The UK might not have set the world alight with their musical offering at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, but Liverpool received praise from all sides for its hosting of the popular international event. It’s a northwest city that knows how to party.
The sun shone and the city presented its best face on the world stage. The reaction of the media and the public was uniformly positive and they found the atmosphere friendly and welcoming. This should be no surprise of course as Liverpool has a rich cultural heritage and a long tradition of bringing in the tourists.
Now, the city’s leaders and business people are already looking to the future and planning ways to capitalise on the successful hosting of Eurovision. It’s estimated that 300,000 additional visitors descended on the city during May, spending some £200m. Ultimately the region is set to benefit economically by twice that amount.
The focus is now moving towards how this can be expanded on and converted into more permanent investment.
Nuala Gallagher, Corporate Director for City Development, addressed this issue in a recent blog post. She said: “The challenge is to strengthen our appeal beyond tourism and further elevate the city’s standing as a great place to live, work and invest in – and deliver long-term social and economic impact.”
She added: “The good news is a lot of thinking and hard work has been going on for some time to analyse which areas of the city’s economy need developing.”
Meanwhile local businessman Dan Davies, CEO of Rockpoint Leisure, told the Liverpool Echo that a new fund should be established to support art, music, and performance in Merseyside, to keep the momentum generated by Eurovision going.
He told the publication: “We gave artists a platform to be able to perform here and give seed funding out for new businesses to start.”
Mr Davies added: “I thought we carried it off brilliantly as a city and hats off to Steve Rotheram (Liverpool City Region Metro Mayor) and the team who were involved in it. We have a real opportunity to build on the legacy of this.”
“The whole regeneration we’ve been doing has art, music and culture at the heart of it. There’s a number of things we need to do but also protect all our music venues and help them over the line.” He points to the Hope Anti-Supermarket, an independent music venue, that later had to close as an example of the potential music venues have to offer.
He added: “I think Liverpool is uniquely placed. It’s historic and there should be much more events like this on. We proved we can pull off some big events and it generally went very well. I think we need to build straight away on the creativity and artistic talent that the city has.”
There are already several major regeneration projects going on in Liverpool at the moment, including Anfield Square, Littlewoods Film Studios, and the King’s Dock.
If you are looking for office space in Liverpool, please get in touch today.