Industry Update #8

Reaction to UK Government announcements

Earlier this week, the UK Government outlined its 60-page roadmap to reopen society in the coming months. The document strongly emphasises that the lifting of restrictions will be subject to meeting the five tests that the Government has set as well as the most up to date scientific advice.

On the Tourism & Hospitality industry specifically, the roadmap advises that, provided they are safe and enforce social distancing, the of reopening key areas of the industry such as hotels, pubs and restaurants would feature in phase three of the UK Government’s plans. It is anticipated that this third phase will not arrive any earlier that 4 July 2020 and only if it is safe to do so.

This information allows us to be cautiously optimistic about a tentative reopening of the tourism and hospitality industry – subject to some very important caveats – throughout the latter part of summer 2020. It allows the team still working here at Marketing Manchester to progress to the next phase of planning for recovery, albeit one that requires a great deal of flexibility.

In the coming weeks we will be looking to our colleagues at UKHospitality, who have been influential and informative in response to this crisis and have stated that they will be releasing a series of protocols aimed at supporting the safe reopening of hospitality. Like us many of you will have input into these protocols. We will also look to share similar guidance from our national, regional and local partners within the industry as well as updating our Tourism and Hospitality Support Hub with the latest information about the UK Government’s Job Retention Scheme extension.

Business tourism, meetings and events webinar – Wednesday 20 May

The impact of COVID-19 on the business tourism, meetings and events industry has been widespread and devastating. The industry was in rude health in early 2020, with Marketing Manchester’s business tourism team on track for one of its best years for prestigious conference wins. Cancellations have now been seen across all boroughs and venue types in Greater Manchester and it is widely accepted that easing of lockdown for business tourism will feature later in the UK government’s roadmap than some other industries.

Building on previous webinars for the tourism industry, Marketing Manchester would like to invite our dedicated business tourism partners to join us as we discuss a wide range of issues, reactions, forecasting for the industry and seek to share ideas, best practice and opportunities for Greater Manchester as the business tourism sector plans its recovery out of lockdown.

I will be facilitating the webinar with a highly respected panel of speakers, including:

  • Kerrin Macphie, Head of Business Events at VisitBritain
  • Martin Fullard, Editor of Conference News
  • Shaun Hinds, Chief Executive at Manchester Central
  • Sarah Payling, Strategic Partnerships Director at Ocean Media Group

The webinar will run 11:30-12:45 on Wednesday 20 May and will include time for questions.

Invitations have been sent to all of our business tourism members. Non-business tourism members will be able to view the webinar after the event – a link to re-watch will be shared in the next newsletter.

Greater Manchester Economic Recovery Campaign

As mentioned in last week’s newsletter, we are working with colleagues from the GMLEP, GMCA and The Growth Company to prepare an economic recovery campaign to support the the GM drive to Build Back Better.

A webinar on this subject hosted by the Growth Company and Greater Manchester Local Enterprise Partnership with input from Mayor Andy Burnham took place this week and can be viewed again here. Meanwhile, input on the GM Build Back Better movement launched last week and is currently being sought from across all areas of Greater Manchester’s economy via the form on the GMLEP website, here.

The economic recovery campaign will initially focus on coming out of lockdown, aiming to build confidence and trust in business and employees in the return to work, and then resident and visitor audiences when the time is right as they return to leisure and ‘non-essential’ activity.

Manchester Misses You campaign

The campaign, featured on the Visit Manchester website provides visitors with vibrant virtual content including cultural and education experiences from across Greater Manchester, that can be enjoyed from home.

The response to the campaign has been fantastic, we have published over 60 articles on the website, which has received 35,000 visitors over the past few weeks, 500,000 impressions on Twitter and over 1.5 million impressions on Facebook.

We need more of your great content to share across our channels to keep feeding the campaign and showcasing the breath of our brilliant destination. Recent features include:

Please send all contributions to stuart.aiken@marketingmanchester.com.

Amplifying your good news

In addition to sharing content for our Manchester Misses You campaign, we are keen to receive positive news stories from our partners and members that we can amplify via our corporate channels as we gradually move out of lockdown. We’re particularly keen for stories about the tourism and hospitality sector such as new and initiatives, corporate social responsibility stories or details about plans to reopen or changes to the services offered.

If you have such news to share please email it to press@marketingmanchester.com and feel free to add this email address to your distributions lists. We will aim to report suitable stories in the news section of the Marketing Manchester website and will feature most relevant in future newsletters as well as sharing via Marketing Manchester’s Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.

Tourism and Hospitality Support Hub

To make sure that tourism and hospitality businesses are given the most up to date information, we continue to service the Tourism and Hospitality Support Hub to signpost and connect the sector to advice, webinars, support and guidance across a variety of areas.

The Hub includes a series of FAQs. If you have any specific questions or would like to talk to someone, we have set up an email address and number to contact us on: supporthub@marketingmanchester.com   

Useful links

Business support and advice

Health and well being

Surveys, workshops and webinars

Other

https://theredhat.co.uk