A five-year plan to improve the economic value of tourism to Brighton and Hove goes before councillors this week.
The Visitor Economy Strategy, going before the Brighton and Hove City Council Tourism, Development and Culture Committee on Thursday (27 September), is aimed at bringing in more money and jobs.
Target areas in the plan include bringing in more conferences and encouraging more year-round visitors.
More overnight and midweek high-spending leisure and business visitors are described in the report to councillors as key to developing the tourism industry.
The new plans aims to
- Improve the environment
- Create sustainable tourism growth
- Develop a strong place brand
- Invest in partnerships
Brighton’s current brand identity is “a creative city with a blend of modern culture and exotic architecture, sea and countryside, and a distinctive free-spirited atmosphere you won’t find anywhere else”.
A new identity would look to include health, history and the environment.
Tourism supports 21,760 “actual” jobs according to the report going before the committee.
In 2016 tourism was worth £886 million to businesses in the city, with more than nine million day trippers and one-and-a-half million overnight and overseas visitors.
Brighton and Hove receives twice as many daytrippers as competitors such as Cambridge, Bournemouth and Southend.
More than 1,000 small businesses are involved in the tourism industry in some way.
The council is described in the report as”delivering a significant proportion of the tourism ‘product'” in the city.
Key areas the council is responsible for include historic houses, museums, visitor information services, conference venues, the seafront, outdoor events, parks, highways, signs and public toilets.
The report said: “It (the council) has a major impact on the visitor experience through the decisions it makes in terms of planning, development, conservation and transport issues and through its environmental health, trading standards and licensing roles.
“The council also supports the city’s tourism businesses through many of its communications and marketing activities and in particular through the work of Visit Brighton, positioning and promoting the destination as a leading tourist destination.”
Great. Are they going to sort out the traffic now?
Do you think whoever produced the report spoke to the traffic planners (now there’s a misnomer in Brighton where traffic planning has been bad for decades)? It sounds like another consultation, stating the obvious, that won’t come to anything more than just a report and wasted expense.
Grim to see the word “brand” used of a place which should be multifarious rather than reduced to adman-speak. Doubtless the Report will also mention the “offer”.
In a mtg of this cttee earlier this year cllr handwringing lamented the runaway night time economy dragging the city ‘offer’ down. The image of Brighton is squalid and squalid behaviour is not clamped down on. It puts other kinds if potential visitors OFF.
The presenting officer drew attention to the fact we get day and overnight but not longer-stay visitors. A small city with a small populaton in a confined geographical space messages that it does not merit staying for any length of time. You can probably exhaust possibilities in a day. So any solutions need to offer a transcending reason to book longer stays here.