Great Days Out campaign 2025

Article published 10/04/2025

Now that spring has sprung, many attractions and experiences have re-opened for the season. Following the success of our Great Days Out campaign in previous years, it returned for 2025 from 12 March to 20 April.

Targeting Scots, our campaign aimed to highlight that a day out or break in Scotland is good for the soul. We wanted to encourage Scots to get out and explore more of their own country and experience all that’s on offer this spring and summer.

Our campaign promoted affordable and memorable days out for families, couples, and friends, using audience-appropriate channels. This included print, digital, radio, and social media content around the following themes:

good for wellness – re-energise with a spring reset
good for culture – explore Scotland’s cultural gems
good for foodies – support local businesses and tantalise your tastebuds
good for the great outdoors – immerse yourself in nature this spring
good for island adventures – escape and enjoy island experiences and events
good for events and festivals – there’s so much going on you won’t want to miss
responsible tourism – green travel and shop local

Key campaign statistics

76.8 million

tourism day visits in Scotland by GB residents

£4 billion

total tourism day visit spend in Scotland by GB residents

£52

average daily spend per tourism day visit in Scotland

194

attractions and experiences showcased in the 2025 campaign

Market volume and value source: GBTS, day visits (2024)

Working in partnership

To support industry and to help make visitors’ experiences as affordable and responsible as possible, we’ve worked closely with organisations such as:

The Association of Scottish Visitor Attractions (ASVA) – inviting members to provide stories and updates on anything new that shouldn’t be missed
ScotRail – highlighting their great value Kids for a Quid travel promotion
Museums Galleries Scotland – featuring a number of their sites across Scotland
Good Journey – raising awareness of the car-free travel discounts on offer for selected attractions
Scotland Loves Local – encouraging Scots to think local first and support local businesses

The campaign featured 78 ASVA members including a number of members who provided us with updates including:

Aberdeen Science Centre
Camera Obscura
Dalkeith Country Park
Dynamic Earth
Edinburgh Zoo
Highland Wildlife Park
Holyrood Distillery
Hopetoun House
Kirkcaldy Galleries
Loch Katrine & SS Sir Walter Scott
Mercat Tours
National Mining Museum of Scotland
Scottish Seabird Centre
Stirling Old Town Jail
Tall Ship Glenlee
UNESCO New Lanark
V&A Dundee
Perth Festival of Arts
Scottish Crannog Centre

See our Great Days Out webpage on visitscotland.com

Press and radio

We’ve worked closely with News UK on a publishing partnership, targeting Scots. This included online articles on thescottishsun.co.uk and thetimes.com, on-page print ads, and multi-page cover wraps and pullouts in The Sun and The Times Alba newspapers.

These native articles and advertorials highlight some of the best days out in Scotland. They covered cultural attractions, outdoor fun, family fun, and food and drink experiences.

These News UK features were supported with digital banners and social media traffic drivers on the aforementioned websites.

Good for the Soul spread in The Times

We’ve been working with Bauer radio, broadcasting 10” and 30” Days Out advertising trails, 40” presenter trails featuring New Lanark and Loch Katrine.

We also helped Bauer pull together "Where’s Molly?" daily competitions that ran between 31 March and 4 April.

These featured Molly describing an attraction in Scotland. Listeners were asked to call in with their best guesses for the locations that were being described for a chance to win a daily prize of £500, which Bauer provided.

The stations received an overwhelming response to our the competitions. This resulted in jammed phone lines for 15 minutes when our campaign went live.

The five locations that Molly talked about were:

The Kelpies
Highland Wildlife Park
National Museum of Scotland
Stirling Castle
Riverside Museum

Radio activity is live across multiple Bauer stations in Scotland, including Forth, Clyde, Tay, Northsound, Moray Firth Radio, Central FM, Kingdom FM, Nations Radio, and Original 106FM.

See our Great Days Out webpage on visitscotland.com

Meta campaign

As part of our multi-touchpoint approach for the campaign, we created targeted activity across Meta channels (Instagram and Facebook). These target Scots with ads, driving viewers to the campaign landing page.

See our Great Days Out webpage on visitscotland.com