Visit Scotland | Alba
Article published 14/08/2024

Events deliver memorable experiences and showcase Scotland, our values, and assets globally. This helps to attract people to live and work, study, visit, and do business here.

They strengthen Scotland’s position as a world-leading tourism destination. This enhances the reputation of our places, our sectors, and our communities; both domestically and internationally. It also builds a sense of pride.

Events give people a reason to travel to destinations; whether that’s from overseas visitors looking to attend a “bucket-list” gig or festival, or locals exploring areas which they haven’t visited before.

Events often attract media coverage and generate a social media buzz. This extends reach, interest, and influence in a destination.

In this article:

Visitor marketing

Summer events and festivals were featured in campaigns across our key target markets of the UK, US, and Germany.

  • Events featured in the activity included:

    • Highland Games taking place across Scotland
    • the Edinburgh Festivals
    • the Open Golf Championship at Royal Troon
    • The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo (which featured in our New York City Scotland Week activity with broadcaster NBC)

  • The activity included core campaigns with:

    • Expedia (UK and US)
    • Culture Tip (US)

  • The activity included partnership campaigns with:

    • DFDS Ferries (Germany and Netherlands)
    • golf marketing partners (US)
    • LNER (UK) and ScotRail / DC Thomson (Scotland)

Further promotion of events and festivals are secured throughout our event activations, including:

  • across media and broadcast coverage
  • via on our own channel content, including blogs and web articles, social media, and email

Maximising global PR

Lead times for our media contacts can be up to six months in advance. So, we use a mix of tactics to get our messages included within their editorial calendars and encourage travel to Scotland for upcoming months.

Comms bundles go out to more than 2,500 global consumer media contacts include regular “What’s On” sections. These provide the opportunity to highlight large and small scale festivals run across the country.

Edinburgh Festivals, Fèis Ìle, The Eden Festival, East Neuk Festival, and HebCeltFest have all featured recently.

A hook that generated interest amongst our media contacts as part of a Highland Games focus in May, for example, was the Kinloch Rannoch Games and its new female Chieftain.

Media interest can often turn into direct coverage, future press visit activity, broadcast and interview opportunities. For example, a recent interview saw Aberdeen Maritime Festival and Dundee Food & Drink Festival mentioned on BBC Good Morning Scotland as part of a family days out feature.

We’ll build on summer festival momentum with upcoming autumn events and festivals roundups.

 

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Related links

06/08/2024

Business events update

Find out how we support business (or MICE) events to boost Scotland's visitor economy.