Report of the Strategic Director (Growth and Development)

This report provides an overview of the visitor and night-time economy in Manchester, demonstrating the city’s strong position and the scale of the opportunity in the coming years. It highlights the changes and economic challenges which all cities are grappling with and demonstrates how Manchester is well placed to capitalise on emerging trends. It also sets out the proposed next steps to ensure that we are best positioned to support growth in a way which maximises these opportunities.

The Committee received a report of the Strategic Director (Growth and Development) which provided an overview of the visitor and night-time economy in Manchester, demonstrating the city’s strong position and the scale of the opportunity in the coming years. It highlighted the changes and economic challenges which all cities were grappling with and demonstrated how Manchester was well placed to capitalise on emerging trends. It also set out the proposed next steps to ensure that the city was best positioned to support growth in a way which maximised these opportunities.

Key points and themes within the report included:

• Visitor economy highlights;
• The visitor experience;
• Visitor attractions and cultural offer;
• Travel and transport highlights;
• Hotels and accommodation in Manchester;
• An overview of the evening and night-time economy;
• Retail and leisure highlights;
• Opportunities and challenges; and
• Next steps.

Nick Brooks-Sykes from Marketing Manchester provided an overview of key points, including highlighting the forthcoming launch of a new Visitor Economy Strategy and suggesting that further information on this be provided at a future meeting.  The Chair agreed to this proposal.

Key points and queries that arose from the Committee’s discussions included:

• To welcome the strong cultural and leisure offer in the city;
• To welcome the shift to more independent businesses in the city centre;
• Balancing the needs of people living in and near the city centre and the need to drive numbers of visitors to the city centre and provide a good cultural offer;
• Safety and perceptions of safety including for people working in the night-time economy, referencing Unite the Union's Get Me Home Safely Campaign, and for particular communities, such as trans people;
• The impact of the introduction of the Accommodation Business Improvement District (ABID);
• The impact of the night-time economy on public services, including the police and health services, and the need for late night public transport;
• That a lot of the night-time economy was focused on alcohol consumption;
• Improving the offer for families with children;
• That Manchester had some thriving district centres and how were they linked into the strategy;
• Where visitors to the city centre were coming from;
• Signage to better walking routes to help visitors navigate the city;
• Was more hotel capacity needed; and
• Recognising that different parts of the city centre had different characters and faced different challenges.

The Strategic Director (Growth and Development) agreed that balance was important, highlighting the growth in relation to homes, jobs and the cultural offer in the city centre.  She advised that licensing decision on the times that venues could stay open until helped to deliver this balance but that busy city centre streets needed to be managed, and she informed Members that the Night-time Economy Strategy would focus on broadening and deepening the offer as well as on how to manage it.  She informed Members that the ABID Board, which was primarily led by hoteliers, oversaw the use of the £1 levy on room bookings to increase hotel occupancy, advising that their work focused on targeted marketing, increasing business events, increasing visitor events, and improving the city welcome.   A Member asked for more information on the use of the £1 levy in a future report.

In response to a Member’s question about venue closures, the Strategic Director (Growth and Development) advised that there was a challenging market for many leisure and hospitality businesses, with a lot of competition and increasing costs, and that the Council was doing what it could to support businesses.

The Director of City Centre Growth and Infrastructure advised that there had also been a number of new businesses opening so some of these closures were just the normal ebb and flow of business.  In relation to safety and security, she informed Members about the work of ABID’s security group and the Pub and Club Network.  In response to a Member’s comments about staff not being familiar with the Ask for Angela scheme, she advised that further work might be needed to ensure staff were briefed on this while highlighting that the high turnover of staff in the sector presented a challenge.

Nick Brooks-Sykes reported that the newly introduced night buses would help staff working in the night-time economy to get home safely and that many establishments offered taxis to staff working late.

In response to comments about District Centres, the Strategic Director (Growth and Development) informed Members that the Cultural Strategy focused on the importance of a local offer and that the Greater Manchester Visitor Economy Strategy focused on the offer across Greater Manchester, not just in the city centre.  She acknowledged that the offer needed to be diversified to meet the needs of a range of residents and visitors, advising that the Night-time Economy Strategy would include this, and that, as with many cities, there were issues with anti-social behaviour linked to alcohol consumption and a collective response to managing this was needed.  She informed Members that walking routes were being looked at as part of the City Centre Movement Plan and offered to provide further information in a future report.  She reported that hotel capacity was sometimes not sufficient, when a number of large events were taking place in the city, and that a 20% increase in bed space was expected; however, she advised that the challenge was to fill those hotel rooms at other times and she offered to provide more information on ABID in a future report.  She reported that for some events, such as the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) event at Co-op Live, 78% of visitors were from outside the area, including national and international visitors. 

Nick Brooks-Sykes reported that the city had periods of very high demand for hotel rooms, particularly linked with football matches and concerts at the Arenas, and the city did not have sufficient capacity for this, whereas there were other times when demand was much lower, commenting on the supply of AirBnB accommodation focused around the venues which created this higher demand.  He reported that ABID employed welcome hosts in the city centre, promoting a sense of safety and welcome for visitors.  He advised that, as the transport network developed, this would facilitate visitors exploring the suburbs and that this was an opportunity which could be highlighted in the new Visitor Economy Strategy.  He advised that regular leisure visitor surveys were carried out, with the information from these shaping the marketing strategy.  In response to a Member’s question about what visitors said could be improved, he advised that he could provide this information after the meeting.  He reported that more families were visiting the city, both for day visits and overnight stays, and that there was an opportunity to further develop the offer for families. 

The Chair referenced requests to bring reports to the Committee on the Greater Manchester Visitor Economy Strategy, the Evening and Night-time Economy Strategy and the Accommodation Business Improvement District (ABID), as well as a previous discussion about bringing a report on work taking place on hotel supply as part of the Local Plan process and advised that he and officers would look into scheduling these items for future meetings.

A Member advised that some district centres experienced similar issues to the city centre, in terms of needing to balance the needs of local residents and visitors to the night-time economy, and asked if this could also be addressed in the Evening and Night-time Economy Strategy.  The Strategic Director (Growth and Development) advised that the Strategy would primarily focus on the city centre but that the scope of the work could be looked at and that there would be principles from this work that would be applicable to areas outside of the city centre.

Decisions:

1. To note the update, including that Marketing Manchester’s Greater Manchester Visitor Economy Strategy will be launched in early 2025.

2. That the Committee will receive reports on the Greater Manchester Visitor Economy Strategy, the Evening and Night-time Economy Strategy and the Accommodation Business Improvement District (ABID) as well as a report on work taking place on hotel supply as part of the Local Plan process.

[Councillors Johns, Northwood, Abdullatif, I Robinson, Rawlins and Benham declared a personal interest as members of Unite the Union.]