addresses and by March 2009 we should have more than 35,000
• Every month we will send out Brighton Latest, our online newsletter to our consumer database of email addresses
• Cost: £5,000
• Objective: Each email to deliver 10% click-through to www.visitbrighton.com. Assuming an email database of 30,000 this will deliver a total of 36,000 visits through to www.visitbrighton.com (3000 per email.

What will this do for you?

• Drive more visitors to your pages and websites through visitbrighton.com.

5. London media launch for Brighton Festival

• Brighton Festival is bigger and better than ever. Events include The Great Escape, Artists Open Houses, Brighton Festival, Brighton Festival Fringe, and Caravan
• Under the collective heading of Brighton Festival we will launch all these events to a National media audience
• Timing: March 2009 (TBC)
• Cost: £5000. Additional funding to be supplied by Festival events
• Objective: Create £500,000 of additional media coverage for Brighton Festival.

What will this do for you?

• More media coverage will mean more visitors in May 2009.

6. Affiliate marketing / Paid search

• In addition to search engine optimisation, affiliate marketing and paid search are two cost-effective ways of driving traffic to www.visitbrighton.com and to your partner pages
• Paid search involves buying advertising space on major search engines so that visitbrighton.com appears when people are looking for Brighton tourist information. We will continue to use paid search in 2008/09
• Affiliate marketing involves paying affiliate websites or businesses for traffic, enquiries or bookings generated on visitbrighton.com. We will trial affiliate marketing - initially with VisitBrighton partners in 2008/09
• Cost: £5,000
• Objective: To deliver 60,000 visits or equivalent to www.visitbrighton.com at an average cost per click of 8p

What will this do for you?

• Drive more visitors to your pages and websites through visitbrighton.com.

7. Kids go Free campaign

• To position Brighton as a family friendly destination during the summer months
• Runs June to August 2008
• Alongside PR, the campaign will be heavily promoted through all visitbrighton.com marketing tools
• Cost: £1,000
• Objective: To deliver 3000 enquiries and 1250 bookings.

What will this do for you?

• Deliver extra leads and business to partners who are interested in attracting family visitors. All you have to do is provide an offer for the campaign.

8. Autumn / Winter Breaks Campaign

• To increase business for all partners over the quiet autumn / winter period
• Runs between November 2008 - March 2009
• Alongside PR, the campaign will be heavily promoted through all visitbrighton.com marketing tools
• Cost: £1,000
• Objective: To deliver 2500 enquiries and 800 bookings to partners

What will this do for you?

• Deliver extra leads and business to you over the quieter winter period. All you have to do is provide an offer for the campaign.

9. Enjoy England web video

• Enjoy England are running a series of 12 short films promoting hidden England. One of these will feature on Brighton
• The films will be promoted on enjoyengland.com, visitbrighton.com as well as through The Independent's website www.independent.co.uk
• The video will be hosted by Simon Calder 
• Timing: April 2008
• Cost: £2,500
• Objective: 10,000 views of film

What will this do for you?

• Give people new reasons to visit Brighton
• Drive customers to visitbrighton.com and then to your partner pages and websites.

10. My Brighton

• Work with some of Brighton's very special personalities to put together unique videos and podcast guides to showcase the city to visitors in a quirky way
• Encourage visitors to download the guides from visitbrighton.com to use when they come
• Use the quirkiness of the podcasts and videos to get additional media coverage
• Cost: £5000
• Objective: 10,000 views of videos and 5000 downloads of podcasts.

What will this do for you?

• Encourage visitors to do more and spend more with your business when they visit
• Drive customers to visitbrighton.com and then to your partner pages and websites.

11. I love Brighton

• We will run a competition to identify our core fanbase
• Competition entrants will be asked to upload images, videos and poems (etc) to prove they love Brighton the most and therefore win a number of prizes!
• We will then chat regularly with this group to keep them posted on all the Brighton latest news
• Cost: £1,000
• Objective: Build 500 database of Brighton lovers.
  What will this do for you?
• This group are key to getting the word out about everything Brighton offers. The more we tell them the more people will know and the more they'll spend in Brighton and with your business.

2008-09 Overseas Leisure Marketing Plan

1. PR

• We will work with specialist PR agencies in Germany, Netherlands and France to gain media coverage for Brighton as an alternative city break to London and other major European destinations
• In particular we will target media in cities with popular low-cost routes into Gatwick
• Objective: £500,000 media coverage in Germany and France, £200,000 media coverage in Netherlands
• Cost: £12,000 each Germany and France, £6,000 Netherlands. £7,000 for hosting media visitors.
  What will this do for you?
• Additional media coverage of Brighton will encourage more overseas visitors to choose Brighton for a short break
• Coverage will help drive more overseas visitors to visitbrighton.com and then to your partner pages and websites.

2. England Rocks Music Campaign Netherlands

• England Rocks was an incredibly successful campaign for Enjoy England in 2007
• The campaign celebrates England's amazing pop music culture
• Brighton currently has one of the best music scenes in the country
• We will support Enjoy England's England Rocks campaign in the Netherlands
• Participation will include presence on a microsite, PR, data capture and much more
• Cost: £5,000
• Objective: TBC

What will this do for you?

• Additional media coverage of Brighton will encourage more overseas visitors to choose Brighton for a short break
• Coverage will help drive more overseas visitors to visitbrighton.com and then to your partner pages and websites.

2008-09 Leisure Marketing Objectives

• Help increase occupancy between January and April and September and December 2008 by 3%
• Achieve media coverage for Brighton to the equivalent advertising value of £4 million
• Deliver 2 million unique users to www.visitbrighton.com between April 2008 and March 2009
• Add 25,000 new prospects to the VisitBrighton database.

Market Summary

General

• The highest ever number of flights was recorded in 2006. The world's scheduled airlines - including low cost carriers - offered a record 3.3 billion seats on 28.2 million flights during 2006 (OAG 2007)
• Half of all overseas travel from the UK, or part of the trip, is now booked online. 44% of all airline trips from the UK are rated as low cost or low fare, reflecting the influence of no-frills carriers on the travel sector (World Travel Monitor Survey 2006)
• Almost 50% of consumers book holidays on a personal recommendation from friends or family. 33% are influenced by press travel articles. 15% are influenced by teletext (Nielsen / Net ratings Online shopper survey 2007).

Domestic

• Long term decline in domestic tourism is forecast.  Spending on domestic tourism is likely to fall by more than £1 billion over four years. It will drop by around five per cent to £19.91 billion in 2007. This year's slump is attributed to the prolonged spell of wet weather during the summer on the back of a disappointing year in 2006 which saw spending down significantly on the previous 12 months. UK tourism also faces the ongoing appeal of holidaying abroad through low cost flights, the high value of sterling again the dollar and euro, and the increasing range of holidays and destination available. (Keynote 2007).
• Weather is the number one factor for turning Brits away from the thought of having a holiday within the UK. The high cost of vacationing in the UK ranked as another factor. 49 percent people thought that holidaying in the UK is too expensive and a fifth consider that resorts are not as friendly as they are abroad.  25 percent admitted that if the UK was cheaper for things like food, drinks and accommodation, they would holiday here to reduce their carbon footprint (Yougov 2006).
• Brighton is perceived as being very expensive for accommodation. With an average room price of £116 Brighton is number 3 behind Bath (£130) and Cardiff (£120) (Hotels.com Hotel Price Index 2006).
• 19% of UK adults say they are already taking, or will in future take, more holidays in the UK in response to environmental concerns (Hyder Consulting). However the majority of people are still unwilling to sacrifice foreign breaks to reduce their carbon footprint. More than half (59%) of those polled said they would still not consider switching overseas holidays to UK breaks.
• Terrorist alerts prompt people to rethink their holiday plans and opt for UK breaks. (Hoseasons saw a 26% rise in enquiries about UK holidays after the July scare).
• The number of overnight visits made to eight top English cities in 2006 was more than 22.8 million. The research found that eight out of the top ten most visited destinations in England last year were cities (VisitBritain).
• 102 million overnight trips were made in England 2006 by the domestic market spending £16.2 billion. The average spend was £159 per trip and £53 per day. 41% of travellers were visiting friends and relatives, 40% were on holiday. 73% of visitors stay 1 - 3 nights. 30% stay in a hotel, motel or guesthouse. Cosmopolitans and the 25- 44 age group are the biggest market for UK breaks. The top 3 regions for UK breaks are the South East, South West, North West (Enjoy England 2006).

Overseas

• Global travel & tourism will continue to grow at a steady annual rate of 4.2% over the next decade (World Travel & Tourism Council 2006).
• The fall in value of the US dollar has been blamed for a slump in demand for travel to London among Americans. Latest figures from the online travel company show London is no longer in its top-10 of most searched-for destinations. In July 2006, the capital ranked seventh, while last month it dropped to 15th, despite the fact that traffic to the US site, cheapflights.com, has increased significantly in that time (Cheapflights 2007).
• The cost of staying in a hotel in the UK is the highest in Europe and could be damaging the British tourism industry. (Good Hotel Guide 2008).
• For Brighton, key overseas markets are France, Germany, Netherlands. Across all these markets some general trends can be identified. England is desirable due to its reputation for contemporary culture (films, music, arts etc). Or for want of a better word - it's cool.  It's also seen as having lots of cultural events and attractions. The 24 - 44 young professional market is one of the largest markets across most European markets. They have money to spend and are most interested in exploring Britain's contemporary culture.