Uncover the Cotswolds

The ‘Uncover the Cotswolds project encompasses the Cotswolds, Cheltenham, Gloucester and Forest of Dean and Wye Valley.  It is one of a number of projects to benefit from the Government’s £40 million Discover England Fund. 

>>> An overview of the Uncover the Cotswolds project

Spring 2021

During the first three months of 2021 the Uncover the Cotswolds project had to refocus on gathering content for cotwolds.com  & Visit England's website, as well as offering business support due to the continued lockdown. 

Following a digital health check survey of businesses, help and support has been offered to businesses including SEO reports, digital health reviews, support to get bookable. A range of training modules have also been produced, www.cotswolds.com/training 

We promoted the area at several key virtual trade events including ETOA Best of Britain and Ireland, Visit Britain's Explore GB & ITB Berlin. Virtual training sessions have been held with Finnish operators, Tour Partner group and a virtual FAM visit to the area with UK Inbound. 

The final stages of the project have seen content shared with Visit England including giving a presentation to all the marketing team highlighting what is new for 2021 and the focus on key Cotswold towns.  A range of new itineraries have been added to the website alongside a suite of digital town guides and an overall digital browser to help businesses promote and encourage visitors to book things to do in the area when bookings are made.

We are delighted with the range of new product developed and are excited for the number of businesses that are now bookable on our website.

Evaluation of the project and businesses involved in the project will continue during 2021/22 so we ask that businesses continue to update the tourism data system Tstats each month, 

Update November 2020

Our Uncover the Cotswolds project is now well under way with staffing in place, a focus on Woodstock via website, social media & media articles. We promoted what is new for 2021 to 14 countries worldwide via Visit Britain PR Connect event resulting in more media promotion. A virtual meeting for TXGB was well attended with many businesses now signing up to be bookable via the platform & ourselves. See more information and the presentation here. We are delighted with new businesses coming forward wanting to be involved in the project & feel excited at the new product being developed. See our latest project update.

Update October 2020

We are delighted to have been awarded a grant from Visit England for 2020/21 from the Recovery Discover England Funding. With our strategic partners we are now starting our campaign activity, including enabling businesses to get bookable with TXGB and  a domestic focus on places and experiences less well known about in the wider region. Keep an eye out for communications and our next steps page.

Update July 2020

Together with our partner DMO's of Marketing Cheltenham and Forest of Dean & Wye Valley, we have submitted a revised  bid  for 2020/21 Discover England Funding to VisitEngland. We are now waiting to  hear, hopefully by late August, if we have been successful and hope campaign activity, including enabling businesses to get bookable with TXGB and  a domestic focus could then begin later in September.

Update 2019/2020

The Uncover the Cotswolds travel trade website was launched in March 2019.

Across the wider region with the kind support of businesses we hosted  five  dedicated FAM visits with key travel trade operators. We also attended key trade events such as Visit Britain's Explore GB in Harrogate to continue to build relationships with operators. 

Businesses were able to gain further training via Visit Englands Taking England to the World course and we hope to set up further courses. If you are interested please email us. 

Update  2018/2019

Work is progressing well on ‘Uncover the Cotswolds’.  This exciting project was made possible by funding from VisitEngland’s Discover England Fund and we’ve spent the past couple of months searching out existing, and finding exciting new tourism experiences for the Nordic, Spanish and Italian travel trade.

We already have a shortlist of more than 70 experiences which will feature on our brand new travel trade website which is currently under development.

We’re delighted to be working with tourism consultant Jo Butler to help further develop our experiences and to find any which may have eluded us!  As well as setting up Experience Oxfordshire, Jo has a wealth of experience heading up other Discover England Fund projects.

The next step is to fine-tune those experiences through a number of training days, as well as offering workshops about in working with the travel trade.

The aim of the project is to uncover hidden gems, especially in lesser known parts of the Cotswolds and Forest of Dean, helping to extend the season of visitor interest and encouraging more people to stay here longer – and spend more money while they’re here.  It’s experience-led, but will benefit all our tourism businesses including accommodation, food and drink providers and our many wonderful shops.

More experiences will be added as we uncover them in the future so there’ll be plenty of chances to get involved and if you feel you have an experience to offer, please email cotswoldstourism@cotswold.gov.uk and one of the team will be in touch.

We have already achieved a huge amount thanks to the project and there’s much more to come:

• We’re developing a new travel trade microsite
• New film and photography has been commissioned
• We have already attended one travel show in Sweden and will be in Berlin in March promoting the project and new experiences at ITB Berlin, the world’s largest tourism fair
• A new travel trade map has been published and illustrated website maps are being developed
• We are organising three familiarisation trips for our key travel trade partners for the spring, showcasing the new experiences.

We are relaunching T-Stats – our system for recording monthly occupancy and footfall figures to give a picture of tourism trends across the Cotswolds and Forest of Dean and to try and help evaluate the impact of the project.