As the official tourism website of Great Britain, VisitBritan represents the British Tourist Authority for the UK and leads the way in showcasing what Britain has to offer. By building the value of tourism, they encourage potential visitors and develop the visitor & tourism economy.

VisitBritain is a non-departmental public body underpinned by the government Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS). The organisation also operates a separate domain for VisitEngland, offering inspiring content to a domestic or “staycation” audience.

VisitBritain, the UK’s national tourism agency responsible for promoting Britain and supporting the UK’s tourism sector, approached CTI Digital with a digital transformation project that involved a move to a modern Adobe Commerce and Drupal platform. As part of this original project, our hosting team delivered auto-scaling AWS infrastructure capable of scaling 300% over standard traffic levels for season spiles and national television exposure. 

Additionally, VisitBritian needed to ensure website stability throughout a series of high-traffic TV campaigns, including a prominent feature on the Camelot National Lottery. The website needed to maintain stability and operation while handling up to a 3,000% spike in traffic. This spike was expected to be significantly larger than previous promotions and therefore needed testing and optimisation to handle such large volumes of traffic in short bursts.

Read more about our digital marketing and content strategy project, which formed a part of the wider digital transformation for VisitBritain. 

By ensuring the website’s resilience to high-traffic surges through TV campaigns, we have enabled VisitBritain to maintain an uninterrupted online presence during mission-critical promotional periods. This proactive approach to infrastructure provisioning has safeguarded its reputation and strengthened confidence for future campaigns.

The deployment of auto-scaling AWS has provided a dynamic platform capable of adapting to fluctuating demands in real-time while also benefiting from website performance optimisation and enhanced operational efficiency by enabling the seamless allocation of resources.

Our expertise in delivering scalable cloud infrastructure has enabled VisitBritain to easily navigate high-traffic scenarios, ensuring uninterrupted service delivery and positioning them for continued success and growth.

Key results include: 

100% uptime throughout a popular campaign.

Enhanced Website Stability: The robust cloud infrastructure and load testing ensured VisitBritain's website remained stable and operational during high-traffic TV campaigns, safeguarding its online presence and reputation.

Seamless Scalability: The utilisation of auto-scaling AWS infrastructure enables the ability to dynamically adjust resources due to traffic fluctuations and demands ensuring optimal performance without interruption.

Proactive Risk Mitigation: Through comprehensive load testing, potential performance bottlenecks and vulnerabilities were identified and addressed, minimising the risk of downtime and creating a positive user experience.

Enhanced Operational Efficiency: The strategic allocation of resources and optimisations based on the load test results enhanced operational efficiency, enabling effective resource allocation and cost reduction.

Strengthened Client Confidence: The successful implementation of scalable cloud has reaffirmed VisitBritain’s confidence in our ability to deliver reliable and high-performance digital experiences.