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The recently acquired agency beat Bigmouthmedia and Spannerworks in a competitive pitch to land the account.

VisitBritain currently has a huge range of promotional activity live across a range of media, as it faces an uphill task to promote the country as a holiday destination during one of the wettest summers on record. The Search Works will run paid and natural search activity across all international markets.

The agency will go to work immediately to complement VisitBritain's above-the-line activity.

VisitBritain is backed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and has 25 offices worldwide.

VisitBritain said it chose The Search Works because of its ability to run international campaigns, in a pitch process that concentrated largely on organic search.

The Search Works' last major win was also in the travel sector: it picked up EasyJet's search account in July, shortly before it was bought by affiliate marketing firm TradeDoubler.

Better news for Spannerworks came as it has landed its first major business since being acquired by US-based digital media group iCrossing, in winning the exclusive UK search brief for online mapping firm Multimap, also following a pitch.

The agency has been handed the immediate task of driving summer traffic to the mapping firm's website.

Both Spannerworks and The Search Works have been bought recently, for £40m and £56m respectively.

Spannerworks was bought by iCrossing in February, adding to the firm's other digital assets that include technology arm Sharp Analytics, the eponymous flagship digital agency and, since July, web development firm Proxicom.

Last week saw a handful of major accounts changing hands. In the biggest move, Sky took its search budget out of digital agency I-Level in favour of Diffiniti and Unique.