Visit Surrey was delighted to sponsor Surrey Cultural Partnership’s annual forum earlier this year, where Dr James Kennell, Visit Surrey Director and Head of Surrey Hospitality & Tourism Management at the University of Surrey, was a key-note speaker. Read on to discover his insights into the opportunities and future potential for Surrey’s tourism and cultural sector.
Surrey’s cultural tourism opportunity: from assets to experiences
Surrey’s cultural sector matters for the visitor economy because it helps us to answer the hardest question for a destination: why should someone come here, and why now?
When culture is packaged well, it becomes a driver of demand that supports higher-spend visits, longer dwell time, stronger midweek and shoulder-season trade, and gives visitors strong reasons to return.
For hotels, venues, attractions, food and drink businesses, and experience providers, that translates into more confident forward bookings and a more resilient year-round market.
Surrey already has the raw ingredients: heritage and landscape, festivals, galleries, and a vibrant cultural scene across the county.
The challenge is that the offer is often experienced as a set of individual assets rather than as a joined-up proposition.
But visitors don’t come to us for ‘assets’, they buy into the shape of a trip: a good day out, a weekend itinerary, a themed journey, a set of experiences that feel purposeful and easy to choose.
Many of you are already grasping this opportunity, encouraging multi-faceted visits through initiatives such as joint ticket offers and campaigns, shared itineraries, and partnerships with local eateries and vineyards.
Visit Surrey can support the cultural sector in this, helping to connect like-minded organisations from across the tourism sector and initiate conversations about how you might build exciting visitor journeys together.
And if you already have partnerships underway, we’re here to support you with cross-promotion opportunities, using our destination marketing to make these experiences discoverable to an ever-widening visitor audience of more than a million visitors per year.
To make the most of this opportunity, it helps to focus on two shifts that are shaping cultural tourism right now.
First, there is a move away from simply promoting individual cultural assets and towards designing visitor-ready cultural experiences—things people can easily understand, choose, and book.
Second, there is a growing demand for depth and immersion: experiences that feel participatory and meaningful.
The shift from cultural assets to designed cultural experiences
One of the clearest shifts in cultural tourism is away from simply promoting what a destination has, and towards designing what visitors can actually do.
The key question in all this has changed from ‘What do we have to promote?’ to ‘What can someone actually do when they visit Surrey for culture.’
That shift matters because cultural visitors are time-poor and choice-rich. They want experiences that are intentional, narrative-led and participatory, not just a list of venues and attractions.
What “experience design” could look like in Surrey
This isn’t about building shiny new cultural magnets or chasing large capital projects. Those funding conditions feel much tougher now, and Surrey’s opportunity is more immediate: better use of what’s already here, presented in ways visitors can recognise and book.
In practice, experience design can mean:
- Story-led walks and trails
- Hands-on workshops and making
- Cultural weekends that combine landscape, heritage and creativity
- Behind-the-scenes access and meet-the-maker moments
- Event-led programmes that create a reason to visit at a specific time of year
And not all of this has to be “educational”. If we want to attract Generation Alpha then some of these experiences need to be fun, quick to grasp, and designed for participation, using technology and events formats to keep the pace and attention. Not least, they need to be “Tik-Tok ready”.
Depth and immersion: why meaning beats spectacle
A second trend shaping cultural tourism is the growing demand for depth and immersion.
Immersive experiences are among the fastest-growing visitor attractions internationally. But “immersive” is often misunderstood. It’s easy to assume that immersion automatically means high-tech. What visitors often tell us is different: they value experiences that are meaningful, memorable, and participatory, not just spectacular.
There is also a noticeable appetite for a different pace. Many high spending visitors want slower, more reflective cultural journeys that allow people to switch off and spend their time well.
Surrey shouldn’t try to out-London London
This is where Surrey is well positioned. We do not need to compete with London on scale or novelty. Surrey can compete on depth:
- Culture embedded in landscape
- Heritage experienced through stories
- Places that reward attention rather than rushing past
That kind of proposition supports the visitor economy in a very practical way: it encourages longer stays, repeat visits, and a stronger year-round market.
Where Visit Surrey can add value: making experiences discoverable
Experience-led cultural tourism doesn’t succeed just because the product is good. It succeeds when those experiences are packaged into journeys that visitors can easily understand, share, and choose.
Visit Surrey can play a practical role here by:
- Supporting conversations about how to develop cultural activity into visitor-facing experiences
- Encouraging cross-promotion between partners
- Assisting with amplifying what is working for you through your marketing and social media - especially when multiple partners align around a shared proposition. Visit Surrey loves sharing best practices with our sector and celebrating your successes
A Destination Management Organisation like Visit Surrey is in a unique position because it can connect members across different areas of the sector - culture, hospitality, events, sport, transport, town centres and more. At their best, DMOs act as honest brokers and trusted partners, helping improve the overall quality of the destination offer.
Takeaways?
- Design experiences, not just listings
If your offer is currently presented mainly as an asset, experiment with shaping it into:
- A day out
- A weekend itinerary
- A themed trail
- A seasonal series
- Build immersion through participation
Immersion can be low-tech. It can be:
- Making, tasting, learning, joining
- Access to people and stories
- Small-group formats
- Guided or hosted interaction
- Collaborate to create journeys
Visitors rarely consume culture in isolation. They eat, stay, travel, browse, and attend events. The strongest tourism propositions are joined-up - and that requires active partnership across organisations. The strongest offers are the ones that make those links easy.
- Spread the word
Work with Visit Surrey to amplify your offer through their top-performing website and social media channels.
Please e-mail Visit Surrey at membership@visitsurrey.com to discuss the opportunities we can offer.
