LOTUS Takes Andorra To Love Trails Festival

In July 2018, a team from LOTUS travelled to Weobley Castle in Swansea to attend Love Trails Festival representing Visit Andorra.

Love Trails is unique. It is the UK’s first non-competitive running and music festival, meaning that nobody wins medals or trophies. Instead, the programme focuses on music and wellbeing just as much as running and adventure. Now in its third year, Love Trails is steadily growing, attracting new sponsors and exhibitors. The location was beautiful with views of the Great Pill River from the campsite.

This year, Love Trails attracted over 1,000 people of all ages and abilities. People came to have fun and run with friends. Others came to challenge themselves against a range of tough running routes, incorporating hills and water. Visitors who attended the festival were generally interested in healthy living and enjoyed challenging themselves – the ideal targets for an active and adventure summer holiday in the Andorran Pyrenees.

This was LOTUS’ first time attending Love Trails and was included within our consumer marketing plan for Visit Andorra in order to reach young and active adventure-seekers as part our objective to build awareness of Andorra’s summer offering.

Our Andorra-branded tent was in a very prominent position in the heart of the festival village, situated directly behind the start/finish line of the runs, and (most importantly!) opposite the bar. A very popular competition was run from the stand offering the chance to win a trip to Andorra and run next year’s Andorra Ultra Trail. To enter, participants had to complete ‘I’d like to run the Andorra Ultra Trail because…’ which generated some lovely, thought-provoking comments, and great content for social media.

People who visited the stand were rewarded with comprehensive, in-depth knowledge on Andorra and what the country can offer in terms of outdoors and mountains sports. There were also lots of useful giveaways for the runners – jelly beans went down a treat for those who’d just finished a run, while sweatbands and caps were in great demand thanks to wall-to-wall sunshine across the weekend. As dusk drew in and the music on the outdoor stage started, Andorra fleece neck warmers kept the wind off.

While the stand naturally received lots of interest from enthused runners keen to hear about Andorra’s trails and running competitions, there were also plenty of enquiries about the rest of Andorra active offering, including the cycling, hiking, and climbing routes.

On the Sunday morning, Visit Andorra sponsored a 5km ‘shake-out’ run, joined by 32 festival goers. The course started at the Andorra tent for runners to grab some Andorra caps and sweatbands before hitting the trails, and then finished back there for jelly beans to celebrate the feat. This was hugely successful with everyone saying they had fun.

We were blown away by the festival over the weekend – not only in the runners’ fitness and sheer determination to complete the demanding courses, but also in the incredible friendliness of the trail running community. The level of engagement really stood out and we are very grateful for all the support.

It was a fantastic weekend!