Winter 25/26 Campaign Results
The 25/26 Winter campaign aimed to raise awareness of Manchester and stimulate demand for overnight stays for the winter months of Jan - March, building interest and consideration through inspirational content, and driving bookings through strategic partnership campaigns.
Figures at a glance
- £78.80:1
- Return on Investment against ABID budget.
- £16.5M
- Economic Impact
- 54.5M
- Impressions
- 60,352
- Travellers attributed to campaign activity
- 46,011
- Room nights attributed to campaign activity
Spain
In September 2025, Manchester became the first English city to partner with Barcelona's iconic La Mercè Festival, delivering a programme of cultural events and travel trade engagement to develop relationships and partnerships across the two cities.
Our campaign built on this, targeting audiences in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area to continue to raise Manchester's profile, inspire trip planning, and drive travel to and overnight stays in Manchester. Activity involved:
An awareness campaign using search and social media to drive audiences to the Visit Manchester website, increasing consideration for the destination and inspiring trip planning through engaging content.
A conversion campaign in partnership with influential travel platform Skyscanner, designed to reach new audiences, build additional interest and support incremental growth in traveller volume and overnight stays.
UK and Ireland
From November 2025, campaigns launched to target travellers from the UK and Ireland.
This included a digital campaign across Visit Manchester channels designed to reach audiences across key stages of the travel planning journey, building interest and encouraging longer stays through engaging content, and incentivising demand with special offers and promotions.
Alongside this, we delivered our third co-op rail campaign, working in partnership with Transport for Wales, TransPennine Express, Avanti West Coast, and leading travel marketing experts Sojern to drive bookings for travel to Manchester, generating overnight stays as a result. This built on previous campaigns, improving performance and results.
We also developed and delivered our first campaign in partnership with Booking.com, promoting the destination through the most influential OTA around to generate hotel bookings and overnight stays in the city.
Campaigns were supported by Marketing Manchester’s Out of Home advertising across the UK and Europe, delivered in partnership with Manchester City Council and JCDecaux.
Campaign Results
The Winter 25/26 campaign performed well, generating significant economic impact for the city and delivering a £78.80:1 return on investment against ABID budgets.
It helped us to establish partnerships with key suppliers, provided valuable insights on the channels used, and informed next steps in campaign planning to ensure that marketing activity continues to focus on generating additional visits and an incremental increase in room nights.
For more information about leisure marketing campaigns, or to join the working group, please contact rachel.witkin@marketingmanchester.com
