Agenda item - Chairs Communications

40.1    The Chair gave the following communications –

Tourism update

A briefing note has been tabled for all Members, and there are some spare copies in the public gallery, regarding the Economic Impact estimates of Tourism for Brighton & Hove 2016 which have just been released.

The Visitor Economy Strategy is currently in development. Stage One consultations have been undertaken comprising one to one telephone conversations with 14 national organisations and key representatives within the City, the purpose was to understand issues and opportunities and how Brighton & Hove is perceived. Stage two consultations are scheduled to take place towards the end of January, the purpose of these consultations is to test out early thinking and direction with selected representatives from key relevant sectors. Blue Sail the appointed consultants for the Visitor Economy Strategy are working closely with Regeneris who are consulting on the overarching Economic Strategy and Hotel Solutions who are consulting on the Hotel Futures Study to ensure alignment across all strategies and studies. The draft Visitor Economy Strategy will be available for review in early February 2018.

VisitBrighton continues to work with over 528 City partners engaged in tourism, in the last 3 months VisitBrighton has:

·         Played a key role in the Save Madeira Terrace Campaign – raising £464,000, exceeding the target of £430,000

·         Hosted journalists which resulted in coverage most notably in Good Things Magazine, Olive Magazine, Sunday Times Ireland and The Metro

·         Engaged with 57k followers on Twitter, 23k friend on Facebook and 9k followers on Instagram

·         Handled 46 conference enquiries, confirming enquiries which will generate £4m on their arrival, most notably confirming:

-       British & Irish Orthoptic Society Annual Conference – June 2018 – 250 delegates

-       National NIV Nurses Association –  June 2018 -  250 delegates

-       UK Serial Group Conference– arriving March 2020 – 900 delegates

-       UNISON Disabled Conference – Oct 2020 – 400 delegates

·         Booked 1881 bed nights of accommodation for conference clients generating £14k commission

Material Practices: Painting and Printmaking at the University of Brighton

·         Hove Museum has been working with the University of Brighton to present an exhibition of a selection of the work of final year students on the Fine Art Painting and Fine Art Printing courses.  The exhibition of work is of great benefit to the museum and to the university.  It provides for the museum and its audiences an exciting display of contemporary work and for the students of the university it provides experience in selection, display, audience and the public world.

·         The exhibition opened to a private view on 15th December where students, councillors and local business people were welcomed to the museum.  Canapes were provided by the students of Portslade and Aldrington Community Academy, organised by Chris Mellet, the assistant headteacher at the school. The young people not only made the food but showed great skills of organisation and maturity as they took over the professional kitchen of the museum and circulated amongst the guests with the trays. The ingredients were supplied by the local co-op.

·         The event was supported by local councillors, in particular Councillor Wealls, who facilitated the relationship with the university and with PACA, relationships that Hove Museum will now build on for future partnership working

Public Art Update

A new piece of public art has been commissioned for the Huxley Building on the University’s Moulsecoomb campus.

The Commissioning partners were Brighton Digital Festival, University of Brighton and Brighton & Hove City Council.

The Huxley Building houses the School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences, teaching pharmacy, chemistry, biology, biomedical science and ecology.

5 artists were shortlisted from an initial expression of interest from 32 artists.

The shortlisted artists were George King Architects, Matt Jakob / Nexus Studios, Luke Jerram, Paul Sermon & Charlotte Gould and Stanza.

Nexus Studios were the winners of the Commission. Installation should be completed by summer 2018.

This was funded by Section 106 monies from the University of Brighton for their new build the Science Faculty – Huxley Building.

Latest tourism figures show city’s pulling power

Total expenditure by visitors to Brighton & Hove is estimated to have been in the region of £885.9 million in 2016, an increase of 3.2% compared to 2015.

The data also shows the city had  9,6m day trippers,  a 5.8% upturn on 2015, while the amount of money spent during their trip increased by 6.2% to £353 million. 

The number of overnight stays in the city showed the biggest increase at 1,6m, just over 10% up on 2015.  Domestic visitors were shown to be the group that had contributed most to this growth with almost 15% more overnight trips made by UK travellers compared with 2015 figures.   The only figure to have dipped slightly is the number of overnight trips made by overseas visitors, which was down marginally, by 2.1%, though both the length and value of each trip has increased. 

The statistics can be interpreted in a number of ways but generally these figures are a good indication of the tourism sector’s overall performance and it’s very encouraging to see that Brighton & Hove continues to be a popular visitor destination and is competing well at a regional and national level. 

Other events

I gave a speech at the November’s Cultural Framework Summit: Your City/Your Culture/YOUR VOICE event, and was very pleased to see the hundreds of people who came along to participate in developing our Arts and Culture framework. In the evening a small gathering was hosted for delegates from Belgium and Finland.

On 29th November I attended the impressive Southeast Tourism awards event at the Hilton Metropole

Finally Nick Hibberd and I met with GTR to discuss fair deals from London to Brighton, following this issue being raised in committee by Cllr MacCafferty. There was agreement to look at ways of promoting Brighton as a visitor destination across London stations, and options about how to involve stakeholders in follow-up work around this is under discussion.