Training Britain’s Tourism Suppliers to Operate Internationally
VisitBritain/VisitEngland is the national tourism agency that is funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. It works globally to raise Britain’s profile worldwide, to increase the volume and value of tourism and develop Britain’s visitor economy.
The Discover England Fund
As part of a £40m government fund to develop a new bookable English tourism product, VisitBritain/VisitEngland has created a B2B training programme entitled ‘Taking England To The World’ aimed at the entire English travel industry.
The objective of the programme is to help tourism suppliers across England (i.e. hotels, tours, and activities) to become “international ready” so that they are well placed to promote their products and services overseas. By developing a greater understanding of the considerations involved in entering international markets, the training programme is designed to help tourism suppliers develop a world-class English tourism product and build England’s profile as a tourist destination.
The first part of the programme is an inbound tourism toolkit – available online and in print. The second part is face to face training programmes, based on the toolkit content. VisitBritain wanted to produce video and animation content to feature within this training programme to help ensure that the training sessions were as engaging as possible.
Video Approach 1: Vox Pops with Tourists
We spent two days in London interviewing tourists on a variety of topics including what they look for in a holiday, how they go about researching and booking their trip and their opinion on images currently used to promote visiting England. We spoke to a brilliant mix of nationalities including tourists from France, Germany, Norway, Singapore, Hong Kong, Finland, Thailand & USA. We created seven edits to be used throughout the training programme, one of which you can watch below.
Video Approach 2: Interviews with Travel Trade Bodies
We travelled to Berlin to attend ITB, one of the biggest B2B events of the year for the international travel trade. VisitBritain hosted many English suppliers on their stand and we were able to approach them for interviews. Participants included National Express, Historic Royal Palaces and Big Bus Tours. We covered topics including their tips for working with international markets, the benefits of working with 3rd parties to sell and collaborate with other services and whether there is still value in printed brochures in the digital age. We created seven edits in total.
Video Approach 3: Animations
This approach was chosen to help to simplify two of the more challenging topics – pricing structure and package travel regulations. Both of these videos were simple level in terms of pricing, but the designs were developed bespoke to be in keeping with VisitBritain’s branding.
Outcome
The videos were recently presented to the England travel industry and rolled out as part of the training programme. The feedback has been brilliant with the client commenting that the audience ‘really loved them and were totally on board with their relevance and direction’.
“Extremely organised, efficient and professional. Took time to fully understood the brief and understand what I needed out of the project. Excellent communication throughout. A pleasure to work with. I wish all agencies were this great!”
