As 2024 draws to a close, we reflect on an exceptional year of growth, innovation, and success for Marketing Liverpool.
This year, we continued to position Liverpool City Region as a leading destination for tourism, business events, and culture through a range of activities that encompassed campaign activity, overseas trade missions, conferences, exhibitions and major event marketing.
By working with our incredible partners, stakeholders and colleagues across Liverpool City Region, we’ve collectively produced some amazing achievements.
We also introduced the Liverpool City Region Local Visitor Economy Partnership, of which more information will follow in the new year.
But for now, here’s a look back at some of the highlights that made 2024 unforgettable.
Tourism Campaigns that Captivated the World
Our tourism campaigns reached new heights in 2024. Covering everything from gastronomy to the region’s music scene, film locations, Taylor Swift, major events and Christmas to name a few. Here’s some of our highlights:
Taste Liverpool
Taste Liverpool highlighted the region’s incredible food and drink offering. From our local produce across the region, to restaurants, food markets, coffee shops, bars and the people behind it all, we continued to put Liverpool City Region on the map as a must visit gastronomic hotspot. Time Out named Liverpool as one of the best places for food and drink in 2024 after all…
Have a look at our Field To Fork video highlighting some of the region’s best food scenes.
Discover a New Beat
Liverpool City Region is the ultimate destination to visit when it comes to music. Home of The Beatles, a UNESCO City of Music and a host city for the Eurovision Song Contest, we wanted to celebrate the incredible music offer across the region. Over the summer we worked with content creators, produced a dedicated webpage, and created a hero music video to show the world how special our music scene is.
Have a look at the Liverpool in 360 music video and music events happening here.
Liverpool, The Ultimate Setting
Film and Liverpool go hand and hand as the most filmed UK city outside of London. Liverpool, The Ultimate Setting is a campaign that highlights the vast amount of locations used across Liverpool City Region in major blockbusters, TV shows and music videos for visitors to explore on their trip to the city.
Find out more about it on VisitLiverpool.com
Liverpool Loves…
Liverpool City Region is no stranger to hosting events of grand proportions and 2024’s event calendar was packed full of events visitors were flocking to the region to experience. To celebrate this we launched the Liverpool Loves campaign which shined a spotlight on those incredible events. From Comic Con Liverpool to Eurovision Song Contest, The Randox Grand National Festival, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and P!nk at Anfield Stadium – we celebrated it all!
Taylor Town
When Taylor Swift comes to town, you know you have to go big, and big Liverpool went! Working with the Culture Liverpool team, we created a campaign to encourage the thousands of people visiting Liverpool for one of Swift’s three-sold out shows to explore the city.
Collaborating with Make CIC, Culture Liverpool produced a series of 11 artworks inspired by each of Swift’s Eras and placed them around the city to make up the Taylor Town Trail. The trail earned international media coverage, viral social media moments, an award for best ‘Regional Event’ and fans claiming that ‘Liverpool just knows how to do it.’
Read more about Taylor Town here.
River of Light
This year River of Light was the most successful yet, with record breaking numbers of people visiting the 12 light installations that make up one of the city’s most popular events of the year. With engaging installations inspired by the theme of ‘Play’ produced by Culture Liverpool and an accompanying marketing and social campaign from VisitLiverpool, the teams have collaboratively placed River of Light as one of the region’s annual events not to miss.
Look back at this year’s River of Light here.
Let It Be Liverpool City Region
Rounding off the year, we celebrated the holiday season with our brand new campaign ‘Let it be Liverpool City Region’, a celebration of all the festive activity taking place across the region. With a dedicated webpage, targeted advertising, international influencer visits and a Christmas video – visitors were inspired to Let it Be Liverpool at Christmas.
Find out more about the campaign here.
A busy year for Liverpool Convention Bureau
It’s been a busy year for Liverpool Convention Bureau (LCB) as the team behind bringing conferences and business events to the city region have continued to lead the way in business tourism. Here’s a few of the team’s highlights
Unveiled a stylish new brand ‘Making Incredible Happen’
LCB began the year with a rebrand, incorporating the team’s key pillars of people, place, planet and passion into a stylish new look. Rolling it out across the website, exhibition stands, social media, the Event Planners’ Guide and marketing collateral, it’s hard to miss that famous LCB pink! We also released ‘LCB: The Movie’ which is a showcase of some of the region’s incredible event spaces.
Visit the website and watch The Movie here.
Represented the region across the world at sales missions and trade shows
When it comes to flying the flag for Liverpool City Region, the team doesn’t stop! From attending national trade shows like Confex (London), The Meetings Show (London), and Conference and Hospitality Show (Leeds) to taking Liverpool global at events like The Meetings Show APAC (Singapore), IMEX Frankfurt (Germany), IBTM World (Spain), Global Incentives Summit (Ireland) and IMEX America (Las Vegas), we’re making sure that everyone knows that Liverpool City Region is the perfect place to host events.
Picked up some amazing accolades
In 2024 we were still celebrating being named as ‘Most Improved Destination’ at the GDS Awards (2023) and then went on to win Bronze for Best UK Convention Bureau at the M&IT Awards (2024) and ‘Destination Team of the Year’ at the miaList Awards in Liverpool.
Another award winning year for the Liverpool Convention Bureau team!
Find out what the team get up to on LinkedIn.
Digital Transformation and Innovation
2024 was a record breaking year for us for our online presence. Have a look at some of the incredible stats from our year online.
Digital Highlights:
- VisitLiverpool.com website traffic increased by 20% in 2024 from 2023.
- October and November saw a record number of views to VisitLiverpool.com with 2.2million views over the time period during the River of Light campaign.
- Saw an increase in views to the music section of VisitLiverpool.com with an increase of 360% as a result of the Discover a New Beat campaign.
- The Family Friendly things to do page increased by 200% over the year.
- The ongoing development of the VisitLiverpool app offering information for visitors and special offers with over 4000 active users.
- We’ve helped in the development of an interactive kiosk at Liverpool John Lennon Airport for visitors to find out what’s on across Liverpool City Region.
- Liverpool Convention Bureau’s website has seen overall traffic increase by 158% .
Social media highlights:
It’s been a busy year across our VisitLiverpool social media channels as we covered everything from events to campaigns and our wonderful partners. Here’s some of our key stats:
- 46.5 million impressions across VisitLiverpool social media channels.
- 10.3 million video views across VisitLiverpool social media channels.
- An increase of 7,000 Instagram followers over River of Light campaign period.
Strengthened international relationships
The team have continued to strengthen our international partnerships by working closely with VisitBritain and participating in key global events.
We’ve attended Travel Trade events around the world including destinations like Australia, Brazil, Spain and Germany in partnership with VisitBritain to shout about Liverpool City Region’s amazing group travel offerings. And in September we welcomed the Annual UKinbound conference to the city with a record breaking amount of delegates attending.
We’ve also worked with a range of national and international press, media and content creators who have produced coverage showcasing the very best of Liverpool City Region.
Looking Ahead
As we move into 2025, we are excited to build on this year’s momentum. With major events on the horizon and new partnerships forming, the year ahead looks like an exciting one for the region.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to our success in 2024. Here’s to another year of growth, creativity and shared success for Liverpool City Region.