Industry Update #16

Recovery and confidence campaign to support £9 billion visitor economy

Marketing Manchester launched a new consumer campaign to help recover the tourism, hospitality, leisure and cultural industries and rebuild confidence in Greater Manchester as a place to visit, live, work and study.

Our Find Your Space campaign aims to inspire consumers to take time to discover Greater Manchester’s rich and perse leisure and tourism offer, whilst prioritising well-being, kindness and safety.

You all know just how hard the tourism, hospitality, leisure and cultural industries have been hit by COVID-19. By our estimations, by the end of next month it is projected that a £4.2 billion loss (-47%) will be made to Greater Manchester’s previously buoyant £9 billion visitor economy.

Our new campaign is an attempt to begin to mitigate against this loss with a safety-first approach, whilst also complementing other Greater Manchester recovery campaigns and initiatives in the public domain such as Build Back Better and Safety in GM as well as those developed by local authorities.

We launched yesterday with the first wave our campaign squarely focused on hyper local audiences, encouraging Greater Manchester residents to get out and about in their local villages, towns, cities and countryside.

As COVID-19 restrictions ease and when it is safe to do so, the campaign will evolve to target regional audiences in neighbouring counties such as Cheshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire, before eventually becoming a wholly inclusive domestic tourism campaign later in the year, encouraging staycations from around the UK.

Two sub-brands of the Find Your Space campaign – Space to Meet and Space to Learn – will also launch in autumn, encouraging confidence and safety within Greater Manchester’s important business meetings and conference industry and the ability for students to live, study and have a full student experience at Greater Manchester’s five universities.

We have many partners to thank for helping to develop the Find Your Space campaign including Greater Manchester Combined Authority, The Growth Company, CityCo, Manchester Hoteliers Association, Manchester Airport, University of Manchester, Transport for Greater Manchester, Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Pro-Manchester, Manchester Central, Bruntwood, Ocean Media, Capital and Centric, Northern Restaurant and Bar, the Greater Manchester local authorities and of course all of our membership partners.

It goes without saying that you are invited to join us in our efforts to restore a strong economy and safe future across Greater Manchester. If you think that the campaign speaks to your audiences or you would like to help shape it as we progress through the rest of the year, please contact Clair.Hewitson@marketingmanchester.com.

And if you can, please post support for the campaign on social media using #FindYourSpaceMCR and one of our campaign images which you can view and download here.

We look forward to updating you on the success of the campaign over the coming weeks and months.

Reaction to Chancellor’s Summer Economic Update

The Chancellor delivered his Summer Economic Update in Parliament yesterday, which outlined a package of measures mostly to give businesses the confidence to retain and hire and provide people with the tools they need to get better jobs. However, it will not have gone unnoticed that there were two announcements within the package which will have significant impact on tourism, hospitality and leisure businesses:

  1. Eat Out to Help Out: To encourage people to safely return to eating out at restaurants the Government’s new discount scheme will provide a 50% reduction – up to £10 per head – for sit-down meals in cafes, restaurants and pubs across the UK from Monday to Wednesday every week throughout August 2020.
  2. VAT: The rate of VAT applied on most tourism and hospitality-related activities will be cut from 20% to 5%.

I’m delighted to see that the Chancellor recognises the value of tourism, hospitality and leisure industries and the urgent help that they require. The Eat Out to Help Out scheme is a smart way of encouraging people to eat out during quieter periods and the reduction in VAT to 5% is will have a significant impact on businesses over the next six months.

As always, we will be looking closely at the detail of how these measures will be implemented – see newly published guidance on Eat Out to Help Out here. We will also continue to lobby the government for support and guidelines for our business conferences and events industry as well as our creative and cultural organisations.

In Case You Missed It: Five things to do now to prepare for reopening

1. Read up about VisitEngland’s new industry standard and consumer mark “We’re Good To Go”, and then get accredited for free: https://goodtogo.visitbritain.com/

2. Familiarise yourself with guidance. There have been several useful documents released by the Government plus a fantastic summary from UKHospitality which is a must-read for any business that welcomes guests and customers.

We are still waiting for standards and guidance be published for theatre, live music, performance and conference venues. We continue to work with local and national partners to lobby the government for these to be released but are pleased to see last weekend’s announcement of a financial support package.

3. Sign up for one or more of VisitEngland’s series of practical business recovery webinars which could help you become more sustainable, adapt to the new normal or brush up on tech skills: https://www.visitbritain.org/visitengland-business-recovery-webinar-programme.

4. Take a look at our Tourism and Hospitality Talent Hub to see how we can support inpiduals working with the tourism and hospitality sector that may have been displaced or laid off. The Hub also offers a variety of industry focused courses that can be used to upskill or retrain staff or former staff, including awards, certificates and diploma qualifications. For more information please get in touch with Margaret Bartnikiewicz via email: talenthub@growthco.uk or call 07503 620815.

5. Send us your reopening plans, news and images. If you have a full press release then great, please send it to press@marketingmanchester.com and we’ll get it on the site and shout about it. However, even if you don’t have a press release please send us a few bullets detailing your opening date and plans so that we can update our What’s Open in Greater Manchester page on the website. It’s also important that we have the latest intel when contributing to regular radio shows such our weekly slot on BBC Radio Manchester on Friday mornings.

Tourism and Hospitality Talent Hub: redundancy support

Due to COVID-19 many businesses have been forced to reduce numbers within their current workforce. Making redundancies is one of the hardest parts of running a business and The Tourism and Hospitality Talent Hub is here to help you and your staff through this difficult period.

We offer free inpidual career consultation help impacted staff plan their next step. Our support includes CV writing, interview tips, a variety of upskilling training and job hunting as well as advice and guidance on money matters, health and wellbeing.

For more information on the support we can offer please get in touch with Margaret Bartnikiewicz via email: talenthub@growthco.uk or call 07503 620815.

Partner news

Some welcome news from our partners that we think you should know about:

Please email your news to press@marketingmanchester.com FAO of Andy Parkinson and also add this email address to your media/press distribution lists.

Tourism and Hospitality Support Hub

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis the Tourism and Hospitality Support Hub has been available to ensure that tourism and hospitality businesses are given the most up to date information including reopening standards and guidance. We have streamline the Hub to give the most useful information; however, we will continue to deliver the service throughout the reopening of the visitor economy and anyone who needs specific and detailed support should contact supporthub@marketingmanchester.com for bespoke help and advice.

Latest Links

https://theredhat.co.uk