Member FAQs

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Are Make It York part of City of York Council?

Make It York Ltd is the Destination Management Organisation for York. It is a private limited company limited by shares and has an independent Board of Directors. Its sole shareholder is City of York Council (CYC). CYC currently contributes 6.7% of Make It York’s total revenues.

More information about the wider remit of Make It York can be found at makeityork.com

How do Make It York work with the York BID?

Make It York work closely with all key stakeholders in the city including the York BID, who deliver a variety of projects to improve the city environment. Make It York works collaboratively with York BID on a series of events and initiatives within the city centre including the city’s winter lights, York Ice Trail and Yorkshire Day.

For more information on YorkBID click here

How does Make It York work with Welcome to Yorkshire?

Make It York works with Welcome to Yorkshire through the Visit York brand. This includes ensuring that York as a destination is given profile where appropriate by sharing content, cross promoting where possible and keeping the York pages on Yorkshire.com up to date.

For information on our UK wide trade and industry partner organisations click here

What changes have there been at Make It York?

As part of Make It York’s Phase Two strategy, the company has gone through a series of changes in order to simplify and streamline its marketing messaging. In simple terms, the five original Make It York brands (Make It York, Make It York for Business, Science City York, Visit York and VisitYork4Meetings) will be reduced to just two - Make It York and Visit York.

Visit York will be the consumer-facing side of the organisation, continuing its focus on the tourism sector, whilst Make It York will focus on wider economic development. The work delivered primarily under the banners of VisitYork4Meetings, Make It York for Business and Science City York will be absorbed into the new combined teams, with businesses able to contact the core team across the organisation.

The move was accompanied by an internal restructure, with initial plans to recruit into three brand new roles created as part of Make It York’s growth approach. Four members of staff have also left the company. This is part of a strategy for growth, and was not a cost-cutting exercise.

Who should I be talking to at Make It York?

With regards to your Visit York membership, your contacts remain largely unchanged. A full list of the team is listed here.

How do the changes to Make It York impact my Visit York membership?

Visit York activity will remain unchanged and will continue in the same way as it does now. Make It York is committed to leisure and business tourism promotion through the Visit York brand.

The main changes relate to how activity is organised within Make It York and will be as follows:

• Creation of new core teams within Make It York. The Marketing and Communications Team will work across the whole organisation, with dedicated leisure and business functions. A new post has been created which will be a dedicated Consumer Communications Manager, focusing specifically on destination PR.
• Creation of a new Head of Marketing and Communications role. This will absorb the Head of Visit York position.
• VisitYork4Meetings will no longer exist as a stand-alone brand and business tourism marketing will delivered under Visit York.

This restructure in activity will in the longer-term open up more possibilities for collaboration across the organisation and a wider scope of business support for our members.

What does the change in brand really mean for business tourism activity?

York will continue to market York as a destination for business tourism. All marketing activity will now fit into the wider Visit York strategy with the intention that business tourism focused streams of campaigns will be created. We will continue to showcase York and our venues to conference and event organisers through our website, attendance at key industry exhibitions, with Visit Britain and through our membership of the Meetings Industry Association (MIA) and the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA).

The noticeable difference going forwards will be a change in focus from the traditional ‘conference desk’ model to an inspiration hub for conference organisers. The intention is to move to a commission free referral model, with an enquiry system from the website that goes straight to our venues. This is currently a work in progress and we will keep members updated. Reducing the administration around enquiries will allow us to focus attention on inspiring organisers to choose York as a conference destination and explore new opportunities and new markets.

More detail can be found in the Business Tourism Update.

Will Visit York membership subscriptions increase?

The membership year runs from 1^st April- 31^st March. Any increases will be decided on during the budgeting for the forth coming financial year. Membership subscriptions have been held for the last four years

When will my membership be renewed?

Following the rapidly developing situation with the outbreak of COVID-19 we are looking at how best to support our Visit York Members. In light of this we will be deferring all membership renewals (due 1^st April) until 1^st June. This will also include any Visit York members who pay by Direct Debit, no payments will be collected in April or May. You do not need to cancel your Direct Debit, we will ensure that no payments are taken.

The membership team are working remotely and can be contacted via email or phone. Please do keep us up to date and we will support where possible.

PJ.Edgar@makeityork.com

07908 402084

For support and updates on COVID-19, please also check our support webpage here: https://www.makeityork.com/coronavirus-update/