Visit Scotland | Alba
Article published 12/07/2023

Caroline Warburton, Destination Development Director

Welcome to our latest regional industry update for Dundee and Angus. We've pulled together an overview of our activity from April to June. 

With the summer in full swing, we are hearing encouraging signs from tourism and events businesses about the season ahead. We know there are still challenges however the appetite for holidaying in Scotland is strong. It's encouraging to see interest from both the domestic and international markets. 

The region is already buzzing with events following Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Dundee, Bonfest in Kirriemuir and the opening of V&A Dundee’s Tartan exhibition.  

One of the big tickets for this summer is the 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships which are just around the corner. And they are coming to Dundee and Angus. The Gran Fondo Individual Time Trials will be held on Monday 7 August – an excellent opportunity to reinforce the region’s appetite for hosting events and festivals.  

Read on for more information on our activity to support tourism and events in Dundee and Angus.

In this article:

Regional marketing

  • New and updated blogs

    Check out some of our new blogs on visitscotland.com featuring Dundee and Angus:

  • New video on tartan

    Our multimedia team have created a brand-new video Tartan Explained: in two(ish) minutes, taking viewers on a journey of tartan from its origin to the modern day.  We worked with V&A Dundee, who featured in the video promoting their current exhibition - Tartan.

  • Working with Beano and ScotRail

    Verdant Works, RRS Discovery and the Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre were featured in the Daily Record. Arbroath Harbour and RRS Discovery featured in social posts and images of V&A Dundee Tartan exhibition featured in our publishing activity with Beano and ScotRail.

  • Postcards by Hannah comes to Dundee

    Social media influencer, Postcards by Hannah, visited Dundee and experienced V&A Dundee's Tartan Exhibition, The McManus Art Gallery, RRS Discovery and eating out in Dundee. This trip was turned into a blog "How to spend a weekend in Dundee" which you can have a read and share with your visitors or watch the Instagram reel. It's already racked up 173,000 views and counting.

  • Supporting our Museums and Galleries

    Verdant Works featured within our recent campaign with Museums Galleries Scotland. Find out more about some of our new partnership marketing campaigns this summer. 

Dundee and Angus on social (April – June)

663,900 reach

Number of times Dundee and Angus content reached people on their social channels

+27,000 engagements

Reactions, likes, comments, shares and saves of Dundee and Angus posts

Reach of 146,000

Top performing post by reach on Facebook was a stunning image of Glamis Castle

Consumer PR featuring Dundee and Angus

Scotland Week 2023

Thousands of people across the US and Canada unite every year in New York to celebrate Tartan Day on 6 April, and for the last 20 years, we've participated in a week-long programme of events to promote Scotland, alongside key partners. Our Consumer PR team headed out to capitalise on the opportunity, inspiring journalists and media by pitching what's new in Scotland for 2023. We ran a series of events over the course of the week including a media lunch and Johnnie Walker whisky blending lab. As part of this trip we were accompanied by representatives from V&A Dundee to shout about the museum and Dundee.

Lunan Bay "just beachy"

Lunan Bay in Angus was included in a pitch to media on beaches to explore in Scotland ahead of the summer and featured in a round-up in the Scottish Sun (reach: 880,000). 

Corporate PR for Dundee and Angus

Some of our recent highlights include: 

  • a regional media release, featured in The Courier, highlighted the success of our travel trade event VisitScotland Connect and some of the regional businesses that attended

  • a regional media release highlighting how Dundee and Angus contributed to the success of the Year of Stories 2022

To view all the press releases, visit our media centre.

Hear from our regional iCentre teams

It’s been a busy and rather exciting time recently for our team at the Dundee iCentre at V&A Dundee. With BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend taking place at Camperdown Park last month, we had the BBC Radio 1 presenters based outside V&A Dundee. There was a lot of activity in the run-up to the music festival and Greg James popped in to see us for some local insider news!  

The Tartan exhibition continues to bring lots of visitors to see us and we’ve seen an increase in footfall via the cruise ship passengers, many of whom come into the iCentre for a map and orientation of what to do in the city. We’re pleased the open-top bus is back this summer and seems to be proving popular again this year.

Scotland's Year of Stories evaluation

Find out more about the full impact of Scotland's Year of Stories 2022 with key insights, learnings and results.
 

Read the full evaluation

Future Themed Year

We're asking for your help to scope out options for a future Themed Year. Our Themed Years celebrate the very best of Scotland and its people. Take part in our survey – it’s open until 20 July 2023.

Complete the survey

Cycling | getting into gear

Sustrans Scotland has created a great cycling routes map with support from VisitScotland, which is hosted on visitscotland.com. The map has had over 140,000 page views this year so far and includes eight long distance routes, including the River Tay Way from Kenmore to Dundee, and 61 day trip suggestions. More routes will be added to the map in future. It's a great resource to share with your visitors, especially this year as we gear up to host the first ever combined UCI Cycling World Championships.

View the map.

 

Screen grab of a cycle route map detailing the River Tay Way

2023 UCI Cycling World Championships | all you need to know

We've pulled together a handy guide for the 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships.

Find out about the events happening across Scotland and in your local area to keep your visitors "on track".

Read the article

brand identify image person on a bike raising their hands

Time Trail race in Dundee and Angus

The UCI Cycling World Championships is the first event of its kind ever created with some 13 world championships events taking place from 3 - 13 August this year across Scotland. 

Dundee and Angus will play host to the Time Trail race, which forms part of the championships on 7 August.

Find out more information about the route and schedule on their website.

Local businesses

A handy business guide has been pulled together from the organisers with information and advice for businesses in the run up to, and during, the 2023 UCI Cycling World.

Check out the guide

Taking Scotland to the trade

Our intermediary marketing teams undertake an extensive annual programme of activity. This allows us to take Scotland to the world in collaboration with our network of global tour operators and travel agents. We work with this network to promote Scottish experiences and products that are relevant to their clients.

Our platforms include enewsletters, webinars, trade events and market relevant social media channels. Some recent activity has included:

  • V&A Dundee Tartan exhibition featured in a WeChat article in April

  • Dundee's UNESCO City of Design status, V&A Dundee and RRS Discovery Point featured in our market webinar to the North America market

  • Dundee was the focus of a welcome programme to around 3000 North America travel advisors

VisitScotland Connect 2023

VisitScotland Connect is our biggest business-to-business event for the travel trade. This year, the event took place at the P&J Live in Aberdeen in April. Many tourism businesses from Dundee and Angus attended, including Glamis Castle,  Forbes of Kingennie Country Resort, and travel trade representative for the region Scotland's Tay Country to name a few. 

Event success in numbers:

  • around 175 tourism businesses in attendance
  • more than 250 global tour operators, guides and travel agents attended
  • buyers represented from 23 countries, including the UK, US, Canada, Europe, China, and Asia Pacific
  • Over 6,000 meetings held

room of people sitting around separate tables discussing business

VisitScotland Connect 2023

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