Inbound tourism: a new strategy for the North East

Jen Rea, Inbound Tourism Manager at Newcastle International Airport, explains how a new inbound tourism strategy can benefit businesses and communities across the North East.

Newcastle International Airport recently launched a new inbound tourism strategy. This is a major new part of our agenda here at the airport, with the aim of increasing numbers of inbound passengers arriving in the North East. As well as helping us to secure capacity increases on our existing routes and make a case for new routes to and from the region, this strategy will benefit the whole of the North East – not just tourists and those operating within the tourism sector, but the wider North East business sector and local communities as well.

The North East has a fantastic offering but there’s always more we can be doing in terms of attracting tourists and visitors to the region and Newcastle International is now taking a leading role in this.

We’re working to bring in more tourists who will in turn spend more money in the region – hotels, bars, restaurants and visitor attractions can all benefit from this, but the additional connectivity and routes to and from the North East which we also hope to support will benefit businesses across a range of sectors.

As a public-private partnership, Newcastle Airport already operates collaboratively, and we hope to see more partnership working as we continue to work with colleagues across the North East to roll out this new tourism strategy.

In light of this, we very much welcomed the North East Strategic Economic Plan which identifies leisure and tourism, and the need for joint working in this area, as a key part of the offer in the North East. We look forward to working closely with colleagues at the North East LEP to push forward this agenda for the region.

www.visitnortheastengland.com is the new inbound tourism site for the region, helping us to promote the North East in a range of overseas markets. We’re working with businesses to showcase our fantastic region to tourists across the globe and are looking forward to adding even more content and functionality, including ticketing, to the site in the near future.

There’s no doubt that an increase in tourists and the accompanying tourism spend will help us to create more jobs in the North East, especially in our hospitality, catering and leisure businesses. Tourism is already the fourth largest sector in the North East and we want to work together to make the very best of the opportunities that tourism presents for the region.

Jen Rea, Inbound Tourism Manager, Newcastle International Airport.