Every July the UK’s largest agricultural event, the Great Yorkshire Show arrives at the Great Yorkshire Showground in Harrogate, bringing with it over 140,000 visitors across four days. Now in its 164th year, showgoers travel from far and wide to celebrate agriculture, food, farming and countryside. Visitors to the show often visit Harrogate town centre or extend their stay to spend more time in our beautiful spot of North Yorkshire.
The show, alongside many other events held at the Yorkshire Event Centre not only provides evidence that Harrogate and the wider area is first-class destination to hold large-scale events, it also brings great economic benefit to the town, attracting people to the area to stay over and spend locally which all helps to boost the local visitor economy. It also provides an opportunity for us to interact with an engaged audience of show attendees by having a presence at the show.
In 2022, we attended with our first Visit Harrogate stand, showcasing all of the great things to do across Harrogate, Ripon, Knaresborough, Boroughbridge, Masham and Pateley Bridge to encourage repeat visits and provide inspiration on how to extend stays during a trip to the show.
This year, following the creation of the new North Yorkshire Council, we joined up with our North Yorkshire tourism colleagues to create a stand that highlighted the attractions, events and experiences on offer across the county – from the Yorkshire Coast to the Yorkshire Dales.
We are currently on an exciting journey to come together as North Yorkshire, creating a new Destination Management Plan for the county, and working on an application to become a North Yorkshire LVEP under the new Visit England structure for DMOs. Whilst this activity continues at a pace in the background, the Great Yorkshire Show provided a perfect platform to collaborate for the first time and put North Yorkshire front and centre of visitors’ minds for their next day out or short break.
The stand, which brought together tourism partners from across the patch including Provenance Inns, North Yorkshire Retreats, Sherburn Aero Club and the Inn Collection Group as well as Castle Howard, Doubletree by Hilton Majestic Hotel, Harrogate and Birdforth Hall Holiday Cottages received a positive response all round.
The Great Yorkshire Show was just a first glimpse of the exciting future opportunities to make a bigger impact as North Yorkshire and the chance to be involved in events like this as well as our visitor facing campaigns is just one of the reasons to partner with Destination Harrogate, and the North Yorkshire Tourism team.
To keep up to date with all of the latest developments, future opportunities to attend shows and be part of campaigns, sign up to the Destination Harrogate newsletter.
