Sports stars sign up to support VisitBritain ahead of London 2012
Lennox Lewis was the last undisputed heavy weight champion of the world As the country prepares to host the greatest show on earth this summer, VisitBritain has recruited three sporting legends in a new marketing push to inspire potential visitors to explore the whole of Britain.
Three-times Wimbledon champion and Olympic gold medallist Boris Becker, the last undisputed world heavyweight boxing champion Lennox Lewis and Ryder Cup winning captain, Colin Montgomerie have all produced a personal film talking about what makes Britain special for them.
The assembling of the three new VisitBritain sporting ambassadors marks the most recent phase of the national tourism agency’s global GREAT campaign which aims to attract an extra 4.6 million visitors by 2015 spending £2.3 billion.
Sport is already a huge draw for international tourists and is worth over £2.3 billion to the UK economy each year.
It is also one of seven tourism ‘pillars’ the national tourism agency is using to promote Britain around the world, highlighting the UK and featuring many of the historic destinations that millions of sports fans will be familiar with.
Becker said: “I have been called Britain’s favourite German, but quite honestly I don’t think the list is very long!
“London is my home away from home, two out of my four children were born in Britain and my wife fell in love with the place and couldn’t live anywhere else.
The new celebrity videos will be shown across all of VisitBritain’s digital channels including visitbritain.com and visitbritain.tv, which together receive over two million views of content each month.
The sporting videos will also be posted on Love UK - VisitBritain’s Facebook page.
Now with nearly 800,000 fans, it has recently been named one of the biggest brand pages in the UK ahead of Cadbury’s and Starbucks.
VisitBritain will also be using its twitter account @VisitBritain, voted by Klout last year as the most influential national tourist board on Twitter, with regular sporting tweets throughout 2012 and at Games time.