Daniel Hartmann
VisitBritain wants travellers to get out and see the landscapes they know from the screen
White cliffs in Kent, Scottish lochs, moors and castles — Great Britain has plenty to fill an itinerary. Plenty of visitors, though, never make it past London.
The capital is a great city. But skipping the rest of the country means travellers miss some of its best bits, and the regions lose out on the money those extra visitors would bring.
That's the gap VisitBritain is trying to close. One of the tourist board's flagship pushes is "Starring GREAT Britain", a campaign built around the real places that appear in films and TV series shot on these shores.
The campaign launched in January 2025. It comes with a map of filming locations open to the public and itineraries organised by region. The Scottish Highlands route, for instance, stops at scenery that turns up in Outlander, The Diplomat and Downton Abbey.
Crews keep choosing the UK, so the site is updated as new productions arrive — Wuthering Heights landed earlier this year, and the page will grow again once the new Harry Potter series is released.
Great Britain on screen
Speaking to Euronews Travel at World Travel Market in London, VisitBritain chief executive Patricia Yates explained what the campaign is for.
Getting people to look beyond London is central to the board's work, she said, and it happens in two ways.
The first is simple logistics. Britain is a small island and getting around is easy: a couple of hours to Manchester or Liverpool, or a flight into Manchester followed by three hours up to Newcastle and Scotland.
The second is the reason to go — a story strong enough to pull people in. "Starring GREAT Britain" shows that film can do that job, Yates said.
Every region has a story to tell, she added, and tourism businesses are stepping in behind the campaign to build products that international visitors can actually book.
Set-jetting has been a big travel trend for several years. Game of Thrones, The White Lotus and Dune are among the productions that have sent visitor numbers up in the places where they were filmed.
Tourism has a distribution problem
Across Europe, plenty of countries are struggling with tourist numbers packed into cities that can't absorb any more, and locals have taken to the streets in protest.
London can cope with the visitors it gets. Even so, VisitBritain is careful about which smaller places it pushes people towards.
Yates said the board has to deliver tourism that works for businesses and for the communities living there. That means promoting places with the infrastructure, the capacity and the appetite for visitors at a given time of year — and staying away from places that don't want them and are already feeling the strain.
Like any tourism board, VisitBritain also has a type of traveller in mind.
The ideal visitor explores, asks questions about the place, stays longer and takes their time, she said.
That appetite is showing up across international travel generally, in her view: people want an emotional, personal connection and a chance to slow down.
Head to England's north east
Beyond the set-jetting routes, Yates pointed to the north east of England as a region worth adding to the list.
Kynren, a historical theme park, opened there in July, with 1,200 local performers telling the story of England.
And for Potter fans, Alnwick Castle in Northumberland is the place where Harry learned to fly a broomstick.
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Source: euronews.com
