Tourism hopes to capitalise on Royal Wedding goodwill

06 May 2011 by
Tourism hopes to capitalise on Royal Wedding goodwill

The UK's tourist industry is hoping to capitalise on the enormous goodwill and joy created by last week's Royal Wedding.

While the day itself saw a million people descend upon London to join the wedding celebration of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the event marks the start of a four year campaign - to be officially launched in July - to deliver an extra four million overseas visitors spending an extra £2b over the next four years.

"Our work really begins now on promoting the UK around the globe and we couldn't have hoped for a better start with the Royal Wedding and the glorious weather we enjoyed in the run up to the event," said a http://www.caterersearch.com/Articles/2011/04/27/337973/The-Royal-Wedding-a-great-boost-for-hospitality.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">VisitBritain ](http://www.visitbritain.org/)spokesman.

The nearly 4,500 accredited international journalists who descended on London to cover the wedding used the opportunity to film numerous tourism reports from around the UK, with the blue skies and sunshine showing the regional towns, cities and landscape in a positive light.


ST ANDREWS

Specific interest has been shown in St Andrews, where the newly named Duke and Duchess of Cambridge met at university, and the island of Anglesey, where the couple now live.

[VisitScotland](http://www.visitscotland.org/), which says the tourist wedding market is already worth £80m to the Scottish economy, is promoting the nation's royal romantic credentials by targeting over a million people through direct marketing and hosting international press trips.

Jane Frazer, director of sales and marketing at the five-star, 209-bedroom [Fairmont St Andrews](http://www.fairmont.com/standrews), said the wedding has given a fantastic boost to the hotel, as well as the town and region.

"Not only has it given us exposure to a global audience, but perhaps more importantly it has shown the world that our historic town has so much more to offer alongside the golf for which it is most famous," she said.

"Being the place where the royal romance began, we always knew Fairmont St Andrews would attract attention but the level of interest has been phenomenal and now millions of people worldwide have heard about our resort and know Prince William was a member.

"We've experienced high levels of occupancy during the week of the wedding as well as enjoying a significant increase in enquiries from North America in the days following it."

Meanwhile, Anglesey, which lost most of its US business following 9/11, has now been put on the world map, thanks to the Royal Wedding. In recent weeks the island has hosted visits from more than 50 international TV crews from the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Brazil. Hotels across Anglesey are currently reporting a 20% increase in business.

Neil Rowland, chief executive of [Tre-Ysgawen](http://www.treysgawen-hall.co.uk/), a four star, 29-bedroom hotel in the centre of the island, said the wedding had been fantastic news for Anglesey.

"The extent of the exposure has been far greater than anything we could have imagined," he said. "Our occupancy for April was 23% up on the same month last year.

"Like many other regional hotels, we have had a difficult time over the past couple of years and we were originally expecting this year to be worse than 2010, but thankfully that has all changed now."


THE ROYAL WEDDING IN FIGURES

â- In a report produced on the eve of the nuptials, the average revenue per booking was shown to rise by as much as 383.7% on 30 April compared with the same day in 2010, 215.1% on the preceding weekend and 210.9% for the post-wedding weekend.

â- Room rates were said to increase by 134% for the wedding weekend, year-on-year, while the length of stay increased by more than 100% over 2010, with a rise of 71.4% over the weekend before and 90.2% over the weekend after.

[Buckingham Palace reveals menu for Royal Wedding reception >> ](http://www.caterersearch.com/Articles/2011/05/03/338096/buckingham-palace-reveal-menu-for-royal-wedding-reception.htm)Hotel revenue per booking jumps nearly 400% for Royal Wedding weekend >>[The Royal Wedding - a great boost for hospitality >>

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