Magical marketing strategies
for the visitor economy

that drive bookings ticket sales footfall

experiences attractions destinations events hospitality

If you’re looking for marketing magic for your visitor attraction, tourism or leisure business, restaurant, bar, experiences or destination, you’re in the right place. 

Marketing Strategy Consultation with Kelly Ballard

Marketing a visitor attraction or hospitality business is no easy task. With tight deadlines, multiple campaigns, and constant demands from different stakeholders, it can feel like there’s never enough time, resources, or clarity to deliver real results.

Maybe you or your marketing team is facing these challenges:

  • Overwhelmed with workload. From social media to event promotions, email campaigns to content creation, there’s always more to do than there are hours in the day.
  • Pressure to deliver results. Whether it’s increasing footfall, boosting ticket sales, or growing online engagement, the expectations are high—and the resources don’t always match.
  • Fragmented strategies. With so many platforms and channels to manage, creating a cohesive marketing strategy can feel impossible.
  • Lack of specialist skills. Not every team has experts in SEO, paid ads, or PR—and outsourcing isn’t always in the budget.
  • Stakeholder demands. From board reports to managing feedback from various departments, keeping everyone aligned can drain time and energy.
  • Keeping up with trends. The digital landscape is constantly changing, and it’s tough to stay on top of the latest tools, tactics, and best practices.

At Visitor Elves, we understand the unique pressures marketing teams face in the hospitality and visitor attraction industry.

A Helping Hand for Your Marketing Team
We’re here to lighten the load and provide the strategic expertise you need to achieve your goals. Whether it’s strategic planning, refining your messaging, or offering hands-on support with content creation and social media management, we’ll partner with you to make marketing feel more manageable—and more impactful.

Let us help you simplify your workload, improve your results, and free up your time to focus on what matters most: creating meaningful connections with your audience.

Let’s work together to make marketing work for you

Visitor Economy Marketing Services

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Marketing Power Hour

If you are a business in hospitality, tourism, leisure or events, you might have a marketing dilemma that you need an expert to help you seek clarity on quickly. A Marketing Power Hour can quickly help guide you or put you back on the right path.

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Marketing Strategy

Are you looking to become more strategic with your marketing? Are you fed up feeling overwhelmed and unsure whether you’re spending time and money in the right place? Let me help you create a marketing strategy that will bring the magic back to your marketing. 

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Marketing Mentor

If your organisation is short on marketing resources and needs some strategic guidance and support, a Marketing Mentor might just be the solution you’re looking for. I help CEO’s as well as junior marketers who need to learn more about the industry.

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Who are the Visitor Elves?

Led by Kelly Ballard, a seasoned marketer with over 25 years of experience in the leisure and tourism industry, Visitor Elves is a marketing consultancy that works with leisure businesses that want to grow.  Visitor Elves is a safe pair of hands that provides marketing strategies, campaign planning and management and marketing mentoring.  

Kelly has spent years fine-tuning marketing strategies specifically for the visitor sector, helping destinations carve out their place on the tourism map and increasing footfall for both big names and lesser-known treasures.

Our portfolio speaks for itself, from Bristol Zoo Project to Forestry England, Mendip Activity Centre to Marketing Cheltenham and many more in between.

Visitor Elves has the skills and knowledge to help – and if we don’t have it in-house, we know the perfect person to bring to the party.  

We also host the Visitor Elves Podcast, where we go behind the scenes of some of the best businesses in and Wales and the West of England,  and find the magic that makes them tick.  We talk marketing, management, challenges, technology and favourite places to visit.   Take a look at our recent conversations below.

 

Book a free 15 minute chat now to see how I can help you

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Latest Podcast Episodes

Hear from people who work in the visitor economy of the West of England talking about their organisation, what they do, their tips for success and their story.

Ep.53 Clare Reddington CEO at Watershed Bristol

Ep.53 Clare Reddington CEO at Watershed Bristol

Clare Reddington on skipping school, creativity and financial resilience at Bristol's Watershed.  On today’s podcast, I spoke to Clare Reddington, CEO of the Watershed in Bristol. The Watershed: A Beacon of Cultural InnovationWith over half a million visitors last...

Ep.52 Online ski travel company Heidi with co-founder Marcus Blunt

Ep.52 Online ski travel company Heidi with co-founder Marcus Blunt

Unpacking Ski Travel: How Online Ski Company Heidi is Redefining Getting to the Slopes, with CEO Marcus Blunt.  In this episode, Kelly had the pleasure of chatting with Marcus Blunt, co-founder and CEO of the Bristol-based online ski travel company Heidi. Since its...

Ep.51 Gloucester Food Dock with owner Sarah Mansfield

Ep.51 Gloucester Food Dock with owner Sarah Mansfield

From Forgotten to Fabulous: The Gloucester Food Dock Story with Sarah Mansfield.  This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in urban regeneration, food tourism, or the transformative power of visionary development. Join us as we uncover the recipe for...

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