Visit West estimates more than 1 million international visitors came to the West of England region in 2025, and the destination organization has now launched a dedicated travel trade website to convert that demand into bookable business for Bristol, Bath and surrounding areas.

The site targets international and UK travel trade buyers — travel advisors, tour operators, DMCs and transportation companies — and consolidates destination information with practical itinerary-building resources for the West of England.

What does the new site offer sellers?

A supplier directory lets buyers search across several categories:

• Accommodations, attractions and activities
• Food and drink businesses
• Ground handlers

Each listing carries key selling points for groups, travel trade contact information, and details of enhanced or exclusive experiences available to visitors. That structure matters for sellers: it shortens the sourcing cycle for group product in a region where trade-ready supply has traditionally been fragmented across individual operators.

The site also publishes ready-made trade itineraries covering Bath, Bristol, the Cotswolds and the Mendips. These give advisors and tour operators a starting point for clients looking to extend stays beyond London and the UK's better-known hubs — a distribution play aimed at capturing incremental itinerary days rather than competing head-on with established gateways.

Jon Chamberlain, Visit West's Head of Marketing, framed the launch as part of a longer product roadmap. "Our new travel trade website is an incredibly useful resource for buyers looking to extend or enhance itineraries in Bristol and Bath and beyond," he said in a press statement. "Further developments will include new inspirational itineraries based on market insights, and more businesses featured as they develop their offering for the international travel trade."

How is Visit West building international distribution?

The website launch sits alongside an intensifying trade program overseas. A recent trade mission to Australia and New Zealand, led by VisitBritain, included a workshop in Auckland attended by 150 travel agents and advisors. The mission then moved to Sydney and Melbourne, where British travel trade and tourism suppliers met with more than 300 Australian buyers and advisors.

Those numbers give a sense of scale: a single mission put the region's suppliers in front of more than 450 Antipodean trade contacts across three cities. For long-haul sellers, Australia and New Zealand remain high-value source markets for regional UK itineraries, and the Auckland-to-Melbourne sequence suggests Visit West is prioritizing advisor education in markets where regional England typically needs active selling against London-centric defaults.

Chamberlain said the combination of the new digital resource and a "packed diary of events this autumn and winter" positions the region to be "front of mind with buyers in key markets." Bristol and Bath both rank frequently among top destinations for overseas guests, according to Visit West.

The organization's stated next steps — market-insight-led itineraries and an expanding roster of trade-ready businesses — signal that the current directory is a starting inventory rather than a finished product. Buyers evaluating the region should expect the supplier base to broaden as more local operators formalize their trade offering.

Visit West says further itinerary releases and supplier additions will follow as businesses develop their international trade propositions.