There’s no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a massive affect on overseas visitors to our city region.
The once familiar sounds of international languages being spoken in the street and seeing queues of tourists at the Beatles Statues now seems a distant memory. However, we are confident that these visitors will be returning in the future and according to the latest insights from VisitBritain they will.
In the meantime, group tour operators across the globe are busy using this time to plan for the future – and this means looking at new markets, developing new itineraries and adapting to a post-covid world.
It’s therefore been really important for us to keep in contact with these travel partners and ensure that Liverpool is front of mind. And speaking to partners in the city we know that many of them have been doing this too.
Here at Marketing Liverpool we have been able to take advantage of several industry events and opportunities that enabled us to connect with overseas tour operators.
With assistance from VisitBritain we attended the JATA networking event – here we had a programme of 121 virtual meetings spread over two days (and nights!) with members of the Japanese Association of Travel Agents (JATA). Several of these meetings were with companies who were looking for ideas for new itineraries for their clients so it was great to be able to share our abundant offer.
We also had a great virtual catch up with Miki Travel in Asia. Again, this was the perfect opportunity to re-connect and update on forthcoming developments, new product, itinerary ideas and the latest COVID-19 safety measures being taken in the city.
We also regularly communicate to our database of tour operators through our Trade Talk newsletter. Recently this has been useful to highlight the activity that Beatles Industry partners in the city have been doing to mark John Lennon’s 80th birthday year and the delivery of John’s piano from the George Michael estate.
Normally at this time of year we would have attended the likes of World Travel Market in London and VisitBritain’s VIBE event where we would meet with all their overseas market managers. So for this year we have put together a presentation that’s being emailed to all these contacts, again to serve as an update with all the latest relevant content.
In the meantime we look forward to the recovery and busier 2021!