High Spending Americans Targeted in New Tourism Drive
16/02/2009
Kate will be attending the US Educational Travel Conference in New Orleans, the largest and most important event for educational travel planners and tour operators in the US. Kate will be promoting York as part of the marketing consortium Britain's Heritage Cities, which pools resources in order to be able to market effectively in the States.Kate said, ‘the United States Alumni Associations are very different to here in the UK. Once a student has graduated from a US University they have a very strong allegiance to it and educational tour operators then target their upmarket holiday packages to them. This market can be extremely lucrative and is relatively easy for us to reach. Our mission is to ensure that York and its sister heritage cites are included in the programmes of top US educational operators such as Contiki, Discover Europe and Collette Vacations.'
Around one hundred travel planners and a hundred US tour operators will be attending the three day event. Their clients are high earning and high spending graduates of all ages, often either pre or post family when they have the most time to travel.
The aim of Kate's mission is to network with the operators and ensure that York is featured in their travel magazines and programmes. By meeting the operators face to face she will have the opportunity to influence which destinations they include in their holiday packages. Appointments have already been set up with key university travel planners from top name universities such as Harvard, the University of Mississippi and Boston.
The Educational Travel market in the US is perfect for attracting the high spend 'baby boomer' traveller looking for a holiday that offers much more than relaxation or good weather. All US universities have extremely active Alumni Associations which offer travel programmes to their members - these programmes typically include a seven night holiday that take participants behind the scenes of what is usually seen by a visitor and include lectures from experts in their fields.
Kate continued, ‘We aim to build on our relationships with these organisations and use the strength of the dollar to attract these high spending groups. Literary, historical and architectural based trips are of huge interest in the States. York and its sister heritage cities have the perfect product match for this market and we hope that because of the current exchange rates, more US visitors will choose a holiday in York this year.' ends -
For more information, please contact Kay Hyde, PR Manager, Visit York, Tel: 01904 554451, email: kh@visityork.org
Notes to Editors:
The 2009 Educational Travel Conference takes place between 19-21 February
The conference website is www.travellearning.com