South Tyneside Culture Partnership
The Challenge
South Tyneside is home to an impressive collection of cultural organisations, heritage assets and creative talent. However, many organisations were facing a common challenge: how to develop tourism products that could generate new income while remaining authentic to their mission and values.
The South Tyneside Culture Partnership wanted to explore how museums, libraries, arts organisations and heritage venues could better engage tourism markets, create bookable experiences and unlock the commercial potential of their existing assets.
Our Approach
Northern Latitude was commissioned to design and facilitate a commercial experience development workshop bringing together cultural organisations from across the borough.
Drawing on our experience in tourism product development, visitor experience design and destination management, we led participants through a structured design thinking process that combined:
Tourism and visitor market insight
Customer personas and audience understanding
Experience design techniques
Travel trade and distribution opportunities
Pricing and commercial modelling
Collaborative product development
Rather than starting with new infrastructure or major investment, we encouraged participants to look at what they already had: stories, spaces, collections, expertise, communities and local partnerships.
The focus was on transforming existing assets into distinctive experiences that visitors would actively seek out, book and recommend.
The Outcome
By the end of the workshop, participants had developed a range of new visitor experience concepts, identified commercial opportunities and created practical implementation plans.
The process also helped organisations develop a stronger understanding of:
What motivates today's visitors
How tourism products are bought and sold
The requirements of travel trade and group travel markets
The role of collaboration in creating higher-value experiences
How to balance cultural value with commercial sustainability
Most importantly, organisations left with a renewed sense of confidence and ambition about their role within South Tyneside's visitor economy.
Our Role
We specialise in helping destinations, cultural organisations and visitor attractions turn ideas into market-ready experiences.
Our work combines practical tourism expertise with hands-on experience of building, operating and growing successful visitor experiences. We help organisations identify opportunities, understand their audiences, develop compelling products and create realistic pathways to delivery.
Whether you are a museum, heritage site, local authority, destination partnership or cultural organisation, we can help you unlock the tourism potential of your people, places and stories.
Looking to Develop New Visitor Experiences?
If you're exploring how to attract new audiences, generate additional income or create more distinctive visitor experiences, we'd be happy to discuss how we can help.