Northern UK attracts many

Indian travellers are now visiting Britain beyond iconic London to see more of Manchester and the UK’s northern regions. Manchester is not only popular for sports, but also offers cultural experiences and cuisine.

Kanchan Nath

The cricket world cup proved a great draw for visitors from India to the UK. Sharing statistics on the number of Indians that have visited Manchester, Sheona Southern, Managing Director, Marketing Manchester, said, “India is a really big market for the UK, half a billion pounds are spent by Indian visitors. Nearly half a million Indians visited the UK last year and the majority preferred to go to London. However, more visitors are now coming to Manchester. Last year, our first campaign took off. We attracted 20,000 additional visitors from India.”

The India-Pakistan world cup was the biggest watched game. It was a sell-out, with 65,000 people in the stadium. 40% of those people were Indian travellers

The main attraction of Manchester remains sports. “There is cricket as well as football; we have two premier football clubs which have got really good tours. Last year was a big year for us with the cricket world cup. The India-Pakistan match was the biggest watched game. The match was a sell-out, with 65,000 people in the stadium; 40 per cent of those people were Indian travellers. In terms of the people watching, two-thirds was an Indian audience. It was a billion people watching that match. Lots of eyes were on Manchester. It was awesome in terms of the exposure for Manchester,” she added.

Citing the other reasons to visit Manchester, she said, “Culture is also important for us, we have great museums and theatres, we get all the west-end shows in Manchester and museums are free. Half an hour away from Manchester is the beautiful countryside. We have got four national parks surrounding Manchester. So, you have the city buzz and a beautiful countryside.”

Elaborating on future plans, she said that 2020 is the second year of campaigning for Manchester. “From January to March, we will be going for a digital campaign. We are working with MakeMyTrip, so apart from the practical bookings we will be sharing the experiences, things like the steam train, behind the scenes in the cricket club and open hours at the museum, cooking demonstrations, making gin, football tour and football museum. We are also hopefully going to be in India, bringing our pre-season tour from the Lancashire cricket club to India next year. We spoke to 500 people from the travel trade in India to educate them about our products. My team was here thrice last year, working with Visit Britain. I personally welcomed two lots of 30, really keen travel trade members. This time, we are more focused, so I have just met with the travel trade associations,” she said.