Experience North East England

Experience North East England

Experience North East England, then Destination North East England, is the destination marketing agency for the region, promoting the North East as a place to visit, meet and invest. As AI moved quickly into everyday working life, it wanted to help businesses across the visitor economy build real confidence and capability, in a way that was practical, responsible and grounded in how the sector actually works.

The question was not whether AI mattered to the visitor economy. It was how to help a wide range of organisations, from large attractions to small owner-led businesses, move from curiosity to capable and responsible use, without leaving anyone behind.

That breadth was the heart of the challenge. The visitor economy spans hotels and inns, museums, gardens and castles, tour and experience providers, destination and public-sector bodies, and small charities, all working at different sizes, budgets and levels of digital confidence. Plenty of people were already curious about AI, but that curiosity was uneven, and few organisations had a clear sense of where AI genuinely fitted, where it did not, and how to use it without creating new risks.

Commissioned by Experience North East England and delivered by Dr Yulia Dzenkovska and Simon Laing, the programme was built in three stages. An online taster session in December 2025 introduced AI in the visitor economy, gauged interest, and shaped the focus of the training that followed. Three full-day masterclasses then ran in January 2026 in Durham, Newcastle and Alnwick, combining practical demonstrations, discussion, hands-on experimentation and sector-relevant examples. Finally, around 20 hours of tailored one-to-one support helped organisations move from general understanding to specific application in their own context, across marketing, customer communications, content, research, operational workflows and early chatbot work.

Across the three masterclasses, the programme engaged 44 participants from 34 organisations, with good spread across County Durham, Newcastle and Gateshead, Northumberland and the wider region. The mix was deliberately broad, balancing commercial operators, cultural venues, destination bodies and third-sector organisations, and it brought together both established venues and smaller owner-led businesses.

The results were consistent across all three locations. Self-reported confidence rose at every site, with average gains of roughly 35% to 47%. The strongest improvements were in people's confidence to choose the right AI tool for a task, to discuss risks and limitations honestly, and to move from general awareness towards practical use. These were pragmatic gains rather than hype. Participants focused on saving time, improving quality, and strengthening the communication their visitors actually experience, with common use cases in marketing and content, website optimisation, customer-facing chatbots, research and analysis, accessibility-focused content, and internal workflows.

A clear pattern ran through the programme: individual readiness is developing faster than organisational readiness. Curiosity and willingness to experiment were high, but the supporting structures, governance, workflows, internal policy and leadership backing for shared learning, were often still underdeveloped. In other words, the appetite is already there. What many organisations now need is help to embed AI more strategically, safely and together.

The one-to-one support is where much of the real value emerged. Given space to apply the learning to live operational challenges, participants worked across four broad themes: operational improvement, marketing and audience engagement, new service development, and charity or mission-led applications. The most promising early benefits were rarely headline innovations. They were practical improvements that reduced friction, saved time, improved consistency and created a little more capacity to grow, and they were often behind the scenes rather than customer-facing.

The wider lesson is encouraging for the region. A practical, regionally delivered support model produced consistent results across very different locations and business types, which suggests the format is flexible enough to work right across the visitor economy. Short, confidence-building sessions opened the door to meaningful experimentation, and tailored follow-on support was where workshop ideas turned into real decisions.