Overall Strategy

Our overall vision is simple! We want Kent to be the first choice destination for day visits and short breaks.

We are confident we can meet this challenge by working together with our private and public sector partners to make our county stand out in the market place, to harness all investment opportunities and enhance our visitor offer.

Our key measurable objectives are:

  • To increase day and short break visits to Kent
  • To increase the value of tourism to Kent
  • Encourage visitors to use ‘green’ transport for environmental benefits (and increase public transport borne visitors to destinations and attractions)
  • To promote Kent as a good value destination
  • To build a database of positive visitor reviews of Kent (user-generated content) 

Our target markets:

  • Domestic - with focus on:
    o Kent Residents and the Visiting Friends and Relative Market
    o Londoners (and those visiting the capital)
  • Near Europeans (France, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany)
  • Overseas Visitor Day Trips Out of London – looking for that quintessential English experience as part of their visit
  • Media
  • Travel Trade

So how do we reach these markets and achieve our objectives?

Our marketing activity is split into what we call “core” activity and specific campaign activity.

Our core activity includes:

The Visit Kent Magazine
Our glossy destination magazine produced in association with Archant KOS Media.  50,000 printed versions annually and 3 seasonal e-versions distributed to a database of over 500,000. 

Digital
Our award winning destination website attracts in excess of 2 million visitors per year.  Other digital activities include a monthly enewsletter programme, social networking, new technologies and an image library.

PR
Our dedicated in-house PR team and supporting specialist agencies deliver in excess of £6 m in advertising equivalent value (AVE) coverage.

Travel Trade
Our award winning trade team proactively targets the travel trade market to ensure maximum coverage for Kent.

Our campaigns includes:

Kent Contemporary
Our brand campaign dedicated to repositioning Kent as a contemporary, forward looking and engaging visitor destination, shifting traditional perceptions of the ‘Garden of England’ into the 21st Century using stunning visual photography enhance this message.  

2FOR1
Running for its fourth consecutive year our highly successful 2FOR1 campaign offers discounted entry into a variety of Kent’s top venues (the campaign is run in partnership with Southeastern, Stagecoach and Arriva)

International Campaign
We actively target the near European markets of France, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany and thanks to our successful “GREET” and “CAST” Interreg bids our international is now much enhanced. 

My Kent
We have made a brave step in the world of destination marketing!  Rather than presenting potential visitors with “official” tourist information about the county we have passed the promotional power over to our residents and past visitors and given them the user generated content website www.mykent.co.uk  

Golf
Building on the legacy of The Open in 2011 our golf campaign continues with a number of specific activities all aimed at raising the profile of Kent as a golfing destination.