As the summer tourist season gets well underway, Orkney continues to be showcased across the UK and beyond this year, as the VisitOrkney and VisitScotland teams organise press trips to the islands, to raise the destination’s profile and continually drive up visitor numbers.

Yorkshire-based folk journalist, Debbie Koritsas came to Orkney for the Folk Festival last month, and described her experience as being filled with “…new friends, brilliant craic, beautiful islands, wonderful people, superb opportunities - I haven't had such a memorable festival experience in years….it was a pleasure and a privilege to be given the freedom to capture the life, energy, happiness and soul of both the festival and the islands.”

Next to profile the islands was an Italian film crew earlier this month, working on the production of an hour-long travel documentary in the islands, ‘Geo Geo’, which focuses on Orkney’s natural heritage and history, and is set to air in Italy later this year. Marketing Executive for VisitOrkney, Carly Simpson, helped to organise the press trips.

She said: “We’ve also just hosted Ken Asch, a journalist writing for the Glasgow Herald, Montreal Gazette and History Today. He sailed from Stavanger to Scalloway and then onwards to Kirkwall on the MK Andholmen, an original vessel from World War Two which was used in the operation known as the Shetland bus.”

A Belgian journalist is next on the list of press trips. Carly explains: “We are hosting Daniel Steevens, who we met at this year’s VisitScotland trade exhibition Expo. He is visiting both Orkney and Shetland and has been commissioned by Belgian newspaper ‘Het Laatste Nieuws’, to write a travel article on the islands.”

Meanwhile, visits to the VisitOrkney website, www.visitorkney.com have reached record levels again this season, with a total of 223,653 visits to the site from January to May, a growth of 25% on last year’s figures.