Yorkshire Business Tourism Campaign. Business tourism (including meetings, incentive travel, conferences and exhibitions) has been identified within the Regional Economic Strategy as a key growth area, with YTB nominated as the lead body to take forward the three year action point "Exploit business, conference and exhibition based tourism." YTB marketing activity aims to position Yorkshire as a key business tourism destination and in order to engage all of the operators trying to gain business tourism the Business Tourism Liaison Forum was established.

PR Campaign
Press activity through the previous three years Business Tourism PR Campaign has been a contributing factor in the rise in visitor figures to the conference website venueyorkshire.com.

The 2008 campaign launched in February with an unusual abseil off the stands at York Racecourse, launching the new campaign showing delegates from Venturefest, one of the UK's leading conferences for entrepreneurs, a more unusual way of bringing their meeting agenda to life by suspending themselves 25 foot in the air, before abseiling down from the stand, at one of Yorkshire's conference venues. Following on from this, will be a mailer out to key Association buyers and trade media contacts, a report in to the 'psychology of a conference delegate' to be sold in to media and regular news stories and photocalls to announce new developments in Yorkshire, being fed to key media.Showcasing Yorkshire as a destination full of unusual venues and then building on this with messages regarding our vibrant cities, accessibility to the region and the strength of our quality hotels / university and academic venues.

During 2007, we followed on from previous years with a 'unique / unusual venues' message, this time capturing a 'business meeting on the Snow Slopes at Xscape, Castleford'. The 2006 campaign launched with a photocall at The Deep, Hull, where divers acted as delegates and went in to the tank to hold a meeting, among the sharks. This 'out of the ordinary' news story was covered by many media, including: PR Business, Financial Times, Calendar News, Yorkshire Post, and others.

www.venueyorkshire.com
Venueyorkshire.com provides a one-stop shop for those looking to organise a conference in Yorkshire. Over the last year venueyorkshire.com has attracted over 110,000 visitors to the site. This fantastic year for the website has been supported by ongoing Pay per Click activity. These results show that the site is a valuable resource for conference organisers.

Business Tourism E-Newsletters
We send quarterly email newsletters to all buyers on our extensive database, updating them on new developments and venues in the region. All premier members are encouraged to keep us informed of any interesting news stories for your establishments. Please send these in to Lisa Losardo at email: llosardo@ytb.org.uk.

Key Account Management
Yorkshire Tourist Board implements a key account programme with buyers and organisers of high value conferences, providing bid support where required.

Business Tourism Familiarisation Visit - 10-12 March 2008
A familiarisation visit has been arranged around the around the Northern Events Show and The Big Wow show, inviting along Corporates, Associations and Intermediaries on to showcase Yorkshire's conference product.

Media Campaign
YTB have taken advertisements in: Conference & Incentive Travel magazine, Meetings & Incentive Travel Magazine, Conference News, Meet Britain's annual publication, Corporate Hospitality Monthly, Headquarters magazine, Incentive Travel Corporate Meetings magazine, and advertorial in C&IT's Association feature earlier this year.

Direct Mail Piece
We will be sending a direct mail piece out in March. The main aims of the DM are: to generate requests for Conference & Incentive Yorkshire 2008, increase visits to venueyorkshire.com and to promote the services of our business tourism manager, Nick Bond and the offer of individual familiarisation visits to Yorkshire, therefore raising awareness of Yorkshire as a unique conference destination.

Exhibitions (domestic and international)
Attendance at certain domestic exhibitions and overseas exhibitions and sales activity. This has included EIBTM in Barcelona, IMEX in Frankfurt, COSH in the Nordic regions, Confec Green in Dublin, RSVP North, Times Creme, Antor Netherlands, Discovery (VB flagship event held in Yorkshire in 2006) and Joint MICE exhibition in Belgium.

And much more...