Family fun campaign launched

Joint family campaign with ScotRail and Beano

Famous comic strip characters Dennis and Gnasher and Minnie the Minx are the faces of a new "blamazing"* tourism marketing campaign to reignite families’ love of rail adventures in Scotland. 

We've teamed up with ScotRail and Beano for the first time to promote family holidays and day trips across the country. 

The two-year campaign aims to use the cross-generational appeal of one of the UK’s best-loved comics and ScotRail’s Kids for a Quid deal, to promote sustainable travel as part of Scottish tourism’s recovery. 

A special landing page – visitscotland.com/beano – has been created with Dennis, Gnasher and Minnie highlighting places to visit in each of Scotland’s seven cities (Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, Perth, Stirling), including dog-friendly days out. 

The campaign will target UK families through digital and print marketing to promote attractions across Scotland. 

It forms part of our drive for sustainable tourism in line with the national tourism strategy, Scotland Outlook 2030.

*  "Blamazing, blamtastic, blam to the max!" in Beano language mean "awesome, incredible, epic, and perfect". Take a look.

Research on the family market

Research on the family market found that affordability, easy transport access and nostalgia are important decision-making triggers for parents considering a UK holiday destination. Of those surveyed, children had a “big influence” on the destination for one in five families.  

The UK family market accounts for a third of all overnight and day trips in Scotland. Prior to the pandemic, overnight stays by families saw year-on-year growth since 2016, with an average 13% increase in trips on the previous year. UK families took 2.2 million overnight family holidays in Scotland in 2019 – an increase of 15% on 2018 and the highest in ten years.   

Research also shows that families contribute the biggest share of the tourism day trip economy in Scotland. On average, UK families take around 41.1 million day trips a year in the country, generating £2.1 billion a year. 

Beano is the world’s longest-running children’s comic with an average monthly readership of 450,000 for children aged 6-12. It also has one of the fastest-growing kids’ digital networks in the UK, centred around the award-winning beano.com reaching 5 million children each month. 

ScotRail Kids for a Quid tickets means up to four children (aged 5-15) can travel for just £1 return on off-peak and weekend journeys with every paying adult.

Additionally, it gives one free child entry to some of Scotland’s most popular attractions when purchasing a full price adult ticket at the attraction.