'Haunt Bristol' Campaign Reveals the City's Dark Side
5th March 2020
Categories: Our News
Visit Bristol’s ‘Haunt Bristol’ themed site pages shine a light on a growing trend in travel, dubbed ‘spooky tourism’, introducing another side to the city for tourists and residents alike.
The recently launched Haunt section of their site explores the city’s Gothic history, uncovering Bristol’s spooky secrets and hidden heritage to focus on Bristol’s alternative attractions, events and experiences. Haunt is the ‘grown up’ Spooky - a product led concept that has the macabre as its focus with content (stories, tours etc.) which include ‘real’ people as well as local tall tales delivering a big fascination factor.
How did it come about?
The idea for the project was first conceived when the team at Visit Bristol introduced a new Experiences section on www.visitbristol.co.uk last year. As part of the research they created a ‘Dark Tourism Experiences’ section to highlight some of the attractions which didn’t naturally fit elsewhere on the site. In October the marketing team also ran the #SpookyBristol campaign to coincide with Halloween. The team at Haunt Manchester spotted Visit Bristol’s Dark Tourism section and approached them to ask if they would be interested in expanding this into Haunt Bristol with the help of their research team.
Project Objectives
Visit Bristol’s aims were to:
- Showcase the spooky/dark tourism experiences and stories of the city throughout the year rather than just around Halloween
- Showcase the alternative/underground/sub-culture experiences that Bristol was able to offer which they had been struggling to find the right place for on the main site
- To address the recent trend for Dark Tourism and Spooky Tourism
- To work with partner attractions such as Arnos Vale Cemetery and Show of Strength Tours which offered more than traditional ‘sightseeing and tours’ channels
- To collaborate with businesses and individuals that were offering spooky tourism experiences, tours, attractions and stories in the city
Haunt Bristol – A Team Effort
Haunt Bristol was created as a sister project to Haunt Manchester, a sub-section of www.visitmanchester.com and is the result of a collaboration with a team of journalists and researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University.
The flexibility and versatility of Simpleview’s e-tourism platform has made it all possible by enabling the marketing team at Destination Bristol to create the dedicated ‘Haunt’ section within the main Visit Bristol website without the need for external intervention.
The result is a great resource, featuring haunted tours, death cafés, spooky tourism experiences, plus the weird secrets of the city’s churches and mysterious places to visit, proving Bristol is an alternative place to visit all year-round.
If you have any questions about creating online campaigns, from themed sections to dedicated channel sites, contact your Account Manager.