Edinburgh's youth tourism campaign targets 3.5 million visitors

Tourism bosses in Edinburgh are hoping to reach 3.5 million young people across Europe with a new tourism campaign utilising social media "influencers".

#UncoverEdinburgh, led by Youth Travel Edinburgh and supported by the Edinburgh Tourism Action Group and Marketing Edinburgh, is a digital campaign looking to profile Scotland’s capital as a top youth tourism destination.

The campaign looks to use use Scotland’s 2018 Year of Young People (YOYP) as a platform and encourage visitors aged 18-26 from key European markets to come to Edinburgh on a year-round basis.

The programme will pair an Edinburgh-based influencer with an influencer sharing a similar special interest from cities like Barcelona, Paris and Amsterdam.

The 10 "carefully selected" Edinburgh influencers will invite a contemporary from a target European city to join them in Scotland’s capital, where together they will create digital content using Edinburgh as an identifiable backdrop.

They will then both spread content across social media which will then be shared by their followers.

The first pairing saw Edinburgh local Davide Verri and Nicanor Garcia from Barcelona, combine to create content for a collective following of almost 740k, who share an interest in culturally significant architecture.

Youth travel is the fastest growing segment of global tourism and Edinburgh is second only to London for young visitors to the UK. Almost 2 million of the city’s visitors come into the millennial age bracket.

VisitScotland has given the campaign a £40,000 grant from its Growth Fund scheme.

For more information on the campaign, visit the VisitScotland website.