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Visit Scotland | Alba
Article published 07/07/2023

Caroline Warburton, Destination Development Director

Welcome to our latest regional industry update for Perthshire. 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 domestic and international markets.  

Our Perthshire Talks Cultural Tourism event in May welcomed 60 tourism businesses to Perth Art Gallery. At the event delegates heard about the upcoming cultural opportunities for Perth in coming months. Our regional team also enjoyed a volunteering visit at the Scottish Crannog Centre. It was great to help and see firsthand their ongoing efforts and progress towards reopening.   

The big ticket for this summer is the UCI Cycling World Championships which are just around the corner. And they are coming to Perthshire! The Gran Fondo – a 160km road race – will take place on Friday 4 August when Perthshire will be on the international cycling map.   

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

Marketing Perthshire

  • New Perthshire blogs

    Check out some of our new and refreshed blogs on VisitScotland.com featuring Perthshire:

  • Partnership Marketing

    The Hauntings exhibition at The Black Watch Castle & Museum and Perth Art Gallery both featured in the Daily Record, with Scone Palace imagery featuring in our publishing activity with Beano and ScotRail.

  • Louise May comes to Perthshire

    TikTok influncer, LouMayyy, stepped off the train at Dunkeld to experience exactly what the town has to offer. Follow LouMayy in a short video featuring an overnight stay at The Taybank, The Hermitage, lunch at ARAN Bakery and dinner at Redwood Wines. The video has racked up over 228,000 views already!

    Watch the video.

  • Supporting our Museums and Galleries

    The Black Watch Castle & Museum featured within our recent campaign with Museums Galleries Scotland. Find out more about some of our new partnership marketing campaigns this summer. 

Perthshire on social (April – June)

3.43 million reach

Number of times Perthshire content reached people on their social channels

231,000 engagements

Reactions, likes, comments, shares and saves of Perthshire posts

Reach of one million

Top performing post by reach on Facebook was our "Happy Coosday" post from Glen Lyon

Consumer PR featuring Perthshire

  • In April the team engaged with media in New York while running various media events. Our team pitched "what's new" stories for 2023 which included Murrayshall Country Estate and The Scottish Crannog Centre. 
  • Sunday Times in Australia mentioned TV’s Succession’s season 2 making mention of Perthshire on the back of a pitch. Reach: 292,000.  
  • In May The Guardian also featured Perthshire in a round-up of suggestions for great long weekends mentioning Ballathie House, Stanley Mills and Branklyn Gardens to name a few. Reach: 105,000.

Corporate PR for Perthshire

  • A supporting statement on the potential tourism boost for Aberfeldy on the back of Ed Sheeran’s latest song - The Hills of Aberfeldy  - that featured in The Herald, the Courier and the Scottish Sun   
  • press release on the success of our travel trade event, VisitScotland Connect, featuring regional businesses that attended 
  • A press release highlighting how Perth & Kinross contributed to the success of the Year of Stories 2022 
  • A supporting quote celebrating the Black Watch Castle and Museum’s 10-year anniversary

Hear from our regional iCentre teams

Our reports from the Perth iCentre are that we're seeing more international visitors around which is positive. The team are busy prepping plans for an event the weekend of the Gran Fondo and have attended an event at the Perth College promoting raising awareness of the iCentre services. 

In Pitlochry, again the team are also reporting an increase in international visitors coming into the iCentre. Event planning is underway, so make sure you keep an eye on the Perthshire Facebook group for any news in the coming months.

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 our support, 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, seven of which are in Perthshire, with three of these focused around the Cateran Eco-museum.

More routes will be added to the map in future and it’s a great resource to share with your visitors, especially this year as we gear up to host the first ever combined 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

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. 

Perth & Kinross will play host to the Gran Fondo, which forms part of the championships on Friday 4 August.

The organisers of the UCI World Cycling Championships have provided an update to residents and businesses in Perthshire around road closures associated with the Gran Fondo which is available online.

Road closure timings

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 Perthshire attended, including Land Rover Experience Scotland, Auchingarrich Wildlife Park, Fonab Castle & Dunkeld House Hotel and Perth Museum 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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