Scarborough Evening News: Scarborough Evening News

A MARKETING campaign which has promoted Scarborough’s along with the rest of the county across the globe has been named as the best in the world.

Tourism board Welcome to Yorkshire has won the World Travel Award for the World’s Leading Marketing Campaign for the second year running.

In the past two years the campaign, which promotes Yorkshire as a tourism destination, has beaten organisations and destinations including Brazil, India, South Africa, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Etihad, Kuoni, Expedia, Visit London, Thomas Cook and Visit Scotland.

The award was presented on Wednesday evening at a ceremony in Doha, Qatar.

Janet Deacon, who is the Scarborough-based area director for Welcome to Yorkshire, said: “This is absolutely fabulous news, to win the World Travel Awards once is a great achievement but to win it twice is phenomenal. This just goes to show what can be achieved with public and private sector organisations working together to promote the great things we have on offer in Yorkshire.”

Equally delighted with the win was Gary Verity, chief executive of Welcome to Yorkshire.

He said: “Yorkshire is a world beater and winning this award for the second year running proves it.

“We have gone head-to-head with some of the best brands with bigger budgets than us and come out on top again.

“The award is testament to the 25,000 brilliant businesses that make up Yorkshire’s tourism industry; their quality ensures we are able to compete on a global scale with the best in the world.

“It also shows how far we have come in three years since Welcome to Yorkshire launched, that we now judge ourselves against the world’s best and not just our competitors in the UK.”

A total of 25 million people have seen the Welcome to Yorkshire marketing campaigns, just one strand of the high-profile promotion of the county, which also includes innovative use of social media, development of the award-winning yorkshire.com and regional, national and international media interest.