Visit Belfast is the destination management and marketing organisation responsible for promoting Belfast city centre and the wider region. Its mission is to attract visitors from ROI and GB markets and showcase Belfast as a vibrant, welcoming tourist destination.
As Head of Marketing, Digital and Communications, Gavin McKenna oversees a fast-moving digital operation where performance, insight, and agility are critical.
The challenge: fragmented data and slow decision-making
As Visit Belfast’s digital activity grew, performance data became increasingly fragmented. Metrics lived across GA4, social platforms, and other tools, all manually pulled into spreadsheets. While the team had access to large volumes of data, turning it into insight was difficult.
Before Hurree, as Gavin explains, “our data was very skewed and it was all over the place.” Trends were hard to identify, issues were slow to surface, and decisions relied heavily on monthly reports.
This lack of clarity slowed performance across both web and social. On social channels, identifying successful content required constant manual checks, making it “very hard to spot what the successful videos were unless we were in the platform all the time.” On the website, understanding where users were visiting, how long they stayed, and how partner pages were performing was equally challenging.
A single source of truth for faster decisions
What the team needed was one clear view of performance. With a background in paid media, Gavin had experience with data visualisation tools but found most options were “either extremely expensive or extremely cheap and they don’t do what you need them to do.”
Hurree offered a simpler, more intuitive approach. By bringing multiple data sources into one platform, Hurree gave Visit Belfast a single source of truth across web, social, and campaigns. Instead of spending time gathering data, the team could focus on acting on it.
For Gavin, the impact was immediate. It was about “pulling all our sources of truth into one visualisation so that we could make decisions quickly,” a change he describes as “a game changer for us.” As Visit Belfast’s needs evolved, Hurree adapted too, building new connectors quickly to ensure reporting was never disrupted.
From monthly reporting to real-time insight
With Hurree in place, Visit Belfast moved from retrospective reporting to day-to-day insight. The team now checks dashboards regularly, using real-time data to spot opportunities and address issues as they arise.
“We’re now able to get day-on-day snapshots,” Gavin says, allowing the team to see what needs improvement and act immediately.
On the website, this has unlocked a clearer understanding of user journeys, dwell time, and engagement across partner pages, insights that can be shared directly with stakeholders to demonstrate value. On social, it has made it easier to identify high-performing content and build strategies around what works.
Hurree’s in-house AI Analyser, Riva, adds another layer of confidence. Rather than relying on external tools, the team values having secure, ethical AI built directly into the platform, giving them reassurance and a trusted sounding board for interpreting performance.
Clear results and accelerated growth
The shift to real-time insight has delivered measurable results. Visit Belfast has seen a 15% increase in engagement across partner pages, driven by a better understanding of user behaviour and faster optimisation.
On social media, the impact has been even more significant. Since using Hurree, Visit Belfast has become the fastest-growing tourism brand on social in the UK. While competitors typically grow at around 3%, Visit Belfast is achieving growth of 23%.
As Gavin puts it, “being able to have the data that backs the creativity has been amazing.”
Confidence, visibility, and trust
Beyond performance metrics, Hurree has changed how digital is perceived across Visit Belfast. The team can now clearly show senior leaders and board members what their platforms are doing and where efficiencies lie, often at short notice.
Just as importantly, the digital team now has greater confidence and autonomy. Being able to clearly see the return on their work has built pride, momentum, and trust, both internally and with partners who rely on Visit Belfast to deliver measurable value.
