A TOURISM partnership promoting the Furness and Cartmel Peninsulas has been re-launched with a fresh image and vision.

The revamped look is part of a drive to strengthen the area's appeal as a visitor destination and the partnership is urging local businesses to use its new logo to increase awareness of what is on offer.

The Furness Tourism Partnership has been transformed thanks to £15,000 of funding from Business Link, and now operates as Lake District Peninsulas.

Among the changes which have been made are a new logo, reflecting the peninsulas' coastline and fells, a redeveloped website, new constitution and committee involving the public and private sector, as well as a new business plan.

It is ten years since the partnership started, and committee chairman Professor Victor Middleton said the executive committee members decided to develop and expand its work, including re-designing its visitor guide.

At the new-look launch, he said the tourism partnership' s "primary reason and existence" was to support 5,000 local jobs.

Discussing the "sheer wealth" of attractions on the peninsulas, he said visitors were attracted by the "quality of our coastline, villages, towns and rural hinterland".

"It is a huge asset that the range of our year-round tourism comprises business visits, events and festivals, leisure, recreation as well as holidays."

Project manager Angela Knowles stressed the importance of the new logo and of local businesses incorporating it into their own publications and promotions.

"It is very competitive out there so we need to keep refreshing our brand," she said.

"It is about getting the message across that this is a unique area of Cumbria.

When we started out in 1992 very few areas of the UK had a visitor guide.

Now everywhere has one."

Prof Middleton added that the marketing never stopped as visitors had to be reminded of what the area boasted.

"We have to up-date things - focus the imagination and maintain a level of intensity," he said.

Of local businesses, and the potential pulling power of their support, he said: "They are in competition with each other, but much more, they are in the business of mutual selling.

By the process of self-help and mutual marketing as a partnership we can do so much.

With the help of local businesses we can do a great deal more."