Can Welcome to Yorkshire ever regain its magic touch? – David Behrens

The truth is that Yorkshire is riding the wave of unprecedented publicity that has made it the de facto holiday capital of Britain – more laid back than Blackpool and closer than Cornwall

This didn’t happen by accident. It was the consequence of a domino effect set off by Welcome to Yorkshire eight years ago when it staged the Grand Départ of the Tour de France through the West and North Ridings. It was an audacious coup that stimulated TV commissioners to look northwards for their reality formats and which in turn began drip-feeding Yorkshire imagery – real or imagined – into the national consciousness.

So it is beyond ironic that the one organisation not enjoying the fruits of the harvest is Welcome to Yorkshire itself. Instead, it is on the back foot, trying to justify not only the 45 per cent subscription increase it has imposed on the local authorities that fund it, but also its very existence.

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You might say it is a victim of its own success. Word of mouth has spread to such an extent that the appeal of towns like Whitby is self-perpetuating. They don’t need a mouthpiece right now.

But it leaves today’s post-cycling era Welcome to Yorkshire struggling to define what it actually still does, and convincing us that it can still do it.

At heart it is a marketing agency, and tourism will always need marketing. But it is a discipline that takes many forms, and brochure writing and website maintenance will get you only so far in an industry rooted in showbusiness, in which standing out from the crowd involves theatricality, networking and plain old chutzpah.

That kind of showmanship sits uncomfortably within a publicly-funded body, though, and partly as a result, Welcome to Yorkshire has lost not one but two charismatic leaders. It was inevitable that Gary Verity would go, given the multiple allegations of abusing staff and expense accounts; but the circumstances surrounding the departure of James Mason remain shrouded in unnecessary secrecy.

All it has left – as its chairman, Peter Box, attempted to justify in this in this newspaper on Wednesday – is its expertise in digital marketing; in counting hits on its website and “likes” on its social media channels.

But, honestly, couldn’t anyone aged 30 or under do that? Being tech-literate in this day and age isn’t a special power possessed only by the anointed; it’s a basic life skill as fundamental as writing a letter or crossing the road.

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So Stuart Parsons, the Independent Group leader on North Yorkshire County Council, is not wrong to question why his authority should continue to pay an agency just to do that, unless it can demonstrate that it is making an effective difference to the local life and economy.

It can’t. When officials at Richmondshire Council asked Mr Box’s staff to list the local activities they would deliver this year in return for their subscription, they received only a printout of off-the-peg website statistics. These amounted to 45 social media posts over six months, which is not even a day’s work for someone, let alone the crafted, creative campaign the council had every right to expect.

It’s not that digital marketing doesn’t matter. On the contrary, it’s the principal way of communicating with a large section of the population. But it’s only one ingredient in a marketing mix for which Welcome to Yorkshire seems to have lost the recipe.

It was outspokenness, a traditional characteristic of the county, that set it apart from the other tourism agencies until three years ago and which made it worth the public money that went into it, misspent expenses notwithstanding. If those crowds in Whitby are to be sustained in the long term, it’s going to have to explain how it plans to bring the showbusiness back.

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