Partner Article

Business tourism on the up

TYNESIDE has reported “strong levels” of confirmed events business for the last year following news that the region attracted business tourism worth £238m in the year ended January 2009.

Newcastle and Gateshead represented 63% of the value of all business tourism in North East England, worth £378m in total, according to research commissioned by One North East.

More recently, the two towns have hosted more than a million delegates in the past fortnight for the Royal College of Nursing Annual International Nursing Research Conference and The Obstetric Anaesthetists’ Association convention, worth more than £1m to the regional economy.

It has also won its bid to host the Liberal Democrat conference for 2012 and has previously hosted Labour and the Conservative conferences.

Newcastle Gateshead Convention Bureau head of business tourism Jessica Roberts said the bureau “experienced strong levels of new enquiries and confirmed business during 2009 and this trend looks set to continue during 2010”.

Newcastle Gateshead attracted an estimated 1.6 million conference delegates in the year ended January 2010, accounting for 57% of the total number of delegates visiting the region, the research revealed.

Ms Roberts said: “With further investment and improved infrastructure, business tourism can play an even greater role in the region’s economic prosperity. Our present lack of large-scale, flat-floor exhibition space means bigger conventions are sometimes turned away.”

Establishing an international conference and exhibition centre in Newcastle Gateshead would be a great economic driver for the region, she added.

The research project was supported by the four sub-regional area tourism partnerships including Visit Tees Valley, Visit County Durham, Tourism Tyne and Wear and Northumberland Tourism.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .