Eleanor Harris: An Eye For British Airways i360

Attracting new tourists

We will be welcoming the world to Brighton next year. My team and I had a busy week exhibiting at World Travel Market in London where we were promoting the i360 and Brighton to the travel media, trade buyers and bloggers from the UK and overseas. More than 50,000 travel industry professionals attend the annual event and with a constant stream of enquiries, our sales team Pippa and Sophie felt they’d met thousands!
We were the only organisation representing Brighton so we played an important role in promoting the city. Most international visitors stay in London but do day trips out of London. Traditionally this has been a well worn path to Stonehenge, Windsor Castle, Oxford and Stratford-upon-Avon and more recently the Harry Potter studio tour. We believe a day out in Brighton – just one hour by train from Central London – is an attractive alternative.

Luckily the feedback we had is that the industry sees the opening of the i360 as an exciting addition. The kudos of the i360 being the world’s first vertical cable car and world’s tallest observation tower created by the London Eye architects is compelling. For the international market, we will have a multimedia tour in 10 different languages and it helps that many countries have had a stake in building the i360 including Holland, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Austria and Australia. One major trade partner can deliver tens of thousands of visitors so this is an important aspect of how we will deliver our business plan.
My favourite event at World Travel Market was a speed networking event with bloggers. I met around 20 family bloggers who review days out in the UK and were really excited about bringing their kids to Brighton. My colleague Anna met bloggers specialising in LGBT travel, luxury travel and food; many of which have more followers than the traditional media. One for example has around 740,000 followers on Instagram and another has 157,000 followers on Twitter.
All the new tourists we bring to Brighton will spend money in the city’s shops, restaurants, and hotels, generating more income and jobs for
the city.
Twitter: @TheBrightoni360 @Eleanor_Harris, Facebook: Brighton-i360, Pinterest: Brightoni360, www.brightoni360.co.uk
YouTube channel: Brighton i360