Edinburgh’s business tourism offering is to be promoted for the first time under a single, cohesive creative and digital strategy.
The ‘Make it Edinburgh’ marketing push aims to raise the Scottish capital’s profile with meeting and event planners.
It comes as the city faces a potential threat to future growth due to a range of external factors.
The range from ongoing uncertainty over Brexit, a potential second Scottish independence referendum and the rise of “subvention funding incentives” by competitor cities.
‘Make it Edinburgh’ has been created through the collaboration of private and public organisations operating in the conference and meeting industry.
The biggest ever joint partnership of its kind within the city, a £40,000 investment by the VisitScotland Growth Fund has match-funded support from flagship partners Convention Edinburgh, Edinburgh Hotel Association, Edinburgh Airport, Edinburgh International Conference Centre, Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and Edinburgh Tourism Action Group.
Convention Edinburgh and its partners secured 114 meetings for the city last year, generating over £74 million for the local economy.
Amanda Ferguson, head of business tourism at Convention Edinburgh said: “Edinburgh has been criticised in the past for not being as ‘joined up’ as other competitor cities, but this campaign will prove otherwise.
“Never before has the city undertaken a marketing campaign on this scale, bringing together private sector partners, working collaboratively through Marketing Edinburgh, the city’s Destination Marketing Organisation.
“The message we aim to promote is that Edinburgh is synonymous with innovation, discovery and thinking, a rich history of heritage, full of inspiring locations, buildings and people. Hence conference organisers should ‘Make it Edinburgh’. The campaign gives us a powerful collective voice that will help us develop our business tourism offering and promote Edinburgh’s world leading Centres of Excellence.”
VisitScotland head of business events Neil Brownlee added: “Business events are vital to the Scottish economy and are an integral way of promoting this country as a place to live, work, visit and invest.
“With its wealth of world-class venues, attractions and expertise, Edinburgh has a huge amount to offer the meetings industry and we are delighted to support this exciting new marketing campaign through the VisitScotland Growth Fund.”