Boosting the business dollar

Busi­ness tourists are worth more to the UK econ­o­my than those who come just to mar­vel at our cathe­drals, scenery and cook­ing. But they could be worth a lot more.

“Busi­ness tourism is not always recog­nised in the way it should be and the coun­try punch­es below its weight as an events des­ti­na­tion. It’s a sleep­ing giant,” says James Beres­ford, chief exec­u­tive of the nation­al tourist board Vis­it Eng­land.

The rea­son for want­i­ng to attract busi­ness events is clear. Busi­ness trav­ellers to the UK spend an aver­age of £131 a day — more than twice the expen­di­ture of leisure vis­i­tors — and trade trans­act­ed at exhi­bi­tions in the UK is con­ser­v­a­tive­ly esti­mat­ed to be worth more than £100 bil­lion, accord­ing to a report from trade body Britain for Events.

Cur­rent­ly almost a quar­ter of vis­i­tors to the UK are here to do busi­ness and that num­ber is steadi­ly climb­ing, with busi­ness vis­its to the UK in 2011 up 6 per cent at 7.2 mil­lion, com­pared with 2010. But, accord­ing to Mr Beres­ford, that’s not enough.

“The top busi­ness events des­ti­na­tion in this coun­try is Lon­don in 14th place [in glob­al rank­ings com­piled by the Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress and Con­ven­tion Asso­ci­a­tion (ICCA), which ranks cities by the num­ber of inter­na­tion­al asso­ci­a­tion con­gress­es it hosts in a year]. The next best is Man­ches­ter at 86th and you’ve got to scroll down to 309th to find Leeds and New­cas­tle,” he says.

Vien­na has held the top spot in the ICCA rank­ings for the last six years while Barcelona, in sec­ond place, has proved the impor­tance of cap­i­tal­is­ing on an Olympic lega­cy. The city’s con­ven­tion bureau report­ed a 129 per cent increase in busi­ness in the year fol­low­ing the 1992 Games.

This summer’s Olympics are an oppor­tu­ni­ty for Britain to rein­vent itself as an events des­ti­na­tion. “Peo­ple still mis­tak­en­ly think we are an expen­sive des­ti­na­tion. In com­par­i­son to many of the Euro­pean des­ti­na­tions, we’re not,” says Mr Beres­ford.

If you want to win an inter­na­tion­al sym­po­sium… you need a more cohe­sive approach by indus­try, par­lia­ment and local gov­ern­ment

Lon­don is already wit­ness­ing a “halo effect” of the Games. Exam­ples of events com­ing to the city on the back of the Olympic and Par­a­lympic Games include the World Asso­ci­a­tion of Cul­tur­al Psy­chi­a­try Con­gress, a meet­ing of the British Asso­ci­a­tion of Spinal Cord Injury Spe­cial­ists and US sports­wear brand New Bal­ance, which will take over West­min­ster venue Alti­tude 360 dur­ing the Games. Oth­er pres­ti­gious con­gress wins include the 20th Euro­pean Con­gress on Obe­si­ty, which will see 3,000 del­e­gates arrive in Liv­er­pool in 2013, and the World Small Ani­mal Vet­eri­nary Asso­ci­a­tion con­fer­ence, which is expect­ed to attract 9,000 del­e­gates to the ICC Birm­ing­ham in April. It is thought these two events will con­tribute £5 mil­lion and £10 mil­lion respec­tive­ly to the local economies.

The launch of the Inter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion Cen­tre at Excel Lon­don in 2010 also increased lev­els of con­fer­ence busi­ness, attract­ing organ­i­sa­tions, such as the Euro­pean League Against Rheuma­tism, which wel­comed more than 16,000 del­e­gates, the high­est num­ber ever, to its meet­ing in May 2011.

Scot­land, which is see­ing unprece­dent­ed invest­ment in its meet­ing facil­i­ties, will wel­come the Com­mon­wealth Games and Ryder Cup in 2014, and these will pro­vide a once-in-a-gen­er­a­tion oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case the coun­try.

Mean­while, the Busi­ness Vis­its and Events Part­ner­ship (BVEP), which lob­bies to raise the pro­file of the busi­ness tourism sec­tor in Britain, is forg­ing clos­er links with UK Trade and Invest­ment. “We need to align inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences and exhi­bi­tions with the government’s pri­or­i­ty sec­tors for the nation­al econ­o­my,” says Michael Hirst, chair­man of the BVEP. It is also call­ing for the Trea­sury to adjust VAT on con­fer­ence ser­vices and venue hire to fall in line with the 5 per cent more com­mon­ly paid through­out Europe.

The BVEP has rec­om­mend­ed that the gov­ern­ment intro­duces a nation­al sub­ven­tion pack­age for UK des­ti­na­tions bid­ding for events, which would allow them to com­pete more fair­ly with oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries. It would also like to see the intro­duc­tion of a spe­cial event visa for meet­ings with more than 2,000 del­e­gates.

“Our argu­ment is that if you want to win an inter­na­tion­al sym­po­sium of immu­nol­o­gists or lawyers, where we are talk­ing about per­haps 10,000 del­e­gates assem­bling, you need a more cohe­sive approach by indus­try, par­lia­ment and local gov­ern­ment,” says Mr  Hirst. “The indus­try isn’t ask­ing the gov­ern­ment for mon­ey, just for it to recog­nise what a busi­ness event brings to a des­ti­na­tion.”

Business tourists are worth more to the UK economy than those who come just to marvel at our cathedrals, scenery and cooking. But they could be worth a lot more.