Visit County Durham take world tourism stage

The chief executive of regional tourism agency Visit County Durham is taking to the world stage this week to promote its digital marketing work at the World Travel Market.

The B2B tourism event draws over 40,000 respresentatives from a range of destinations and industry sectors.

Melanie Sensicle will present Durham’s new web-based app, Virtual Lumiere at the event as part of a ‘Marketing Britain Digitally’ focus, alongside Visit England, Visit Wales and Visit Cornwall.

Steve Keenan, founder of Travel Perspective marketing consultancy and facilitator for the session, invited Visit County Durham after seeing their most recent digital marketing tool.

He said: “At Travel Perspective, we are increasingly aware of the progress being shown by domestic tourism agencies who are marketing Britain through digital and social media innovation.

“Visit County Durham’s new web-based app ticks all of those boxes and we look forward to them joining us at World Travel Market to tell us more about Virtual Lumiere.”

Virtual Lumiere was inspired by Durham’s extraordinary light festival, Lumiere, which returns to the city this November. The app lets people select from over 70 iconic images of the county, apply them in a range of artistic ways with the click/touch of a button to a virtual 3D model of Durham Cathedral and then select a soundtrack to go with their artwork.

They can then share it via their social network across the world, making the beauty of Lumiere and Durham a global experience.

Melanie Sensicle added: “We are doing some innovative things in Durham, finding new ways to promote the destination and capitalise on the profile of key events. We are delighted to have been invited to present our Virtual Lumiere web app at World Travel Market.”

World Travel Market takes place November 4 to 7, with the Marketing Britain Digitally session taking place on Tuesday, November 5.

The Virtual Lumiere web app can be found at www.thisisdurham.com/VirtualLumiere