5 Year Strategy

5 years. 5 ways we will grow the Yorkshire brand.

Our 5 year strategy for the Yorkshire brand.

North Yorkshire Moors Railway Š Alan Pratt/Bow House Ltd

2012-2017

We think Yorkshire is brilliant.

Over the past three years we have developed a strong brand for Yorkshire.

5 ways we will grow the Yorkshire brandt // Keep Yorkshire front of mindt // Keep developing Yorkshire pridet // Grow inward investmentt // Yorkshire’s voice must be heardt // Speak with one voicet

We’ve demonstrated that ambitious and focussed promotion of Yorkshire can deliver economic benefit, and deliver it quickly.

It can also achieve a strong message that Yorkshire is a confident and united place, ready and willing to do business with the rest of the UK and around the globe.

The Welcome to Yorkshire project has thus far concentrated on growing the visitor economy – that was its job, and it will always be a big part of our work, but we’re now launching a five year strategy which will take the Yorkshire brand to a new level. It will extend the brand way beyond tourism, externally into a strong international profile leading to a step change in inward investment, and within Yorkshire into creating community pride and cohesion so that the county speaks with one voice.

We believe maintaining and developing the Yorkshire brand is the only way to give the county the strength it needs to punch well above its weight in an increasingly competitive global marketplace, and bring much needed jobs and prosperity to our people and communities.

We have now completed the delivery of a three year £30 million programme of investment from Yorkshire Forward. Its aim was to increase the value of tourism by 5% annually, and rebrand Yorkshire as a contemporary and vibrant place, built on a strong history and heritage, with ambitions to compete on the world stage. We were also charged with matching that investment pound for pound from the public and private sector, and providing strong leadership to the tourism industry, so that no one within or outside the sector was in any doubt as to its importance to the future prosperity of the great county.

So what have we achieved?

Increased the value of the visitor economy from £5.9bn to just over £7bn.

Yorkshire now attracts 216 million visits per annum, the same as the Disney theme park network globally.

Consistently been the UK’s fastest growing tourism destination, outperforming the rest of the country.

Achieved match funding of £36 million pounds making the total investment in tourism promotion £76 million over the past three years.

Procured hard to achieve best value for money for the investment.

Ensured that Yorkshire was identified in the Government’s Tourism Policy as one of the UK’s vital “attack brands”.

Created a smart, ambitious and confident brand which is uniting the county.

Found innovative ways to increase Yorkshire’s visibility and profile.

Won the World’s Best Marketing Campaign for two years running at the World Travel Awards, beating the following destinations and brands - Brazil, India, South Africa, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Etihad, Kuoni, Expedia, Visit London, Thomas Cook and Visit Scotland.

Put Yorkshire firmly on the UK and international map as a force to be reckoned with.

Job done, you might say, but this is just the beginning. We believe that we’ve demonstrated what can be achieved when a county pulls together behind one strong proposition – and that is what we must continue to do if we want to become one of the world’s top brands, with all the potential benefits that will bring.

We’ve only just begun to break through and change public perception and if we want to achieve a permanent step change we believe we must continue and if possible increase this level of profile building for a further five years at least.

The cohesion of Yorkshire faces some significant challenges with the disappearance of Yorkshire Forward and the move towards localism, coupled with straightened economic times and stretched public funding. Inevitably the sub regional local enterprise partnership structure, and, within tourism, the encouragement of local destination management organisations, threaten the Yorkshire wide cohesion which had been established over recent years, and their development needs to be managed carefully.

There is now the likelihood of duplication of functions across sub-regions and at a local level, where previously countywide structures had proved successful and achieved a more significant impact.

This may not prove to be the most effective use of the limited resource available, and all involved in these discussions must consider whether aggregating funds and co-ordinating activity might be a better way forward for some areas of their work.

Yorkshire must ensure that it does not achieve the laudable outcomes intended by the localism agenda at the expense of its ability to capitalise on the strong Yorkshire brand, which has gained increased traction over the last few years. It has given us a powerful and united voice in the corridors of power at home ensuring that more can be achieved for our communities, and gives us the scale and critical mass to be seriously entertained by governments and entrepreneurs abroad looking for opportunities to invest and develop.

Welcome to Yorkshire has a strong track record in achieving success with high quality integrated promotion and this will continue to be our core activity. At the heart of this will be a high profile television, outdoor, print, digital and social media domestic campaign annually for the next five years, building on our work so far in keeping Yorkshire front of mind.

We will lead the development of a joined up five year tourism strategy for Yorkshire, bringing together the plans of local enterprise partnerships and those of local authorities to ensure that they complement each other and all contribute to the overall ambitious goal of making Yorkshire one of the world’s top destinations for leisure and business tourism.

We will continue to grow our significant membership base to ensure that all businesses across the broad range of the tourism sector are given the opportunity to grow and flourish. We will develop forums from our members to assist local enterprise partnerships, local authorities and the government in shaping their plans with the benefit of the expertise of successful private sector businesses who understand the visitor economy and its challenges the best. We aim to double our current membership numbers to 6000 by April 2014, and to have 10,000 businesses involved in promoting the Yorkshire brand at the end of five years.

Wherever possible we will help to create strong partnerships to develop new products and improve those which already exist, to develop skills, and to co-ordinate and channel promotional spend to a level where it achieves maximum impact. The so called “funnel of tourism marketing” shows us that promotional activity at too low a level will have little impact unless it sits alongside a strong higher level campaign that has the ability to drive new visitors in significant numbers.

That means that we must preserve Yorkshire’s ability to deliver a high profile county wide integrated campaign to persuade new visitors from around the UK and beyond to make Yorkshire their destination of choice. This needs to be complemented by the delivery of good quality tourism information and local marketing to help them decide exactly where to go and how to spend their time and money, and a quality experience which encourages them to return again and again.

Based on the ambitions and demand of local businesses and organisations, Welcome to Yorkshire will continue to deliver specific marketing campaigns based around particular themes or areas. We are already working in partnership with Yorkshire Water on a coastal promotional campaign, and with businesses in Skipton on the I Love Skipton campaign designed to boost visitors to the market town.

We have already achieved press and PR activity for Yorkshire valued at £124 million, most of it featuring local businesses and what they have to offer.

We will continue to connect the local, national and international press with businesses which have good stories to tell, and ensure that this level of press and PR profile continues.

Welcome to Yorkshire has built strong relationships with government and we have cross party support from many Yorkshire MPs, some of whom have been instrumental in making a positive case to government for ongoing support of the sector.

We will continue to make the case to government that relatively small investment in attack brands like Yorkshire will have a swift and beneficial effect on driving economic growth and jobs, and contribute to the rebalancing of the UK economy from south to north. Independent research demonstrates that 4000 new jobs have been added to the Yorkshire visitor economy in the past three years. The sector has the ability to respond quickly to investment with the additional advantage of money staying within the UK supply chain.

Working hard to fund new work We have submitted extensive bids for funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Department for Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to help us develop local product and promotion, including supporting activities around festivals, developing rural destinations, strengthening our rural tourism businesses, and building strong business networks for the future. Our ERDF bid focuses in part on the much needed development of digital and social media marketing capability across the sector, and will help to revolutionise the way tourism information is delivered to the customer.

We will continue to lobby Visit England and Visit Britain to ensure that Yorkshire gets maximum benefit from any centrally funded activity they undertake, and to enable them to sell Yorkshire as a key part of the England and Great Britain brands. Welcome to Yorkshire will be a strategic delivery partner for this work and will be integral to the delivery of Visit England’s Regional Growth Fund activity in Yorkshire.

Keep Yorkshire front of mind.

The tourism sector offers some of the best opportunities to present a confident image of Yorkshire to the outside world.

Keep developing Yorkshire pride.

We will ask people to play their part in our mission to raise Yorkshire’s pride, profile and prosperity.

We’re launching our Yorkshire Champions scheme – a chance for everyone who lives and works in Yorkshire to become part of the drive to make Yorkshire even greater. We all know how much pride people feel in God’s own county, and we want to harness that for the common good. In five year’s time we want every man, woman, teenager and child to be able to articulate a strong message about Yorkshire and to be an active advocate for the strengths of this part of the world. So if they are stopped by a visitor or a potential investor in the street they will be proud, welcoming and well informed about the place they call home.

It’s a chance for everyone who lives and works in the county to play their part in our mission to raise Yorkshire’s pride, profile and prosperity. We’re offering people the opportunity to make a small individual donation annually to join us on the next stage of our journey to build the Yorkshire brand.

But your real contribution will be much larger than that. You’ll be the first to hear about exciting things happening across Yorkshire and have a chance to experience them for yourself, and you’ll join a network of individual advocates spreading the word as widely as possible.

We already have 20 key Yorkshire businesses not directly involved in tourism in our Y 30 scheme, supporting our work to raise Yorkshire’s profile because they know it will be good for their businesses to be part of a thriving and confident county. We plan to grow that number to include the top 100 companies in Yorkshire within five years.

We will use the power of social media to encourage teenagers and young adults to create their own ways of talking positively about Yorkshire to the wider world. They are growing up in an increasingly confident and vibrant county which is making its mark on the cultural life of the country, particularly in the independent music scene. We want talented home grown youngsters, and the best of the thousands of students who choose to come to university here, to decide to stay here to contribute their skills to our businesses and create new businesses of their own.

If they decide to seek their futures elsewhere we want them to remain strong advocates for all that Yorkshire has to offer, and to talk proudly about Yorkshire to others as they make their way in the world.

We will begin to create those advocates at an early age, by working with primary schools across Yorkshire to create an annual project which celebrates all that is best about Yorkshire and the particular area in which they live, helping children to learn about its proud history and heritage, and all that it has to offer today. We are seeking partners to help us make this idea a reality, culminating in a special celebration to mark Yorkshire Day. Our vision is that every child who leaves a Yorkshire primary school in the next five years will be able to explain why they are proud to be growing up in Yorkshire.

We are delighted to be part of Welcome to Yorkshire’s Y 30 group of businesses. Much like the tourism agency, we work closely with thousands of businesses across the county to deliver our services, so it makes perfect sense that we strengthen our relationship with Welcome to Yorkshire and with businesses in Yorkshire.

Y 30 companies supporting our work Welcome to Yorkshire is a not-for-profit organisation.

Every penny of your Y 30 fee goes into helping us attract more visitors, businesses and investors to Yorkshire. We are already being supported by the following companies: HML

Arrow Self Drive

Severfield-Rowen PLC

Grant Thornton

Rushbond PLC

Costcutter

Y 30 represents a mutually beneficial partnership that ultimately raises the profile of our great county and our own organisations.

R&R Ice Cream

Seabrook Crisps

PricewaterhouseCoopers

Ellis Bates Insurance

Bluebird Vehicles Ltd

Calverts Carpets

Northern PowerGrid

Arnold Laver

Richard Flint, Chief Executive Yorkshire Water and the Kelda Group

Grand Central

East Coast

Yorkshire Water

Santander

London Clubs International (Alea Leeds)

Symington’s

We will grow inward investment.

We will harness the power ofr Yorkshire businesses to raise the profile of the county.

The past three years has seen the development of extensive international networks through marketing activity in China, South East Asia, India, Europe and the USA, and through activity in Singapore, Qingdao (China) & New York based around the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race featuring a heavily branded Welcome to Yorkshire boat.

Significant successes have been recorded internationally. These include a cultural exchange with Singapore involving an 1877 copy of Wuthering Heights, and taking New York by storm including our message being seen more than 660,000 times in the back of New York cabs. Later this year a major food manufacturer will partner with Welcome to Yorkshire in New York to promote their product and raise the profile of Yorkshire as a great place to work and invest in.

We now have a springboard to leverage significant inward investment to Yorkshire. Over the next five years we will lead 3 trade missions to international markets across Europe, the US and the Far East, working alongside local authorities, local enterprise partnerships, UKTI, Chambers of Commerce and individual businesses. We will harness the power of Yorkshire businesses involved in international markets to raise the profile of Yorkshire as a serious business destination. This work has already started. Pavers Shoes, from York, will later this year be including a bespoke leaflet showcasing their Yorkshire heritage with every box of shoes leaving their production base in India.

Where there is interest from entrepreneurs in these destinations in developing relationships further we will be the catalyst for turning their interest into concrete inward investment, by co-ordinating and facilitating visits to Yorkshire, and linking them to potential partners here. We will build these visits around appropriate events and activities, for example the World Snooker Championships in Sheffield for the Chinese, or our horse racing calendar, where this has resonance with our international visitors.

Our funding sources Membership subscriptions Already 3000 businesses are part of our membership scheme and the number is growing daily.

Local authorities We have growing support from local authorities who increasingly recognise how important tourism is for the local economy.

Y 30 Business supporters Already 20 big Yorkshire businesses are directly supporting our work, and the network is increasing.

Paid for marketing campaigns We are working closely with members on themed campaigns to help drive visitor numbers and profits.

Grant funding We are working with a range of funders on some exciting projects for the future.

Yorkshire is often at its best and most powerful when it speaks with one voice, but there is a danger that we will lose that strong collective voice as new, more localised structures emerge. Many people have already expressed concern that this could damage the county’s ability to position itself as a confident economic powerhouse.

Welcome to Yorkshire is one of the only remaining Yorkshire wide organisations, and with its excellent track record in PR and communications it is well placed to ensure that voice continues to be heard.

We have built good relationships with the national press and media and worked proactively to get the Yorkshire perspective into national tourism stories as well as create national interest in what is happening in Yorkshire.

As we broaden our work on developing the Yorkshire brand beyond tourism we will use our skills and these relationships to ensure Yorkshire’s voice is being heard on a far broader range of issues, and in particular we will continue to strengthen our connections with the wide range of BBC journalists now based in Salford, to ensure that their attempts to get a northern voice into their stories has a strong Yorkshire flavour.

We are working closely with Yorkshire’s MPs to ensure that wherever possible government gets a clear message about the county’s ambition to be a major player in the life and economic prosperity of the country, and we have built strong relationships with ministers, particularly around areas of tourism and culture. Over the next year we will extend the reach of those relationships to encompass the county’s wider economic interests to ensure that Yorkshire is viewed as an essential partner in rebuilding the country’s economic fortunes.

Yorkshire’s voice must be heard.

Image © Royal Armouries

We will present a clear message about the county’s ambitions for the future.

We must speak with one voice.

Tourism marketing is at its best when it operates seamlessly at every level.

Yorkshire’s challenge over the next five years is to keep united and confident and Welcome to Yorkshire will be at the forefront of ensuring that happens.

This is our message: Yorkshire must continue to speak with one voice.

We must not allow the value of the Yorkshire brand to be inadvertently diminished. Of course different areas of the county have different aspects to promote and that is quite right, but we need to ensure everything is sitting within the stronger brand of Yorkshire if we are to achieve maximum exposure at a significant enough level to achieve breakthrough and impact.

Tourism marketing is at its best when it operates seamlessly at every level. We must continue high profile marketing and promotion to get visitors to consider Yorkshire in the first place. Once they’ve decided to come here they need comprehensive local information to decide how to spend their hard earned cash. Local businesses working together to aggregate spend and effort will achieve the best results.

This is the moment for us all to join in – big business, local authorities and local enterprise partnerships, all tourism businesses and the people of Yorkshire.

Together we can achieve so much more.

This is Yorkshire’s moment.

Gary Verity, Chief Executive

Clare Morrow, Chair

Investing in Welcome to Yorkshire means investing in the future of the Yorkshire economy and championing the county nationally and internationally for the benefit of its residents and businesses.

Welcome to Yorkshire A company limited by guarantee.

Registered in England & Wales: No. 2896762 Chief Executive: Gary Verity

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