How could Brighton and Hove be better marketed to potential visitors? Ideas at a council meeting included promoting the area’s unique offerings from starling murmurations to year-round sea swimming and heritage trails.
Members of Brighton and Hove City Council’s Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee made the suggestions as they discussed almost 30 ways to improve the “visitor economy” and encourage more overnight stays.
The ideas were the product of a cross-party “task and finish group” which held seven evidence-gathering meetings with 23 guests representing businesses and other organisations involved in the local tourism industry.
The task and finish group noted that people visited year-round but most were day trippers – and the number of overnight stays had fallen.
More than 11 million people a year visit Brighton and Hove, spending almost £900 million, but in the winter off-season, there were limited fewer attractions.
The task and finish group looked at ways to boost Christmas events and how to extend summer events.
The night-time economy faces challenges because of a lack of late-night transport, a perception that Brighton is a “party town” and rising cost which are affecting night-time businesses.
At the Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting at Hove Town Hall on Tuesday (3 November), Labour councillor Amanda Evans noted Brighton and Hove’s largely positive reputation.
YouGov listed Brighton and Hove as the third most popular tourist city in the country this year, among all adults, after York and Edinburgh. London and Cambridge were fourth and fifth respectively.
Councillor Evans, who chairs the committee, said: “We punch above our weight already. However, a huge proportion of those 11 million visits a year are summer day-trippers.
“When they come down when it’s a hot day, they clog up the roads. They clog up the railway station. They clog up the beach. We love them anyway. They’re very important to our economy.
“But we set out to look at the idea that, in common with other tourist destinations, we’d like more of them to be coming all year round and more of them to be staying overnight than coming for the day.”
Green councillor Sue Shanks suggested promoting attractions to those attending conferences at venues such as the Brighton Centre – and she brought up the starlings, elms and sea swimming.
Councillor Shanks said: “Lots of people come to see the starlings – the murmurations. It’s a big thing for bird-watchers.
“We could make more of that with hotel packages and someone talking about the starlings or just looking at them – and the elms.
“Soon after I moved here, my dad came to visit for the first time and he was just amazed to see the elms because they were all wiped out across the country. We could make more of them.”
Councillor Shanks also suggested identifying more places for overnight stops for motorhome users, as one herself.
Conservative councillor Anne Meadows put forward heritage trails as another promotional idea to encourage visitors to explore Brighton and Hove.
Councillor Meadows said: “We have so much heritage within the city but we don’t promote where it is or how to get there.
“My thoughts are: ‘Well done on the task and finish group.’ It takes in a broad spectrum and I would want cheaper parking myself if I was going anywhere.”
Among the 27 recommendations made were
- reassess the Visit Brighton model to reduce the barriers to promoting hospitality venues, events and activities
- have Visit Brighton host a central platform providing information on activities in the area
- co-ordinate destination packages
- market Brighton and Hove for its unique identity, the independent shops, the seafront arches, art and culture
- explore partnership with Gatwick Airport to promote the area
- promote Brighton and Hove as a food destination with trails, festivals and restaurant offers
- look into expanding summer events with a winter fringe and winter pride
- tap into the sauna economy and invite the UK Sauna Association to have its festival in Brighton
The report is due to go before the council’s cabinet for consideration on a date yet to be set.
At the risk of seeming mercenary, I think the city would be better off with fewer but wealthier tourists. We attract a lot of visitors, but what is their expenditure per capita per day? And of that amount they spend, how much stays in the city and isn’t exported to businesses and people based outside the city? Fewer, wealthier clients means we’d need to provide a better quality and value offer. Brighton has always had that rough edge, but now it’s decidedly seedy.
more cultural and heritage themed events
Overnight stays spend in the region of 6-7x more in the city compared to day trippers, according to council data, Mr Time. Suggests that maybe the focus could be on multiday events and events that attract people from further away?
Stop Bhcc ‘s war on the motorist.
Sack the dogma driven idiots in the Transport Dept
Totally agree. However, they’ve been pursuing this obsession for years and although it is clearly ineffective, they’re not going to stop.
Convert the Volks railway to rocket powered, extend it to Hove Lagoon and make it free to nudists… I may have to think that last point through some more.
get rid of all the beggars , piss heads and dossers they’re hardly a good advert for the city I grew up in
.Easy! have more all year round cultural and arts events it is they who will travel, and more likely stay the night and eat in restaurants, cafes and bars. Can you imagine B&H having its own Open Heritage Weekend combined with heritage trails, guided tours etc all run by volunteers. Costs the council nothing and brings in a whole new set of visitors from all over who want to learn about and experience Brighton and Hove’s rich heritage all explained by enthusiastic locals.
Why not build a giant tower on the seafront with a glass donut on it which goes up and down once an hour. If you lend me £30m I’ll build it for you. Don’t worry I’ll give you 1% of the revenue as fair compensation on the loan.
Meanwhile… more seriously, do the basics well. Make the seafront and the heritage assets like the pier, terrace and seafront walkways safe, clean and well presented. They are the principle attraction of this city. , there is no need to build white elephants.
Fix transport links. The trains don’t run well on weekends and that is a constraint to London visitors. Meanwhile visiting by car is also problematic as the parking is expensive and constrained.
I thought having a Seafront Board was going to sort this out. Also all of those figures that were spouted about The i360 bring in extra visitors. Anyone that has been to Ford Market would know how well it does so why not have one like it on Madeira Drive. Unfortunately The Left have very little if any Business experience as most have spent their life working in The Public Sector.
Personally, I avoid visiting Brighton because of the obsession with parking apps. When did credit card readers become obsolete?
Spot on. Today in Rottingdean car park, I used the app – 5 screens ( incompetent programming) – then got a something’s gone wrong message. “Contact customer support (but we’re not going to tell you how)”. Bought some meat in the butcher’s – one tap of my card on his little box – done.
City of sanctuary virtue signaling along with persecution of motorists does nothing to bring in money. In fact the reverse. The place looks like a dump and smells of wee. Shops are empty, parking expensive. Piles of rubbish reinforce this appearance. Super aggressive cyclists en e-motorcycles and illegal scooters make pavements a life and death lottery. Potholes and uneven pavement offer the opportunity for injury to all street users.
We do have some nice restaurants now. You can even go into some of those without stepping over junkies asking for spare change.
Perhaps we should sell the place as a set from squid game?
Too many restrictions on parking. It’s hard to find anywhere to park for a day trip let alone overnight. I used to stay over weekends but parking puts me off so much that I don’t bother visiting anymore and I choose other places to stay.
11m visitors come to Brighton , they dont all come by car and need parking
How about free (or even affordable) parking? 🤣 The difficulty of accessing Brighton by car (and the huge cost of transport for a family otherwise) is the sole reason I don’t come to Brighton anymore. I’m definitely not alone here. I grew up in Brighton and transport is the biggest barrier to travelling in from Worthing. It just isn’t worth the expense or stress.
This how to attract more visitors….get rid of all the alcoholics and junkies off our streets , clean the city properly on a daily basis and not just deep clean it once a year! Maintain the seafront on a regular basis, the railings haven’t been painted in decades! Bring down the parking charges and generally stop wasting money on the under achievers of this city and spend much more money on the seafront. Evict tent dwellers who illegally set up home on the beach and on our green spaces immediately and not months and years later. Monitor cyclists better and make centre of the city a safer place to walk around in!
Support local community arts charity Same Sky to bring back the beautiful Burning The Clocks event. This mid-winter lantern parade with bonfire and fireworks is a spectacular and uniquely Brighton tradition which attracts thousands of visitors as well as bringing together our local community. The event has not happened for two years due to lack of funding, but with the right support Same Sky would love to bring it back. Burning The Clocks is a neglected gem – a ready-made cultural attraction to boost the winter visitor economy!
I suppose it depends on what you mean by more visitors. I doubt very much that it could ever again become a family friendly town as it has spent too long promoting itself as a noisy ‘party town’ for the under twenty fives and a race track for the anti-social two-wheeled community.
Scrub the town clean.
Ban rent a mobs and crack heads from the clock tower.
Sort the crumbling seafront and walkways.
Cut car parking costs and build a new central car park that fits big cars.
Focus on Regency events, balls, art festivals, concerts and shows.
More concerts at the Amex.
Oh maybe ice skating at the pavilion…
Carols and a christmas festival, with local restaurants involved. Not cringe winter markets selling Shein tat and spiced bs.
If you want a Winter Pride make it about fringe events, arts and shows, not a drug driven piss up.
As with other comments, get the basics right to make people want to come again rather than just a one off visit. Give the town a good scrub and more importantly, maintain it. It’s embarrassing walking visiting friends and family through streets of dog poo, tagged walls and the overwhelming aroma of urine.
Replace the horrific Brighton Centre with a world class live music, enterainment and sports venue
The A259 is busy dual carriageway that’s a hostile environment separating the town from the sea. It’s easily Brighton’s biggest eyesore. Keep the focus on good public transport, cycling and walking routes. Don’t pander to people who insist on using the planet’s non-renewable energy resources to take 1 to 2 tons of metal, glass, plastic and fabrics with them to the shops.
Reverse the last 10 years of driving tourists and events out of town with extortionate parking charges, bus gate fines and Red Routes and clean and restore the city back to what it should be.
So many good suggestions. All of these are commonsense but sadly that plays no part in the decisions made by the “cabinet”.
It’s interesting that Hove still has the “Heritage of Hove” boards installed during my time as Chairman of Hove’s planning committee almost 40 years ago. Thanks to substantial funding by Amex the cost to our council tax payers was insignificant.
But, of course, we didn’t embark on vanity projects- just used commonsense to manage the borough on behalf of our residents.
An art gallery in league with the Hasings Contemporary, Towner and Palant House with affiliation to the London and European galleries would help!
Clean up the town, make parking affordable, support small businesses, and get rid of antisemitism
Brighton’s 24-hour parking charges. Central locations like The Lanes currently charge over £40 for 24 hours, whereas comparable seaside resorts keep their overnight rates well under £20.
This stark price difference significantly damages our local economy. When parking costs as much as a meal out, it heavily sways visitors’ decision-making against staying overnight. By introducing more competitive overnight tariffs, the Council would directly encourage longer stays, boosting evening footfall for our local hotels, restaurants, and theatres.
Let’s make Brighton welcoming for overnight guests, not discourage them.
How am I meant to afford visiting a place?
I have to pay for the most important things first.
When I do, all of my money is gone.
I do not fancy coming out in the cold weather, just to visit somewhere, it is not that important to me.
Unfortunately, you can almost smell how up its own backside brighton has become. Sitting in a jam next to an unused, car’s width, cycle lane is enough to put me off and I only live in Shoreham. Let alone closing off roads, using parking apps where there’s no signal, £8 plus for a pint and shopfronts boarded up. When people visit us, it’s rarely suggested we should go to brighton and that just wouldn’t have been the case 10 years ago. Well done to the council. They’ve found the pot at the end of the gentrification rainbow…economic decline.
Ban cars from the centre & make every main road a Red Route!
Our greedy Labour clowncil are already going down this economic suicide route to get rid of money spending visitors.
Brighton and Hove needs to get a time machine and go back 20 years to when visitors were welcome and parking was plentiful and affordable.
Maybe clean up the seafront – can’t expect visitors to pay a fortune on parking to sit on rusty benches and look at rusted railings, shelters with no glass & rust all over the paintwork – don’t need a report to sort out something as basic as that –
Well where to start to make it more attractive to visitors
– scrap parking zones all together and just put paid parking in the centre where you can actually just pay with contactless or cash. The only thing that currently happens to the zones and that it spreads as other areas get the parkers that got moved out by the introduction of yet another zone. There weren’t major issues without any of the zones. Pure council greed.
-use the money to tidy up the seafront, restore arches properly and more cleaners to keep the city tidy and attractive instead of vanity projects like the failed 360 and VG. On top of that focus on getting homeless and beggers sorted out as that becomes a bigger problem month on month.
Basically go back to the 2000s
Hmmmm this city is declining rapidly. The police will only turnout if there’s a hate crime. Come to Brighton in the pouring rain and wind.
No parking so let’s park where residents have to pay. The city is dirty, pavements full of weeds, homeless folk, beggars and the benefits culture. Yes Brighton is marvellous!
Why the hell anyone wants to swim in shit filled seas, pay half a year’s wages minus tourist tax (coming soon thanks to that ginger eejit who attempted evaded tax on her seafront flat )
All in all these posh councillors who have none of these problems because at least two of them lived in Birmingham whilst representing Queens Park lols. Yes, they are locals lols
Yes, come to Brighton where the stench of weed is greater than New York ( it’s legal there)
Lunatic champagne socialists and the United republic of Hove comprised of DFLs who escaped London for the reasons listed above.
Don’t forget the giant spaceship lollipop for which we, the plebs, paid for sold for a pittance. Yes, all in all this is such a wonderful city!
Escape to the country …….I can’t wait to get out!
Stop being anti car and make it easy to drive to the sea side and park for free. The cycle lane along Preston park is not used, terrible to ride on. No one wanted it , 5 accidents in 12 months due to the kerbs.