Cash from conferences used to provide seaside towns with a steady off-season income. Now big cities have cottoned on to the economic regeneration potential of corporate venues, where does that leave the old favourites, asks Michael Burton The recent hot weather has given a welcome boost to the UK’s seaside resorts, usually struggling against foreign competition and Mediterranean sun. But packed hotels and beaches still cannot mitigate the concern of seaside local authorities at the long-term challenge to their local economies in the shape of new state-of-the art urban conference centres. For years, the conference business was the mainstay of the off-season economy for seaside resorts. Blackpool, Bournemouth, Torbay, Eastbourne, Brighton, Scarborough, Plymouth, Llandudno and Swansea all built up successful conference businesses to offset the decline of the domestic holiday trade. And local government, with its proliferation of professional societies, was among their biggest supporters. But a milestone was passed early this month. The LGA, which apart from its first year, has always divided its 1,500-strong conference and exhibition between Harrogate and Bournemouth, announced next year’s event would be in Birmingham. Meanwhile, the Labour Party has abandoned Blackpool in favour of Manchester for its September conference. The seaside towns are under threat from a new generation of big and brash urban venues built as part of huge regeneration programmes and often council-owned. Manchester has its G-MEX and Bridgewater Hall, Birmingham its National Convention Centre to augment the tired NEC, London now boasts Excel in the Docklands, Cardiff has its Millennium Stadium, Glasgow its SEC, Edinburgh its ICC, Gateshead/Newcastle its Sage, Belfast its Waterfront Hall. All of them are supported by state-of-the art international conference hotels, and the essential infrastructure of trendy cafés and exotic cuisine. And the trend is to see more of them as an essential ingredient of urban regeneration. Nowadays, delegate expectations are high, and nowhere higher than among the local authority associations. In particular, they want clean, modern hotels with en suite rooms close to the conference centre and good food. The rubber chicken circuit is history, and yet many hotel chefs still live in 1950s Britain, with undrinkable plonk, watery coffee and dried breakfasts. So, where does this leave the seaside towns with their increasingly down-at-heel hotels and end-of-the-pier theatres promoting ageing B-list actors and 1970s pop stars? On the south coast, Eastbourne – once a favourite 1980s and 1990s venue for conferences – seems to have dropped off the circuit. In the north, Scarborough has also become a victim of rising expectations among delegates, and grumbling about the state of the town’s antiquated hotels has forced many conference organisers to look elsewhere. Brighton appears to be holding its own, primarily because of its appeal as a city as well as a seaside resort. Blackpool has long struggled with antiquated facilities and an image problem, and its days as a major conference venue must surely be in question. Torbay still manages to hang on to the waste management CIWM event in June, even though a few years ago, organisers threatened to move to the Midlands. The announcement made front-page news in the evening newspaper, and the show eventually stayed, mainly because delegates liked the town. And Bournemouth continues to be a successful venue. Harrogate, though not a seaside resort, somehow because of its spa town status, manages to convey that sense of being by water, and has been extremely successful in maintaining its ranking, thanks to good hotels and a huge conference and exhibition venue. Planning such facilities is a long process and takes vision and ambition. One city which significantly failed in this respect was Bristol, which – because of its good transport links, proximity to both seaside and country and great city life – should by now have been one of the biggest conference venues in England. A complete lack of vision by the city council a decade ago proved to be next-door Cardiff’s opportunity. The Welsh capital now boasts among the finest conference facilities in the UK. Bristol is not even in the game. The conference business is highly competitive, but the rewards are huge. A back-of-the-envelope calculation of the income generated for Bournemouth hotels, bars and restaurants by the four-day LGA event with its 1,500 delegates shows it must be the best part of £1m. You’d need a lot of bucket and spade holidaymakers to match that. n
