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Cheshire and Warrington SMEs hear from tourism leaders

More than 100 businesses met on Friday from across Cheshire and Warrington to hear from leaders in tourism as well as representatives from the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and Growth Accelerator.

Companies were addressed by the chief executive of VisitEngland, James Berresford, who explained how the national tourist board’s Strategic Framework for Tourism 2010-2020 would impact Cheshire and Warrington, and emphasised the impact of visitor satisfaction.

Mr Berresford said: “Tourism is big business on England. The sector is worth £97 billion, provides 2 million jobs and is projected to grow to £158 billion by 2020. It benefits every part of the country.”

Katrina Michel, chief executive of Marketing Cheshire, outlined plans for the future direction of the company, which has been appointed to promote tourism in the region.

She said: “Cheshire is economically one of the UK’s very brightest stars, but to get the message out there we need to be doing new things in new ways, dominating digital channels where investors and visitors search for information and bringing increasing numbers of key influencers to come to Cheshire and see for themselves how fantastic it is.”

Director of the Cheshire and Warrington LEP, Aidan Manley, highlighted the opportunities set out by Lord Heseltine’s economic report, ‘No Stone Unturned’, and how Cheshire and Warrington could benefit in particular.

He added: “There is a rare opportunity now for Cheshire and Warrington to set out its stall and prepare to maximize funding opportunities coming from Central Government and Europe, following the government’s response to the recommendations in Lord Heseltine’s report.”

James Cook from GrowthAccelerator also attended the event at Crewe Hall and gave an overview of a £200m Government funding package set up for SMEs and how to access finance.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Miranda Dobson .