Tourism will be worth £2bn to the region’s economy by 2020. Ben Schofield looks at how the boom will be realised
TOURISTS will spend £2bn a year in Merseyside within the next decade, according to a masterplan revealed last night.
Industry bosses say they have put together one of the most “ambitious and bold” strategies to boost the sector by 60% by 2020.
Their tough targets include growing the number of jobs supported by out-of-town visitors by 14,000. They also say the region should see 16m hotel visits booked per year by 2020.
The details were revealed last night at the launch of the Liverpool City Region Visitor Economy Strategy, published by the region’s tourist board and inward investment agency, The Mersey Partnership (TMP).
The marketers are confident those targets and more will be achieved by putting our cultural and heritage offer front and centre of efforts to sell the city region.
The region will also boldly bid for more global events to come here. The Liverpool International Boat Show is named as being one potential crowd-puller in the near future.
Insiders at TMP also said Merseyside should consider bidding for the Ryder Cup golf tournament to capitalise on the hugely successful Open Championships at Birkdale and Hoylake.
The outfit will create a “major events” team that will bid for premium events and conferences to come to Liverpool or the wider region.
The Ryder Cup is already scheduled to go to Newport’s Celtic Manor Resort, in Wales, in 2010 and Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2014. The bi-annual tournament would not return to the UK until 2018 so any bid would be a long-term target.
Launching the strategy, TMP chief executive Lorraine Rogers told the Daily Post: “This is really bold and really ambitious. We’re looking at 60% growth in the sector over the next 10 years.”
Tourists currently spend around £1.3bn per year in the city region, which underpins 23,000 jobs.
Ms Rogers is adamant the city will be a fixture in the rundown of the UK’s top five cities for leisure visits and in the top 50 global conference venues. The International Congress and Conference Association currently ranks Liverpool 86th, up from 130th in 2007.
The strategy also paves the way for the city region’s hotel boom to continue unabated. From having around 34,000 beds by the end of 2009, the bed count is set to rise to 49,000 by 2020. But swingeing cuts to the public purse and the end of mass European investment means the roadmap is very much being placed in the hands of the private sector.
Ms Rogers added: “This is a private sector-led strategy that reflects that European funding will end in 2012 and public sector cuts are an inevitability. We’re planning for that now. We’re involving all the key players across the region.
“It’s a collaborative strategy for the next decade that everyone will all get behind because they have been part of it.”
Merseyside will be split into three distinct “destination brands” – Liverpool, Southport and England’s Golf Coast – with Liverpool in pole position.
