News Centre

More than 30,000 people visited Showzam! Blackpool’s festival celebrating Circus, Magic and New Variety. Showzam! Central, the hub of the celebrations during the 10-day festival, attracted 21,600 people while audiences at the event’s 60 plus ticketed shows and tours attracted in excess of 10,000. And while the figures are pleasing news to VisitBlackpool, the force […]

Ruth Connor, CEO of Marketing Lancashire joins Judith Dugdale head of Moore and Smalley’s leisure and tourism team in Lancashire to discuss the current health of Lancashire’s visitor economy and issues and opportunities for the county’s leisure and tourism businesses.

The Blackpool Tower Eye will be introducing interactive character tours at the very top of The Blackpool Tower as an addition to the experience in conjunction with the 120th Birthday celebration.  We are looking for actors to play the role of Sir John Bickerstaffe, a visionary and inspirational character who played a pivotal role not […]

The Woodland Spa located in Burnley, Lancashire has fought off stiff competition from the best day spas in the UK to win the much coveted title of Day Spa Of The Year at the prestigious Professional Beauty Awards 2014 in London. This comes after the Spa has only just celebrated its first birthday. Despite only […]

The Hemingway family’s Vintage By the Sea Festival, led by Wayne, Gerardine and Jack Hemingway, is to return to Morecambe for a second year on 6th & 7th September. In 2013 the Festival marked The Midland’s 80th anniversary and attracted over 7,000 thousand visitors to the town. The Hemingway team has since been working towards […]

The Seafood Pub Company is adding to its reputation as the North West’s fastest-growing food and drink business by opening its fifth pub in less than three years. A £500,000 refurbishment programme has already started at The Barley Mow in the Pendle village of Barley – four miles from the Seafood Pub Company’s second pub […]

Councillors today agreed to appoint Jo Turton as Chief Executive of Lancashire County Council, following an external recruitment process. Ms Turton has been in the role on an interim basis since last August, but the council went out to recruit a permanent appointee at the beginning of January. Leader of the council, County Councillor Jennifer […]

Quality in Tourism (QiT), the official assessment service provided for VisitEngland, have launched two new initiatives for new and existing members. The first exclusive campaign ‘recommend a friend’ will be running up until 31st March for Quality in Tourism members. Once a member has recommended another accommodation provider, they will receive a £50 Love2Shop voucher […]

“Our hope is that the old home, so very dearly loved, may soon become a centre for education, crafts knowledge and beauty; a joy and benefit to many people.” Miss Rachel Kay-Shuttleworth On 17 February 2014, the anniversary of Miss Rachel Kay-Shuttleworth’s birth (17 February 1886), Gawthorpe Textiles Collection will launch an exclusive range of […]

Marketing Lancashire, the county’s Destination Management Organisation, in partnership with the Burnley Bondholders and Burnley Borough Council, has created a new and bespoke Welcome to Excellence training programme, Welcome to Burnley, which will see up to 500 participants take part in the destination’s biggest single initiative to develop customer service excellence and improve product knowledge […]

VisitEngland has launched a search to establish England’s ultimate Hall of Fame.  From Harry Potter to James Bond, the mini skirt to the tuxedo, The Beatles to punk music and the Magna Carta to the World Wide Web, the Hall of Fame will celebrate what England has brought to the world and what makes the […]

Blackpool has enjoyed its best ever visitor numbers for an autumn season since survey records began. More than four million adults visited the UK’s most popular seaside resort between September and December 2013 according to the latest national Omnibus survey. The figure represents an increase of 250,000 visits over the same period in 2012 making […]