We are the Destination Marketing Organisation for the Bristol and South Gloucestershire region. This incorporates the Meet Bristol Convention Bureau whose core focus is to promote the city and surrounding areas as a top destination for business events, while working with partners throughout the city to secure events that benefit the region.
Visit Bristol is our leisure focused brand, promoting to domestic and international consumer and travel trade audiences. This includes offering business support and advice to the tourism and hospitality business community through our engagement programme. The company was started over 20 years ago, as the ‘Bristol Tourism and Conference Bureau’ and has since developed a fantastic reputation locally and within the wider industry, maintaining strong partnerships with strategic partners, trade and media.
We are both an innovator and an enabler. Our approach to destination management and marketing has been innovative. We were early adopters of channel-based digital marketing and social media and are constantly trying new content ideas to see what inspires consumer behaviour. As a trusted source of advice on the city’s events offering and capabilities, Meet Bristol enables innovation. Our Ambassador programme is a prime example of how we enhance Bristol’s reputation as a stand-out events destination, as we bring on board local professionals who are at the top of their industries to bid for high-value business events. It’s about building valuable connections that generate conferences and business events. We take building those connections globally too.
You’ll find us singing the praises of Bristol’s venues and suppliers at international trade shows such as IMEX Frankfurt and IBTM, networking on behalf of our partners and introducing them and the city to new markets. Then there’s our digital presence, which gives businesses a trusted platform to promote themselves through. With a high-ranking website and separate consumer and B2B channels, there’s ample opportunity to get their services seen by the right audience, from a simple website listing to dedicated newsletters. We see the results in both increased brand awareness and direct sales for those featured businesses. Our work is very much with Bristol, for Bristol. While we are not a traditional venue finding agency, venue finding is part of our portfolio and so unlike other agencies, our sole focus is on the city region. We do not have a client base where business is placed anywhere.
There’s nowhere else quite like Bristol and our passion for what this brilliant city has to offer underpins all our work. We’re proud of its creativity, diversity, heritage and innovative spirit, all of which add up to exciting and unique opportunities for event organisers, from gatherings on Brunel’s history-making SS Great Britain to gala dinners under the wings of a Concorde. That passion is matched by our inside-out knowledge of our partners’ venues and offerings too.
We’re always looking forward to partnering with events coming to the city, focusing on ways to enhance the delegates experience. As newly joined members of The International Congress and Convention Association, we’ll be engaging with more international associations and bidding for new business related to Bristol’s sector strengths. Bristol has a great past and present but an even greater future and we’re excited to be a part of that. We will have significant new investment in infrastructure over the coming years, and so will have the ability to bid for and work with events that are larger in scale than anything seen before.
Spanning pioneering aeronautical companies to Academy Award- winning filmmakers, Bristol’s dynamic sector strengths and the talent within those sectors provide plenty to celebrate. As well as aerospace and engineering and the creative industries, these include high tech, low carbon, and professional services. The UK’s smartest city and the UK’s most productive tech cluster are among the titles bestowed on Bristol, while we’re also at the centre of the largest aerospace cluster in the country. Built on an illustrious legacy of engineering and innovation, success in these industries is also driven by collaboration with the city’s two universities. As the tech sector thrives, so do our professional financial, legal and business services.
The Digital Innovation in Professional Services (DIPS) has been created to connect these services to research excellence in digital technology and effective leadership and management practices. We’ve got first-class green credentials too. Leading environmental organisations such as Sustrans and the Soil Association call Bristol home and there’s an ever-growing focus on sustainable development. Tying into the city’s award-winning food scene, we’re also ‘Going for Gold’, campaigning to step up our Silver Sustainable Food City status.
