Merseytravel is looking for two agencies to handle its travel marketing and visitor and tourism marketing.

The three-year-contract (which may be extended by an extra year) will come with a budget of between £1.2m and £1.6m and is part of the Corporate Marketing Service which was established this year to provide an integrated marketing service across the entire organisation including the implementation of Merseytravel’s new brand strategy.

The service will provide the marketing activity for both travel services and products and visitor attractions.

In order to support the marketing activity from next year the organisation will appoint two full service advertising agencies on two separate non-exclusive framework agreements.

One agency will be appointed to support travel marketing and one to support visitor attraction and tourism marketing activity.
The support provided by the agencies will include design services to support various multi-media campaigns, media buying and campaign planning.

 Visitor attraction marketing spend for 2011/2012 has been planned at £250,000 while spend for travel marketing over the same time period is set at £150,000, both including media buying budgets, subject to approval.

Lot 1 for the provision of Travel Marketing Services has an overall budget of between £500,000 and £700,000 with the contract beginning on 1 January 2011 and expiring without extension on 31 December 2013.

Lot 2 for the provision of Visitor Attraction and Tourism services will have the same contract dates, with an overall budget of between £900,000 and £1,100,000.

Submission deadline is 30.9.2010 with between five and 10 agencies expected to be invited to tender.