I’ll be speaking at this Inside Government event on 7th December in London.  My talk will examine the links between economic development and tourism in the UK, in the context of the economic crisis.  Click on the image below to go straight to the event booking page which has a list of all the invited speakers.  I’ve copied some of the information about what looks to be an excellent day underneath.

Tourism is essential to Britain’s economy. Government statistics show that tourism generates £97 billion each year, employs over 3 million people and supports thousands of businesses. The government aims to help tourism achieve its potential as a central part of Britain’s growth strategy.

Britain’s landmarks, monuments, countryside and culture attract visitors from all over the world. Major international events such as the Royal Wedding, Diamond Jubilee and the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games provide a great opportunity to boost tourism, showcasing what Britain has to offer, and created a sustained tourism legacy.

Developing the visitor economy is a priority for the coalition government. The Government Tourism Policy, published in March 2011, aims to harness the potential this area holds to grow Britain’s economy. Objectives include growing the overseas market across the country using London 2012 and other sporting and cultural events, strengthening the domestic tourism market, increasing private sector investment and increasing flexibility for local tourist organisations. There is also a focus on improving Britain’s international gateways and national transport infrastructure.

The tourism strategy is driven by a local agenda. Destination Management Organisations will work with Visit England, local authorities, local enterprise partnerships, and local businesses to regenerate and market their area in the most effective way.

A £100 million partnership marketing fund, co-funded by the government and the private sector, will aim to draw 4 million extra visitors to Britain over the next 4 years, which equates to a £2 billion spend for Britain’s economy, and 50,000 new jobs. The government has also announced the Regional Growth Fund (RGF), worth £1.4 billion, which supports projects that use private sector investment to create regional economic growth and employment.

Agenda

This forum comes at a time of exciting growth for the sector, and will offer delegates the opportunity to understand the implications of the new government tourism strategy in boosting the tourist industry. Key issues to be discussed include strategies for promoting the growth of the visitor economy, and best practice for delivering services, partnership working and localism.

Speakers include representatives of:

Department for Culture Media and Sport

Visit Britain

ABTA

Olympic Park Legacy Company

People 1st

National Trust

Broads Authority

British Library

Marketing Birmingham

*photo courtesy of Chris Campbell: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cgc/

Our new book, ‘Events Management: an introduction’ will be published by Routledge on 22nd February 2012.  You can view more information about it here, and pre-order it from Amazon.

“Contemporary events management is a diverse and challenging field. This major new introductory textbook is the first to fully explore the multi-disciplinary nature of events management and to provide the student with all the practical skills and professional knowledge they need to succeed in the events industry.

The book covers every type of event studied on an events management course, including areas as diverse as sports, music, the arts, corporate events, tourism, and the public and voluntary sectors. It introduces all the key issues facing the contemporary events industry, from health, safety and risk management to sustainability to developing a market-oriented business, with every topic brought to life through vivid case-studies, personal biographies and examples of best practice from the real world of events management.

Written by a team of authors with many years experience working in the events industry, the book introduces the practical skills required in every core functional area of events management, such as marketing, finance, project management, strategy, operations, event design and human resources. A companion website for the book includes a dazzling array of additional teaching and learning features, from self-test questions, audio interviews with key industry figures and additional case-studies to Powerpoint slides and an instructors’ guide. Events Management: An Introduction is the essential course text for any events management program”

 

The Olympic Park in Legacy mode

This is a free event, although you will need to book, and once the details are available I will post up more information on the event and a link to the OPLC booking page on here.

This is the presentation that Charles Bladen and I gave at yesterday’s SHIFT 2011 conference at the University of Greenwich. It sets out some of the framework of ideas behind a research project that we are developing, in which we are taking a critical perpsective on the ethics and practicalities of voluneering by event management students and graduates.

How low can it go?  The devolution of economic development and the possibility of economic insurgency

This presentation provides a critique of the UK Government’s policies and plans for devolving economic development processes from the regional to the local and neighbourhood levels.  Drawing on economic development theory and experiences from Europe, Latin America, the United States and Japan, radical approaches to economic development are reviewed that suggest possibilities for innovative approaches to the problems of economic development in the cities of the UK.

International examples show that alternative models are available for growing the economies of our cities and towns that have the character of a challenging, bottom-up insurgency – a stark contrast to the conservative models of growth being offered by the new Local Enterprise Partnerships and Government departments[1].  In an economic insurgency, traditional, hierarchical institutions and frameworks come under attack from below as new economies take shape and start to re-shape places from within.  

Following the financial crisis of 2008, Western governments have struggled to develop consistently successful responses to stimulating sustainable growth in post-crash economies[2].  In the UK, the Government’s ‘local growth’ white paper appeared to promote a return to pre-crash methods of top-down economic development with an increased role for the private sector, despite the rhetorical references to a ‘new localism’[3] and economic ideas of subsidiarity and sustainability.[4] However, despite these contradictions, recent Government espousals have the potential to create an environment in which more radical approaches to economic development are becoming possible.  This presentation argues that an economic insurgency is a necessary next step in local economic development in the UK.

Despite their huge popularity as holiday destinations, seaside towns have generally been under-researched. Existing research is limited to narrow historical perspectives and is often focused at a regional level. British seaside towns have suffered a significant decline but there is little attention given to how contemporary issues are likely to shape their futures. For this paper, a sample of British seaside towns that form part of the newly approved Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) are analysed to identify how these new governance arrangements are likely to affect future development in these areas. Core-periphery theory (CPT) is used as a framework within which to analyse these  arrangements and to identify potential problems and obstacles.  Analysis reveals significant governance issues for seaside towns in terms of structural inequalities and relationships of dependency. The LEPs do not adequately recognise the peripheral nature of seaside towns and the special conditions needed for their development. There is a reliance on outdated growth models and there is a lack of innovation in their approach. From a CPT perspective, the new LEPs do not seem to provide a brighter future for the development of seaside towns.

“British seaside towns have been subject to numerous attempts at regeneration and rebranding since the collapse of traditional seaside tourism began in the late 1970s. This paper reviews contemporary approaches to seaside regeneration and demonstrates that cultural regeneration strategies are becoming increasingly prevalent in this area. The validity of transferring city-based models of cultural development to these smaller urban areas is critiqued. The history of cultural investment in seaside towns is highlighted to show how current approaches to cultural regeneration, while presented as novel, are in fact a resumption of earlier strategies of cultural tourism development. This heritage of cultural development provides a resource for seaside cultural regeneration which may allow development of this type to avoid the negative social impacts often associated with cultural regeneration in cities.”

The reason for this is that the Games, like all mega-events, has a life-span that far exceeds the event  itself.  The pre-games period, of bidding, winning and preparing for the Games is hurtling to a close.  This is the period in which to build capacity, market incessantly and to plan.  The event period itself will be over in a flash.  In 2007, the manager of a branch of a major hotel chain told me how two floors of his hotel in East London had already been booked up by an American news network for their staff to use during 2012.    Many of the immediate opportunities presented by the presence of the event itself have already been monopolised by large companies who had access to the capital needed to invest in anticipation of the Games, and let’s not forget the licensing arrangements of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG), which means that opportunities to profit directly through providing services, merchandising or human resources are tightly policed.  Admittedly, I’m taking quite a narrow focus here.  It is possible that the cities and regions with their own Olympics strategies will benefit from increased tourism during the Games.   Outside of the South-East of England however, how many areas have a coherent and well-resourced policy for leveraging the benefits of this mega-event outside of the capital?  How many tourists will really want to extend their stay beyond the Games period outside of London and will any want to base themselves outside of the boundaries of high-speed rail and commute to the celebrations?

The period in which meaningful policy development can still have an impact and businesses, government and universities can still engage is in the post-games period and into the legacy phase.  The defining feature of London’s winning bid to host the 2012 Games was its concentration on the long-term benefits of hosting the event on infrastructure, social regeneration, education and sports participation.    I make no claims to an understanding of the relationship between elite sports, event hosting and increasing sports participation in the general public other than to say that the evidence for any linkages seems mixed, at best.  For the most authoritative views on this subject, check out Professor Mike Weed’s blog. 

 Disaster recovery

In many ways, the immediate post games period is going to feel like the aftermath of a disaster in London.  There will be a dramatic drop in visitor numbers to the city and the Olympic park and its surroundings will become inhabited once again by security guards and construction workers.  The parks and streets will feel less like “the world’s greatest party” and more like the opening scene from 28 days later:

Click on this image to watch the opening sequence from the film

Navigating successfully out of this disaster without creating a legacy of disappointment as the adrenaline of the games goes sour in East London’s system will depend on a number of factors; I’m going to concentrate on two here: creating meaningful opportunities for volunteers, and innovations in the local tourism industry. 

For many of the army of volunteers being recruited to help deliver the Games, this will be an opportunity to gain work experience, network, and to work towards qualifications.  Can we create meaningful opportunities for these volunteers to continue to develop their skills and to meet their raised aspirations?  Creating a reserve army of labour for the big society won’t support meaningful economic development in the deprived areas of East London that the Games are supposed to help, and may produce a downward pressure on local wages, encouraging out-migration and worklessness.    During the pre-event period of the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, unemployment in the city halved, mainly thanks to the creation of 59,382 jobs directly connected to the games.  Immediately after the games, unemployment rose again by 21,000, before falling again in 1995 (Brunet 2009).   The employer concords that have already been put in place for the construction work connected to 2012 should be extended to align volunteering opportunities during the games with meaningful post-games opportunities, for those who want them, to take part in mentoring programmes, internships and education and training.  This is an opportunity to upskill the entry levels of the tourism, events and leisure sectors in East London and to make sure that continuous improvements in tourism product quality can take place in the post-games period, helping to re-position East London as an innovative tourism brand.

Innovative tourism developments are going to be fundamental to avoid the serious over-capacity issues that have plagued Beijing and Athens in the post-games period.  Between 2005 and 2008, Beijing’s hotel sector grew by 227% and the number of available rooms rose from 6,452 to 37,360.  This over-supply has led to downward pressures on room rates and drops in confidence in the accommodation sector, accompanied by staff reductions and hotel closures.   In the same way that Barcelona is always used as an example of a ‘successful’ Games, Athens has become a by-word for redundant stadia and rotting facilities. 

Athen's Olympic Stadium: Hopefully West Ham FC will do a better job....

But innovation in tourism does not happen over-night. The Government’s new tourism policy should be seeking to support an innovation infrastructure for tourism right now.  This will mean encouraging partnerships between higher education, the private sector and social enterprise, with the public sector holding the ring.  Small pots of money to support entrepreneurial activity, knowledge transfer and product development should replace top-down destination management schemes and local authority controlled tourism networks.  Government can do this through designating tourism enterprise zones, with tax breaks and incentives to attract new businesses and to stimulate existing business to take on new staff and develop new products.  Moving Shoreditch’s Silicon roundabout to the Olympic Park won’t produce new forms of tourism that create opportunities for Olympic volunteers, or make full use of the excellent transport infrastructure that will connect East London to the tourism hotspots of the city.

 It is time to move tourism policy beyond a blind faith in the positive impacts of hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games and to start concentrating on what come next.  Supporting innovation now will mean that the investment in trained and motivated volunteers won’t result in a de-motivated bulge in the local labour market post-2012.  Creating exciting new tourism experiences for a post-2012 tourism market can’t be done by decree, but a supportive innovation infrastructure could create an environment in which creative tourism entrepreneurs can flourish, creating the products that make use of the accommodation, transport and services that are being put in place for 2012.