'Monumental effort': How Wuthering Heights took Yorkshire to Times Square and beyond in Britain's international tourism push

This was symbolised by a huge billboard in New York’s famous Times Square showing Robbie sitting on the Moors alongside a caption reading ‘It’s Not Wuthering Heights Without England’.

The billboard was a small part of Visit Britain’s ‘Starring GREAT Britain’ campaign to boost international tourism to the UK which sought to highlight popular TV shows and films as a way of drawing visitors here.

Visit Britain worked with international film and TV studios to target ‘high value’ international audiences in countries like the US, France, Germany and Australia and the Gulf.

Patricia Yates, chief executive of VisitBritain, explained in the organisation’s most recent results that Wuthering Heights had played a central role in this year’s campaign.

“Last year VisitBritain launched its ‘Starring GREAT Britain’ campaign,” she says. “This was the culmination of a monumental effort by VisitBritain teams across the globe who negotiated partnerships with nine studios to produce an incredible campaign platform on which to build.

“In its first sixth months alone, the campaign generated an additional £217m in visitor spend.

“Each extra pound represents a boost for the UK economy, a small business supported and a job sustained. The team has not lost momentum.

“The release of Bridgerton Series 4 and Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights told a compelling story of regional Britain. VisitBritain secured new Wuthering Heights intellectual property for the campaign showing Yorkshire’s iconic moors and hosted media, buyers and influencers from around the world in Yorkshire.

“Upcoming productions and their associated destinations will have the same star treatment as the campaign continues.”

The VisitBritain report added: “VisitBritain’s PR and influencer programme amplified the campaign’s reach through carefully selected content creators and media partners.

“Costume drama themed influencer visits, press trips and ongoing media engagement generated high-quality, authentic content showcasing Britain’s regional destinations, experiences and people.

“Influencer activity linked destinations with screen titles, such as Bridgerton, Wuthering Heights, Outlander, Downton Abbey and Pride and Prejudice reaching 7.5 million people.”

The report also highlighted how more international visitors are coming to Yorkshire.

It said Spanish tour operator, Special Tours, has created a new northern England group tour after attending several educational events, from London to Cambridge, Liverpool, Manchester, York and the wider area of Yorkshire and the Humber. The tour has an estimated incremental value of £894,000.

In Germany, Studiosus Reisen developed new North of England tours in North-West and North-East England including York, Durham and Manchester, with an estimated incremental economic impact of £298,000. But while there are some positives, the region’s tourism market is also expected to be affected by geopolitics this summer.

The VisitBritain report warned that the Middle East conflict was “pushing down expectations” for international visitors this year. It said inbound tourism from Gulf Co-operation Council countries was worth an estimated £2.7 billion in 2025, accounting for £1 in every £13 spent in the UK by inbound visitors.

But March and April this year unsurprisingly resulted in “a steep decline in bookings from Gulf, as well as South Asian, travellers”.

The report, written earlier this year, added: “Disruption to Gulf airports has had a wider impact on key markets.

“Around half of Australian and South East Asian visitors and almost a third of Indian visitors to the UK transit via a Gulf airport. Jet fuel costs have risen sharply, putting upwards pressure on air fares; general inflation is expected to rise, dampening consumer confidence in key markets.”

The report noted that domestic tourism has also been struggling, with the number of British people staying overnight in other parts of the country declining in recent years. It said: “In the first nine months of 2025, overnight trips in England were down 5 per cent, although spend was 9 per cent up on a weak 2024. This followed declines in trip volumes in 2023 and 2024 too. The value of domestic tourism spending in England increased over this period, although by less than the rate of inflation, so the value of domestic tourism fell in real terms.

“Domestic holiday trips declined by a similar rate to the total, 4 per cent, over the same period, with spending by domestic holidaymakers up 5 per cent. The only trip purpose to see an increase in volume terms was business trips. Domestic tourism is still crucial to spreading the benefits of tourism around Britain.

“Although London is still the leading English region for share of domestic overnight visitor spending, it only accounts for 17 per cent, a much smaller share than inbound, and only 12 per cent of holiday trips. For all major English regions outside London, most visitor spending comes from domestic tourists. Domestic day trips have performed better.

“Day trips are the most valuable component of tourism, worth almost £55bn in Britain in 2024, compared to £33bn for domestic overnight trips and £32bn for inbound tourism.

“Looking at destination types, seaside destinations continued to struggle in 2025, with overnight volumes and spending well down year-on-year; city breaks performed better. Seaside destinations continued to struggle in 2025, with overnight volumes and spending well down year-on-year; city breaks performed better.”

The report comes in the context of the recently-introduced Local Visitor Economy Partnership model, which are organisations that help promote their region.

Instead of the previous model which saw Welcome to Yorkshire provided taxpayer funding to represent the wider county as its tourism agency, South, West, East and North Yorkshire now each have their own ‘LVEP’, supported by VisitEngland to push their region forward.

While the Yorkshire groups do work together, they were not selected for pilots of ‘Destination Development Partnerships’, which are a coalition of LVEPs working together to create a programme of activity to deliver the Government’s ambitions at a regional level, core funded by DCMS. Pilots have instead been held in the North-East and the West Midlands and the Government announced in March 2025 that it was extending the pilots for another year before assessing whether to roll out the scheme more widely.

But the VisitBritain report highlighted LVEPs around the country are often in a “fragile” position and “low on resource”.

It is also fair to say that the LVEPs in Yorkshire have certainly proved to be less high-profile than the frequently headline-grabbing Welcome to Yorkshire was.

While productions like All Creatures Great and Small and Wuthering Heights may be helping to give Yorkshire a wider international profile, there is still much to be done to keep the region’s hard-working tourism businesses deservedly centre-stage.