CT Consults

We work to unlock the potential in every place

– to create places and experiences that are rich in culture and meaningful to our lives.

At CTConsults we believe that when you find the essence of a place, you can positively redefine and shape people’s experience and enjoyment of it, in ways that are inspiring and transformative for visitors, local residents and businesses alike.

Details of historical stone built wall. Developing a new place brand for the City of York.

York

City of York – Who do you think you are?

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Painted mural of five people on side of building

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland – Starting to share its cultural power

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Woman looking at helicopter covered in pink feathers

Manchester

Manchester – The rise of a Northern cultural powerhouse

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Closeup detail of old wooden cello

Fáilte Ireland

National online distribution strategy for visitor experiences

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Fallen leaves in a park to foreground, curved regency street to background

Bristol and Bath

Bristol and Bath – A tale of two cities

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Foot bridge over river, with buildings on banks

Marketing Northern Cities

Northern cities assemble

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What we do

An agency in three parts

CTConsults offers industry-leading expertise in cultural tourism, heritage, destination marketing and place branding insight. In direct response to our client’s needs we have built our agency in three parts to offer:

Strategy

  • Strategies in cultural heritage tourism and place marketing
  • Stakeholder consultation and community engagement
  • Funding bids and case-making
  • Destination auditing and mapping
  • Place-brand insight and positioning
  • Research and analysis
  • Partnership building and mentoring
  • Experience development planning
  • Action planning

Delivery

  • Website design and development
  • Digital optimisation
  • Content and channel management
  • Digital marketing campaigns
  • Monitoring and reporting
  • Digital skills training & mentoring
  • Bookable product development and activation online

Support

And this is how we do it

We are creative,

No two clients are the same – we never, ever deliver off-the-shelf solutions. We see every project as an exciting opportunity for us to use our curiosity, imagination and expertise to breathe new life and possibilities into your place.

curious,

We passionately believe that culture is the dynamic expression of place. It’s what animates and inspires and draws people to it. In seeking out culture we look for inspiration from the past, present and future, travelling to less obvious quarters, researching long forgotten stories.

collaborative,

We believe that transformational change comes through working in partnership. This is how we will work with you, not remotely, but as part of your team, united by a shared vision to shape and enable places that thrive. Whatever the shape of the team, we help you to achieve future success in your markets.

consultative,

We are driven by insight. Whether sourcing community or stakeholder opinion, tracking trends, monitoring sales returns for marketing spend, we have robust, tested methodologies for gathering and reviewing research evidence that will inform your decision-making and deliver a measurable difference to the sustainability of your project or place.

and ‘can do’.

When we encounter problems and challenges we find the solutions you need. We’ll even build them ourselves, including dynamic websites and partnership platforms. We want your place experience to be as visible, compelling and credible in the digital world as it is in reality. Understanding consumer behaviour and destination needs is what sets us apart.

The story so far...

Who have we worked with?

We have worked with many clients who all want to create vibrant and culturally thriving places that matter to people. As we are often brought in at the very beginnings of a place’s journey, we sometimes we have to play the long game to see the impact which our work delivers. The wait is more than worthwhile when we see places beginning to show exciting and sustainable results.

York
Details of historical stone built wall. Developing a new place brand for the City of York.

We have recently wrapped up on our biggest place brand project to date with Hemingway Design and For the Love of Place, working with the City of York to identify and develop a distinctive brand narrative for a city which is currently seen as a destination for tourism and heritage but arguably little else.

View the full case study
Fáilte Ireland
Closeup detail of old wooden cello

Fáilte Ireland appointed CTConsults to conduct a feasibility study to evaluate options & opportunities, and make final costed recommendations on the optimum solution for the development of a National Online Distribution Strategy for Visitor Experiences, such as Attractions, Activities and Festivals & Events.

Examples of Activities include sightseeing tours, walking tours, land-based and water-based adventure and sporting activities etc. Examples of Attractions include Museums, Cultural and Historical Attractions, Heritage Centres etc. Examples of Festivals / Events include St Patrick’s Festival.

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Bristol and Bath
Fallen leaves in a park to foreground, curved regency street to background

Nationally-funded place-based projects – Discover England Fund, Great Place, Creative People and Places spring to mind – are important devices to galvanise places and clusters, but the trick is always to ensure that when the funding runs out, the momentum does not. Not all maintain momentum, but by taking a longer-term vision and committing to it, Bristol & Bath have been able to progress more than most. 

Their Cultural Destinations programme connected two neighbouring but very different city offers and 28 partners. We started by conducting a ‘root & branch’ destination audit. That identified key priorities and opportunities to focus the collective energy.

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Northern Ireland
Painted mural of five people on side of building

A young, recently emerged tourism destination, Northern Ireland is playing rapid catch-up. The success of recent capital developments like Titanic Belfast and Seamus Heaney’s Homeplace, plus the global popularity of Game of Thrones, has indicated a genuine visitor interest and connection. 

The big opportunity lay in what they simply couldn’t do 25 years ago – being dynamic, strategic and creative in partnerships – transforming good heritage into genuinely distinctive experiences found nowhere else. We found a warm, edgy and contemporary personality emerging

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Leeds
Period shopping arcade with decorative glass domed roof. Visit Leeds seeking to create bookable products for the tourism market.

We were appointed by Visit Leeds to deliver a product audit and additional development support to identify opportunities to create bookable products for the tourism market. This had a number of delivery facets to it:

  1. A detailed product audit that mapped and evaluated the product portfolio of the Visitor Economy in Leeds – no assumptions, except for modest budgets;
  2. An educational programme of stakeholder engagement and support that encouraged the development of the quality and depth of the city’s visitor offer to attract new national and international audiences;
  3. A suite of themed tours and itineraries that can be used across consumer and trade activity – spotting gaps, categorised in a market-facing manner, and designing cluster-based projects to maximise potential;
  4. A travel trade tool kit to assist Visit Leeds with its programme of travel trade engagement.
View the full case study
Marketing Northern Cities
Foot bridge over river, with buildings on banks

In international terms, the north of England is a viable destination, but the product offer, connectivity and infrastructure might beg to differ. How can the powerful cultural offers of some of the region’s great cities – Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Hull and NewcastleGateshead – come together in a way that is accessible and appealing to growing international visitor markets – especially millennials?

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London
Column in Trafalgar Square

In 2015 London was announced as the most visited cultural destination in the world. No.1. Top dog. Job done? Not quite. London has always led by continually innovating and setting cultural trends. Pausing isn’t an option. 90% of London’s visitors follow the path of least resistance (but most congestion) and head to the top 20 attractions. London is so much more, both centrally and when striking out a little further. If encouraging people to explore, London has to then be navigable so that visitors can find the great stuff, the new stuff, in a city where Time Out lists 150,000 events across 55,000 venues daily.

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Coventry UK City of Culture 2021
Stained glass detail of fish with decorative coloured shapes around it - Coventry UK City of Culture 2021

How can a city’s position as a cultural tourism destination be strengthened in the lead up to 2021, and in the process equip its main partners (21 in this case) with the skills, knowledge, experience, and confidence they will need to deliver integrated digital engagement strategies for culture and tourism?

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Carrickfergus
Walled castle sits on a beach, tide partly out, seaweed visible on sand

Carrickfergus is a walled, medieval garrison town, with an intact Norman castle. This place holds many keys to understanding the Northern Ireland cultural heritage story. The invasion of William of Orange into Northern Ireland landed here – just one of the many stories of UK-wide significance – often fraught with contention and used to support sectarian agendas to the serious detriment of the town’s appeal to developers, investors and visitors, diminishing the community in the process. We were commissioned to look at a heritage-led tourism strategy, with the Castle at its heart.

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Cheltenham
Lake in a park, number of people sitting on benches at the edge of the lake. Lawn behind lake and regency building in background

Cheltenham, a charming town that often tops the ‘best places to live’ rankings, also has some outstanding cultural assets, notably its festivals – music, jazz, science and literature. It is also a gateway to the ever-popular Cotswolds, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and tourist hotspot since tourism was invented. If that is not enough, it hosts the biggest National Hunt horse-racing festival in the world, the Cheltenham Gold Cup Festival. However, its major festivals deliver programmes for a fraction of the year.

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Torbay
Boats moored up in a marina at night

Torbay is an historic seaside resort – cheekily nicknamed the English Riviera! As a UNESCO Global Geopark, it unsurprisingly has some outstanding natural assets alongside its cultural venues and programmes. But how to knit these assets together into a cultural tourism strategy that works for the arts, hoteliers and fits in an events and attractions portfolio that has everything from an air show to a zoo, across a bay of three very distinct towns?

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A hands-on team of creative consultants

We are a permanent team of 7 – smallish but well-crafted and supplemented by trusted associates.We share values, have complementary skills but different personalities and styles. We enjoy each other’s company and we work hard to build the same trust and rapport with our clients and associates.

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