By Ellis Butcher

Last updated at 12:20, Friday, 10 August 2012

Images of the Lake District and Cumbria are to be plastered on posters across the London underground later this month in a last-ditch campaign to save this summer’s tourism season.

Cumbria Tourism (CT), working with national tourist body Visit England, has finally got its hands on a £750,000 Government-funded marketing jackpot.

It will use the cash this month – and in conjunction with campaigns over the next two-and-half years – to fund a high-profile marketing push across the heart of the capital, showcasing Cumbria as a place to visit.

Senior tourism officials and businesses have been sweating on the announcement and had hoped that some of the money could have been released ahead of the school summer holidays, to be spent on appealing to city dwellers wanting to escape the OIympics, or international tourists visiting on long-stay holidays to London.

But it appears the money has come too late to capture these markets, although Cumbria Tourism is moving quickly to try and resuscitate bookings for late summer weekends, August Bank Holiday and the autumn.

National tourism body Visit England has been involved in the protracted negotiations with the Government over the fund.

Few tourism officials were prepared to give a critical view of the late timing of the cash.

That’s because the award of a multi-thousand pound tourism fund for the county, in an era of public spending cuts and departmental claw-backs, is regarded as a huge win for the industry under the cash-conscious Coalition Government.

Ian Stephens, managing director of Cumbria Tourism, said: “The timing of the campaign will reach the post-Olympic and Paralympic Visitors as well as Londoners returning to work at the end of August.

“Visit England will co-ordinate the marketing campaigns in consultation with CT with the primary objective of boosting future bookings in the domestic market.”

Mr Stephens added: “The current poor volume of bookings calls for an urgent response, and so CT has agreed an outdoor poster campaign in London to commence as soon as possible with the aim of generating late summer, autumn and winter bookings.”

Official statistics show that tourism started strongly in 2012 with many sectors up, although trade has flattened during the washout summer. Statistically over the first six months of the year, the January to June performance is marginally up on last year, but the figures don’t yet account for the July and August periods when businesses need to do well.

The marketing campaign runs between August 20 and September 16 at a number of headline underground stations and rail stops including Euston, King’s Cross, St Pancras, Victoria, Charing Cross, Embankment, London Bridge, Liverpool Street and Waterloo.

First published at 11:25, Friday, 10 August 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk