2021 Destination Marketing Activities

Escape The Everyday Campaign

In the wake of COVID-19 the English Riviera BID Company, who are responsible for leading on Destination Marketing have commissioned a £100,000 in an 8-week National Marketing Campaign aimed at getting both stay and day visitors to travel to the English Riviera post Lockdown.

The new campaign named ‘Escape The Everyday’ will run online and offline and started on 1st March 2021 after the Prime Minister’s Roadmap announcement.

The online campaign will be running across popular digital platforms including Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest as well as across over 250 popular consumer websites such as the Daily Mail, the Metro, the Independent, the Sun, Evening Standard, Good Morning Britain, Liverpool Echo, Manchester Evening News, Stoke Sentinel, the Express, This Morning, Birmingham Mail, Sky.com and Contravener.

The offline campaign will be running across Birmingham from March 25th 2021 with a series of high profile Roadside Outdoor Digital Posters at key points across the city with the ‘call to action’ across all channels being to visit the official English Riviera website.

Initial results are very pleasing with the Escape the Everyday Campaign having reached over 2.7 million people in week one and website traffic currently 56% up on last year with a significant growth in people visiting the website from Birmingham, Manchester, Slough, Sheffield, Bristol, Leeds, Nottingham and Southampton

Further analysis is showing that that there’s a fairly even split between age demographics which indicates that the campaign is reaching and engaging with all of our audience segments with the majority being first time visitors to the English Riviera website which is also  encouraging.

The ‘Escape the Everyday’ campaign is targeting a broad range of visitors including families, young couples, over 55’s and day visitors and will end on 30^th April 2021.

2021 presents us all with an exciting opportunity to maximise on the predicted Staycation (domestic market) boom and to welcome many first time visitors to the English Riviera who in turn will hopefully become strong advocates for many years to come.

Shared below are the Escape the Everyday Creative assets which are owned by the English Riviera BID Company but available for any ERBID Levy Payer to download and to use in their own marketing activities to help generate new business.

Escape the Everyday Digital Campaign Report

Outdoor campaign review

As a result of this campaign, in April 2021, Torquay became the top trending UK holiday destination on TripAdvisor.