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With the close of the Paralympic Games on Sept. 9 and the official end of the London 2012 Summer Games, VisitBritain has launched the next phase of a multimillion-dollar, four-year campaign designed to stimulate leisure travel to London and Great Britain. The effort is part of a concerted effort to ensure that the destination experiences a halo effect -- rather than a hangover -- from hosting the Olympics.
"We're not resting on our laurels and thinking that just because we had a fantastic summer, where we really showcased the best of Britain to the world, that people will suddenly be calling their agent, jumping online researching, and that Britain's front of mind," said Karen Clarkson, vice president of North America for VisitBritain, the country's tourism marketing organization. "We're not just going to sit back and wait for people to come to us. We're going out there and will ask for the business in a really proactive manner."
VisitBritain has been mounting a serious offensive to avoid the slump that tourism destinations often experience after hosting the Olympics. The most recent and formidable example is the slump in China tourism that followed the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
Consequently, on Sept. 11, VisitBritain launched the next phase of its campaign, designed to put deals and offers into the marketplace to help convert interest into bookings. Clarkson said the tourism organization has partnered with various suppliers, including British Airways and the Globus Family of Brands, to create offers and promotional products geared toward capitalizing on the global media coverage of three recent British extravaganzas: the Olympics this summer, the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in June and the royal wedding last year.
In essence, VisitBritain is trying to reverse the Olympics hangover trend by deploying aggressive new tactics. Having watched and learned from past Olympics, the British tourism industry is working overtime to make sure it encourages the quick return of leisure travel, which took a sizeable hit during the Games.
"In fairness to those people who said that there would be a million extra visitors coming to London, I don't think that was a statement that was supposed to be treated seriously," said Tom Jenkins, executive director of the ETOA.
The ETOA said that London normally welcomes about 300,000 foreign and 800,000 domestic tourists daily during the month of August. After surveying hotels and conducting straw polls, the ETOA roughly estimates that during the Games, London hotels were occupied by a bit more than 60,000 foreign guests per night. That contrasts sharply with previous Summer Games hosts Sydney, which hosted about 25,000 per night; Athens, with 13,000; and Beijing, with 27,000.
"Judged against previous Olympics, this is a major achievement," Jenkins said. Moreover, he said, the fact that attendance fell short of exaggerated estimates is not necessarily the fault of the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, which succeeded in bringing a substantial number of Olympic officials, government representatives, sponsors, sponsors' guests, media and relatives of the participants to London for the Games.
Jenkins said the biggest challenge with every Olympics is that it deters leisure travelers. Consequently, he said, ETOA members faced a lack of demand for their products and experienced a "sharp fall" in passengers to London and the U.K. this summer.
Steve Born, Globus' vice president of marketing, said, "The first thing we looked at was: Do we have another Beijing on our hands?" But he noted that advance bookings to Britain for 2013 are currently running 20% over this time last year.
"That didn't happen to Beijing, Athens and Sydney," he said, adding that he believes the booking trends signal a much quicker recovery for London than was experienced by previous Summer Olympics hosts.
The trap Beijing fell into, Born said, was that in 2009, the year after it hosted the Olympics, products were priced based on the assumption that demand was still going to be high. Conversely, Globus' 2013 Britain prices are going to be lower on average than they were in 2012.
The tourism marketing argument in favor of the Olympics -- or any major sporting event, for that matter -- has always been that the sheer amount of media coverage the host destination receives in the lead-up to and during the event is priceless and will more than offset the investment in, and any losses incurred from, hosting the event.
The rationale is that while tuning in to watch a major athletic competition, millions of viewers will be exposed to a destination they will then be inspired either consciously or subconsciously to visit.
"People watch the Olympics to watch sport," Jenkins said. "They do not watch the Olympic Games as proxy for leafing through a travel brochure or surfing for information on the Internet. There is copious research on the limited nature of the crossover between watching sports on TV and going there on vacation."
And even Jenkins admits that this time, while Olympics viewers are probably not going to book a trip to the U.K. en masse, London is poised to perhaps break the Olympic hangover mold with a quicker-than-average recovery.
"It is reasonable to assume that London will experience a hangover from what happened this summer," Jenkins said. But, he added, "The bounceback should occur, and VisitBritain's campaign, which will be the first such campaign to address the legacy of the Games, will help enormously."
While VisitBritain's aggressive approach might well prove to be a crucial component to reversing the legacy of recent Olympics, operators said there are other reasons Britain is poised to rebound more quickly than its predecessors.
Paul Wiseman, president of Trafalgar, which saw 2012 bookings to the U.K. drop 20% from last year, said, "Proximity is a big issue. London is a lot closer than Beijing, and from most American cities the connection is much better. It's a gateway to Europe. It's just different on so many counts."
He added: "I was always predicting that if the Olympics were successful and if the television coverage was positive, we would have a very positive following year." Wiseman said that bookings to the U.K. for November to April are up 16% and that preview sales for Great Britain (Trafalgar launches its full 2013 Europe brochure later this month) are already up 25% compared with this time last year.
"There was no one happier than me to see the end of the Olympics," Wiseman said. "It had a terrible effect on the short-term business." Still, he said, everything now is pointing to a very strong recovery.
Collette, too, is already seeing strong indications of a speedy recovery in business to the U.K. For 2013 bookings, the company is up about 20% compared with 2012 bookings this time last year, and Liam Dunch, Collette's product manager for the U.K., Ireland and France, said that for the first part of 2013 it has seen its U.K. bookings double from early 2012.
In the 18-month period from September 2011 through March 2013, VisitBritain will have invested more than $55 million in 21 priority markets around the world. The organization poured more than $10 million into marketing in the U.S. this year alone.
All that investment is being made, in part, to reach a goal set by the British government to increase overseas visitors to 40 million a year by 2020, up from the just over 30 million a year currently.
Over the past decade, the U.K. has lost market share in terms of U.S. travelers, Clarkson noted. Yet, a turnaround appears to be under way, whether or not it is being spurred by worldwide media attention to the U.K. over the last year and a half. From January through June, the U.K. welcomed 5% more North Americans than the same period in 2001, making it the best start to the year for visits from North America since 2008.
Prior to the Olympics, the organization rolled out an intensive image campaign with everything from TV ads on NBC to outdoor advertising in New York and Los Angeles to print ads in publications such as Metro. It has been estimated that the campaign was seen by 90 million people globally.
Clarkson said, "It's really a transition phase from building awareness of Britain from a marketing perspective in spring of this year, continuing the momentum with the coverage during the Games period and then ultimately speaking to Americans who would consider a visit, and it's timely to turn that interest into a booking."
This fall, VisitBritain has also initiated a content partnership with Yahoo, which will reach an estimated 400 million people globally, including in the U.S. It's also undertaking another print push in publications such as National Geographic.
In the U.S., it is working with British Airways on projects that include interactive digital media, print marketing and city-based events, details of which will be unveiled in the coming weeks, all designed to encourage people to book their flight to Britain in the coming months.
VisitBritain will also run targeted ads on Expedia, based on consumers' prior booking behavior. And for the younger demographic, there will be a retail-focused, back-to-school campaign this fall in partnership with STA Travel, which will go out to their retail properties and on campuses.
"When you're a host city and a host nation for the Olympics, there's very much a sharing of experiences, of what has worked well and some things to try and address from a challenge perspective," Clarkson said.
"We really are expecting a halo effect, and we are expecting an increase in numbers as we head into 2013," Clarkson said, noting that the industry will only continue to see activity from VisitBritain and its partners through 2015.
"It's not like we're saying this year, 'OK, well, it's an Olympic year. We'll invest a little bit more because we really want to do a big push,'" Clarkson said. "We're taking a more long-term, strategic approach. We've been planning for this for a long time in terms of how we approached the run-up to the Games, how we approached during the Games time, what we're going to be doing for the rest of calendar 2012 and then what we're doing for at least the three-year horizon beyond 2012."
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