Bath has launched its first advertising campaign on the London Underground as tourism chiefs attempt to build on new figures showing UK visitors have delivered a massive boost to the city’s economy over the past two years.
Bath’s economy has benefitted from an additional £70m from tourist spending, helping create with more than 1,000 jobs, in less than 24 months, according to the latest figures from tourism body VisitEngland. 
That means Bath is likely to have reached a three-year target to boost tourism one year ahead of schedule.
Now, in the latest attempt to attract visitors, 50 billboard-size posters have been unveiled at tube stations showing an autumnal Royal Crescent with the strapline Fall for Bath: England’s perfect autumn break.
The posters, created by advertising agency So Design, based on the outskirts of Bath at Wick, are aimed at professionals living and working in the capital looking for the ideal short UK break.
The have been produced through a partnership with train operator First Great Western to reinforce the message that Bath is just 90 minutes away by rail. Among the 35-plus tube stations the posters will appear in is Paddington, where passengers alight to catch the mainline service to Bath.
They form part of a wider autumn advertising campaign involving the Telegraph newspaper group, Heart and Smooth FM radio stations and regional press.
Bath is receiving £500,000 over three years from the Regional Growth Fund to promote its attractions, including festivals, events and spa weekend breaks.
This amount is being doubled through a number of partnership deals to create a £1m fund to be spent between 2012-2015 promoting the city to UK tourists.
So far the funding has brought in an additional £70m from tourist spending, helping create 1,000 jobs.
This success means the three-year tourism marketing campaign for the city launched in 2012 is likely to have hit its target a year ahead of schedule.
Launching the three-year strategy in 2012, then Bath Tourism Plus (BTP) chief executive Nick Brooks-Sykes said: “By producing innovative and effective campaigns, we will be able to realise our ambition of raising the value of day visitors by 9%, growing domestic overnight visitors by the same amount and increasing business event delegates to 169,000, so that by 2014, tourism will be worth £400m to the local economy.”
BTP head of marketing David Jackson said the success was due to a “step-change” in the city.
“The impact that a relatively small amount of Government funding has made cannot be underestimated,” he said. “By securing £500,000 from the Regional Growth Fund, Bath Tourism Plus has not only leveraged over £500,000 of real cash in match funding, but we have also been able to build meaningful partnerships with many new organisations.”
One of these is Bath Business Improvement District (BID), whose chief executive Andrew Cooper said: “The figures are impressive and clearly show the benefits of our collaborative marketing activity both here in Bath, regionally and nationally.”
Bath was one of 14 destinations in England to be awarded Regional Growth Fund money through VisitEngland’s Growing Tourism Locally initiative, which aimed to inspire UK residents to take more holidays at home. The spin off, predicted VisitEngland, would be the creation of more than 9,000 jobs in the country’s tourism sector over a three-year period to March 2015.
Two years in the project has generated an additional tourism spend totaling £517.9m across the country, creating an additional 9,620 jobs.
VisitEngland chief executive James Berresford said: “The Growing Tourism Locally project continues to deliver fantastic results.
“It demonstrates the benefits of public and private sector partners working together to stimulate the visitor economy, with destinations throughout the country benefiting significantly from this investment.”
Previous Bath campaigns have featured local celebrities such as iconic shoe designer Manolo Blahnik to Michelin-starred chef Sam Moody to highlight the city’s great attractions such as the Great Bath Feast and Bath in Fashion.
The Great Bath Feast continues today with MasterChef winner and Bath resident Wan Ping Coombes cooking at the Allium Brasserie.
