VisitGuernsey kicks off 2025 with strong first-quarter growth
VisitGuernsey has started 2025 on a high note, with strong digital engagement and encouraging early-year performance across our marketing activity.
09 April 2025
Our campaigns are strategically designed to build awareness and drive action, falling into three main categories:
- Brand Awareness - aimed at building destination recognition, with no direct call to action.
- Co-funded campaigns - run in partnership with travel carriers and tour operators, these campaigns typically include a price point and a call to action directing users to the carrier’s booking site.
- VisitGuernsey-led campaigns - focused on promoting Guernsey as a destination, these include a call to action directing traffic to our own website.
A key measure of success for VisitGuernsey - alongside positive occupancy figures and port arrival stats? - is the volume of traffic to our website and the number of referrals we generate for industry partners.
We're pleased to report that website sessions for Q1 2025 reached nearly 331,000, representing a 19.6% increase year-on-year. March alone saw 117,500 sessions, with 5.6% of users coming from France - a promising result from our new campaigns targeting Brittany, Normandy, and Paris.
In terms of partner referrals, we directed 78,228 users to your websites in Q1 - a 20% increase compared to the same period in 2024.
Our digital advertising continues to deliver strong results across platforms including Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Google Search and Display, YouTube, and Pinterest. On Meta alone, our campaigns reached just under 1.5 million people, achieving a click-through rate of 2.36% - a 68% increase year-on-year.
Interestingly, the top-performing ads - judged by click-through rate - span a wide range of themes: from history and heritage to wild swimming and cliff running, arts and culture to island hopping. This highlights the importance of appealing to a broad and diverse audience, across both age groups and interests.
While digital advertising plays a key role in our strategy, print still remains a powerful channel in our campaigns. With placements in high-profile titles like The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Observer, BBC Gardeners’ World, and Condé Nast Traveller, our print adverts have reached nearly 1.1 million people so far this year.
These early-year figures signal a strong and encouraging start to 2025 for Guernsey’s visitor economy.
