Campaign aims to sell Edinburgh's tourism to the world

A LANDMARK marketing campaign to promote Edinburgh as the business tourism destination of choice for meeting and event planners has been launched.

Edinburgh is ready to raise its global profile as the business tourism destination of choice for meeting and event planners with the launch of Make it Edinburgh, a landmark campaign celebrating the citys unique position as a centre of excellence, innovation and heritage. For the very first time in its history, Edinburghs diverse business tourism offering will be presented under a single, cohesive creative and digital strategy. The overarching strapline, Make it Edinburgh, ties together an integrated campaign that celebrates and promotes Edinburghs strongest sectors of industry, while providing compelling reasons to choose Edinburgh for future events.

For the first time, the city’s business tourism offering is being presented under a single strategy involving private and public organisations.

The “Make it Edinburgh” campaign is aimed at mitigating the impact on the industry from factors including Brexit, a potential second Scottish independence referendum, and the rise of incentives by competitor cities.

Amanda Ferguson, Head of Business Tourism at Convention Edinburgh said: “Edinburgh has been criticised in the past for not being as “joined up” as other competitor cities, but this campaign will prove otherwise.

“Never before has the city undertaken a marketing campaign on this scale, bringing together private sector partners, working collaboratively through Marketing Edinburgh, the city’s Destination Marketing Organisation.

“The message we aim to promote is that Edinburgh is synonymous with innovation, discovery and thinking, a rich heritage, full of inspiring locations, buildings and people. The campaign gives us a powerful collective voice that will help us develop our business tourism offering and promote Edinburgh’s world leading Centres of Excellence.”

Convention Edinburgh and its partners secured 114 
meetings for the city last year, generating over £74 million for the local economy. With the majority of meetings and conferences taking place in the quieter “shoulder” months, business tourism is seen as a key economic driver for the city, benefiting not only venues and accommodation providers, but a wide range of local businesses including restaurants, taxi companies, florists and photographers.

Second only to London in the UK for international conferences, and ranked 27th in the ICCA Global City Index, Edinburgh’s worldwide reputation as a business tourism destination is already widely recognised.

Neil Brownlee, Head of Business Events at VisitScotland, said: “Business events are vital to the Scottish economy and are an integral way of promoting this country as a place to live, work, visit and invest.

“With its wealth of world-class venues, attractions and expertise, Edinburgh has a huge amount to offer the meetings industry and we are delighted to support this exciting new marketing campaign through the VisitScotland Growth Fund.”

Tristan Nesbitt, Chair, Edinburgh Hotel Association added:

“With over 20,000 hotel beds available, Edinburgh’s impressive and diverse accommodation offering is an important part in the city’s appeal as a business tourism destination.

“This campaign will create an essential platform to more effectively showcase Edinburgh’s hotels and their services.”

More information on the campaign is available at www.makeitedinburgh.com.

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