Club Liverpool has marked its first anniversary by announcing £17m worth of events coming to the city in 2016.
Club Liverpool is a powerful network of influential ambassadors passionate about bringing world class conferences and events to Liverpool and showcasing the very best the city has to offer to associations and organisations across the globe. It launched in January 2015, a partnership between Liverpool Convention Bureau and ACC Liverpool.
Ambassadors have been instrumental in eight conferences coming to the city in 2016, including the European Association for International Education (EAIE, 5,500 delegates) and the World Conference on Lung Health (2,750 delegates). Both are among those taking place at ACC Liverpool, the city’s largest conference venue. Other congresses across the city include the seventh International Conference on the Image at Liverpool John Moores University. By the end of the year, ambassador events will have brought more than 10,000 international delegates to Liverpool.
The combined economic impact for business such as hoteliers, restaurants and bars is forecast to be more than £17m.
Its 125 members are primarily in medical science and education, with one third of all ambassadors coming from the University of Liverpool and significant numbers from Liverpool John Moores University and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.
However the team is particularly keen to grow in other sectors, such as energy, technology and creative arts.
Professor Barry Pizer from Alder Hey Children’s Hospital is bringing the International Symposium on Pediatric Neuro-Oncology to ACC Liverpool in June. He said:
“The ambassadors on the programme are all very passionate about Liverpool and their fields of expertise and put a lot of hard work in to bring conferences here, so it’s excellent to see this manifest itself in more visitors and profile for the city. The process of attracting a conference can be quite drawn out, but having the support of Club Liverpool has made it much easier and simpler.”
Chris Brown, director of Marketing Liverpool, said:
“The city has a wealth of leading experts in fields such as medical science and education. We know that these people want to bring conferences here, and that the city has a much better chance if they are part of the bidding process. What Club Liverpool does is harness this, and the results already more than justify why we need an ambassador programme.”
Kerrin MacPhie, director of conference and exhibition sales at ACC Liverpool, said:
“When we launched Club Liverpool last year, we knew it had massive potential – our ambassadors are experts in their fields and are able to support us in bringing international conferences to the region.
“The city will host some large international conferences this year including EAIE which will be the first global conference and exhibition taking place in our new Exhibition Centre Liverpool. We are continuously working to secure such conferences and the support we receive from the city’s ambassadors is vital.”