Tourism alum shares advice for securing a grad job with current students

The marketing team at VisitBrighton came to Elm House to speak to our tourism students about their marketing strategy and campaign activity. 

Students welcomed Charlotte Barrow, Senior Marketing Executive at VisitBrighton, and Lilli Pullan, Marketing Officer at VisitBrighton and former International Tourism Management with Marketing BSc student.

Lilli joined the VisitBrighton team over the summer, after having her interview on the same day as her graduation in July. 

Speaking to our current third-year students, she said: “This time last year I was in your position, stressed about my dissertation and I hadn’t started thinking about jobs. 

“Three weeks before graduation I started applying and was fortunate to get the first job I applied for – mainly due to the work experience I’d done.” 

Lilli worked a number of part-time jobs alongside her studies, including working for a student marketing organisation that arranged on-campus events with huge brands like Jack Daniels, Bumble and Amazon. 

She also completed a summer internship with a team organising an event at Excel London, and a consultancy project with the Brighton i360 that stood out on her application.

She shared some advice when it comes to applying for jobs: “When going to interview, always mention key skills like team-working, communication and problem solving. 

“When I was writing my personal statement [for this job], I was relating my modules to the job.” 

Charlotte led the guest lecture to our tourism students, sharing how visitor numbers and the economic benefit have changed from 2007 to 2019. In 2007 Brighton & Hove had 8.3mil visitors bringing £868k to the local economy, whereas in 2019 the city had 12.4mil visitors bringing £976k of economic benefit.

The figures show a 50% increase in visitors but only a 12% increase in economic benefit. Charlotte attributes this to an increase predominantly in the number of day visitors who don’t spend as much.

“That’s why we still need to promote Brighton & Hove, to increase economic benefit and drive jobs in the city.” 

VisitBrighton is a destination marketing organisation that’s funded by Brighton & Hove City Council and private funding from local businesses.

Charlotte talked about the importance of having a strong brand identity, from colours to imagery, tone of voice and brand pillars. 

“I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to have a brand, no matter what size the business is. 

“The branding applies to everything we do, from a post on Twitter to writing an article.” 

VisitBrighton delivers a range of marketing activity including campaigns, working with influencers, plus organic social media content and blog posts.

One of their most notable marketing campaigns was ‘Never Normal’ in 2020, which was a twist on the ‘new normal’ saying that became infamous with the covid-19 pandemic.

“Post-covid, we knew the competition was going to be fiercely competitive. We’d need a strong campaign to come back with but also need to be flexible because of all the changes.” 

Charlotte shared her clear passion for promoting the city with our tourism students.

“One of the joys of working in tourism is that it’s not a hard sell – these are all genuine things I love to see and do.”

It was great for our current students to learn more about destination marketing organisations and marketing strategies. On top of this, it was great for them to hear from summer 2022 graduate Lilli about how she secured her first job and how it’s going.

Interested in studying tourism at the University of Brighton? Check out our courses:

• International Tourism Management BSc
• International Tourism Management with Marketing BSc
• International Tourism Management MSc