Bumper First Year for Glasgow City Marketing Bureau

 

At the end of its first year of operation Glasgow City Marketing Bureau (GCMB) reports an increase of 8% in conventions sales over 2004/05 while conference hotel bookings were up by a remarkable £1 million.

 

Glasgow City Marketing Bureau was established on April 1 last year following the re-organisation of Scottish tourism and subsequent creation of 14 VisitScotland network offices in place of 14 area tourist boards.

 

Glasgow alone set up a public limited company, GCMB, to replace the dissolved Greater Glasgow and Clyde Valley Tourist Board (GGCVTB), with responsibility for managing the new Glasgow: Scotland with style brand and to run the city’s Convention Bureau.

 

Figures for the first year of operation show:

 

Scott Taylor, the chief executive of GCMB, said: “In its first twelve months of operation Glasgow City Marketing Bureau has achieved significant success both in growing international conventions business and in securing conferences from UK associations in what has been a flat marketplace.

 

 

 

“The economic impact of conventions and meetings to Glasgow in the past year has been tangible, and they will bring in 376,500 delegate days.  That means one in five hotel rooms sold in Glasgow is to a conference delegate.”

 

The Glasgow: Scotland with style campaign was launched in March 2004 with a budget of £1.5 million.  In 2005 £1.83 million was committed for strategic positioning of the brand through until the end of 2007 comprising £1.14 million from Glasgow City Council and £687,509 from the European Regional Development Fund.

 

This included the sponsorship of the Glasgow: Scotland with style clipper taking part in the 2005-2006 Round-the-World Yacht Race.  The race has secured more than £2 million worth of television coverage for Glasgow reaching a worldwide audience of over 550 million.

 

Taylor said the Glasgow: Scotland with style brand had been fundamental to growing tourist numbers to the city. Hotel occupancy has been 2% higher than last year for the whole of the year with demand outstripping supply.

 

“City branding is red hot at the moment and Glasgow is at the forefront of city branding globally,” he said.

 

“Glasgow is recognised as achieving what other cities aspire to: re-positioning and re-engineering the city product and image.”

 

Brand and tourism experts are praising GCMB for the way it is successfully using the Glasgow: Scotland with style brand.

 

Dr Graham Hankinson of the International Institute for Tourism, Culture and Development at London Metropolitan University, said: “Three of the most successful approaches to destination branding are: the linking of a city's proposition to a real personality; capitalising on a city's architecture both past and present and focusing on a high profile event.

 

“To combine all three as the Scotland with style campaign does is to my knowledge unique. From what I see and hear of the investment in Glasgow's buildings and infrastructure, the city is putting its heart where its mouth is. Successful destination branding is not only about imaginative communications, it is about delivering the brand promise through organisational partnerships across the public/private divide and Glasgow has demonstrated once again that it has a flare for this!”

 

Stephen Page, Professor of Tourism at Stirling University said: “Glasgow is consistently ahead of the game on city branding and is always held up in urban tourism literature as a city that has used branding to create a major destination status in a difficult area as the commentators stated in the 1980s and 1990s.  

 

“Many US cities have been branding for a long time too, but in the case of Glasgow the tangible benefits are evident from the longevity of the campaigns and imagery that have been developed around the branding - also it is seen internationally as a case of best practice in the area - with a great deal of interest reflected in the requests (for information). 

 

“The tangible benefits are reflected in the city's high profile as a tourist destination and its ability to raise itself to bid for major events, and the events focus confirmed that it is certainly a market leader as a multi-purpose tourist city.”

 

Richard Tibbott, chairman of Locum Consulting in West Sussex, Britain’s first specialist destination consultancy company, said: “Locum Consulting advise many city destinations and particularly welcome the way in which Glasgow has developed its brand identity within the national branding context. Glasgow: Scotland with style leaps forward from the transformational and dramatic changes of Glasgow whilst celebrating the contemporary edge that both differentiates this city in Europe and extends the brand attributes of Scotland".

 

Businesses and civic organisations across the city have been enthusiastically supporting the brand, and membership of the Convention Bureau has grown by one third in the past 12 months from 181 to 240.

 

 

 

 

 

To access an image of GCMB’s Head of Convention Bureau Molly Doheny with sales team please click on the following link: https://secure.seeglasgow.com/cb.jpg

 

Further information from:

 

Stephen Breen Ambassador Programme Public Relations

Glasgow City Marketing Bureau

Tel: +44 (0) 141 566 0833.  Fax: +44 (0) 141 566 0855

E Mail: stephen.breen@seeglasgow.com

 

(or)

 

Senior Manager - Public Relations

Glasgow City Marketing Bureau

Tel: +44 (0) 141 566 0831

E Mail: moira.dyer@seeglasgow.com

 

1. The figure of £63.1 million represents new conference business booked by GCMB in the financial year 05/06.  The economic benefit to Glasgow will be felt in the coming years when the conferences are held in the city.

 

2. Funded by Glasgow City Council with contributions from the private sector, the not-for-profit Glasgow City Marketing Bureau has 40 staff engaged in national and international activity comprising:

 

3. VisitScotland’s Glasgow network office, leads on tourist information services and leisure tourism.