HERITAGEXPLORE LAUCHES ON MISSION TO INVIGORATE UK'S HISTORIC HOUSES
June 2024
Image credit: Belvoir Castle | Cover image credit: Heathcliff O'Mally
Last month, technology platform HeritageXplore launched, on a mission to invigorate the UK’s historic houses. This exciting discovery and booking experience for independently owned heritage sites launched with 25 of the UK’s 450 estates, including popular attractions such as Belvoir Castle, Glamis Castle, Holkham Hall, Sudeley Castle and Blenheim Palace. Up to four new sites are expected to be added each month.
According to HeritageXplore, heritage is the cornerstone of UK tourism, representing 15% of the total market. There are 215m visits to historic sites each year, generating an estimated £18.4bn. While the National Trust and English Heritage thrive with efficient, user-friendly approaches, the visitor experience for privately owned properties is disaggregated.
Image credit: Knowsley Hall
HeritageXplore exists to help users to easily find and book new experiences and enhance their visits through the platform’s pioneering technology. For the houses themselves, as well as the bookings, they will gain customer insights, marketing support and access to partnerships in the UK and beyond.
The launch comes at a time of increased interest in UK heritage, fuelled by TV and film events such as Netflix’s Bridgerton, Lionsgate +’s Outlander and BBC1’s The Traitors, all of which were filmed on historic estates. Such sites previously relied on visits by an older, local demographic. But, more recently, a new generation of ‘heritage-curious’ visitors has emerged – tech-savvy experience seekers, aged 18-30, wishing to explore history through the lens of popular culture.
Image credit: Rockingham Castle
Violet Manners, former founder of marketing agency Akana Collective – which worked with brands including Bicester Village, Asprey and Jaguar – is behind the brand. She is also founder and executive producer of Duchess the podcast, which has reached more than 1.5m listeners and recently relaunched as Hidden Heritage podcast. Violet grew up at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire where she witnessed the visitor profile shift to a younger, more digitally native audience and sought a solution that would benefit all generations and bring the independent houses together in one place.
HeritageXplore has raised a pre-seed round of £400,000 to take the platform to market and is backed by an experienced team of colleagues, advisors and investors. William Wildridge is CTO, having spent nearly a decade on the data science team at Google. The board includes tech industry veteran Simon Guild, advisors include Anya Hindmarch CBE and philanthropist Michael Huffington, while investors include Nick Hanauer (the first non-family investor in Amazon who founded and sold aQuantive to Microsoft for $6.4bn), BetterBrand founder Aimee Yang, NobleGrossart’s chairwoman Flure Grossart, US impact investor Dorie Smith and 5 Hertford Street founder Robin Birley.
Image credit: Sudeley Castle
The business is also backed by many of the next generation custodians of independent heritage across the UK – including the Marquess of Blandford at Blenheim Palace, George, Lord Porchester at Highclere Castle, Imogen Hervey Bathurst at Eastnor Castle and Hon, Perry Pearson at Cowdray Estate.
Violet Manners says: ‘We’re thrilled to be launching HeritageXplore, the first tech platform for independent historic houses to be discovered intuitively, collectively and booked with great ease in one place. There’s a huge and growing consumer appetite, especially among the tech-first generations, to experience these iconic locations but there’s been nowhere that brings them together – until now. We look forward to helping the houses maximise their full potential and using our cutting-edge technology to introduce generations of new visitors to these unique and special places.’
Find out more at heritagexplore.com
