LONDON – June 16th, 2010 – VisitBritain, the national tourism agency, has today launched a ground-breaking new website that gives customers from around the world a unique opportunity to be inspired to come to Britain.
VisitBritain.com will be VisitBritain’s main platform for communicating with its customers, focusing on serving up dynamic and personalised content tailored to the country the visitor comes from and written in their language.
The site is a key part of VisitBritain’s innovative digital strategy using social media, online content and mobile to enthuse potential visitors to Britain. With 95% user generated image content throughout, the engaging new version of visitbritain.com will provide an immersive, multilingual online experience, including the latest social media platforms and magazine-style travel features which will showcase the wonderful experiences Britain has to offer the overseas visitor.
VisitBritain recognises that social media has become crucial in the way families decide which holiday to go on, and so syndication and aggregation are enabled within the site so that all content is available across a wide range of travel sites and blogs.
Engaging photo galleries to bring to life Britain’s diversity of people, places, cultures and activities will be enabled via Flickr. Visitors will also be able to see how easy it is to explore Britain by means of maps presented throughout the website alongside inspiring videos and images.
Laurence Bresh, director of marketing, VisitBritain said: “The new website is key to delivering our strategy to inspire visitors to visit Britain before, during and after the Olympic Games.
“Visitbritain.com regularly wins awards as the best tourist office web site in the world. But we don’t want to rest on our laurels - the new site moves even further ahead of the competition by fully embracing social media platforms, online video and personalised content.
“The site has been in development for a year and we have worked hard, along with our supplier SapientNitro, to fully tie together the inspirational and functional aspects of planning a holiday which our customers have asked for. If you see a picture in the interactive gallery, it also shows you where it is located on a map of Britain along with what there is to do around the area, places to visit, places to stay and directs the visitor to our online shop to help them buy travel products that will enable them to make planning their trip as simple as possible.
“Our current 32 million verseas visitors contribute £16.5 billion of revenue to the UK economy, we have stretching targets to grow that figure, so it is vital that we inspire them and make it straightforward to plan their visit here. The site is available in 22 languages to ensure our reach is truly global.”
SapientNitro was selected to design VisitBritain’s new online experience.
Nigel Vaz, Managing Director, SapientNitro added: “VisitBritain.com illustrates perfectly why customer experience is absolutely key: after all, overseas visitors are much more likely to be tempted to visit Britain if they are excited and inspired by what they first see online. We’ve worked closely with VisitBritain to develop a content-rich digital experience to inspire them for future travel and to encourage them to share positive feedback with friends and family. Users should expect the unexpected with the revamped visitbritain.com.”
About SapientNitro
SapientNitroSM, part of Sapient®, is the world’s first customer experience company. We create and engineer highly relevant experiences that accelerate business growth and fuel brand advocacy for our clients. By combining multi-channel marketing, multi-channel commerce, and the technology that binds them, we influence customer behavior across the spectrum of content, communication and commerce channels, resulting in deeper, more meaningful relationships between customers and brands. SapientNitro services global leaders such as Citi, The Coca-Cola Company, Mars, Singapore Airlines, Target, and Vodafone through our operations in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. For more information, visit www.sapientnitro.com or follow us on Twitter @sapientnitro.
About VisitBritain
VisitBritain, the national tourism agency, is responsible for inspiring the world to explore Britain and for developing the UK’s visitor economy. With representatives in 35 countries around the world, we are the international tourism promotional arm for Britain and the nations and regions of Britain.
VisitBritain is a Non-Departmental Public Body whose prime sponsor is the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
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Sapient is a registered service mark of Sapient Corporation.