Years of planning come to fruition with staging of Labour party conference in Liverpool
The Labour Party conference, which starts in Liverpool this weekend, will be the most complex event ever staged at the city’s Echo Arena and BT Convention Centre, its chief executive has revealed.
Bob Prattey said it is the culmination of five years’ work by bosses at ACC Liverpool.
And as events do not come much bigger, city authorities said they are now being forced to look to the international market if they want to attract larger conventions.
Mr Prattey started lobbying the Labour Party in 2006 – two years before the building on the city’s waterfront was finished.
He said: “If one is building a convention centre, you certainly target the party political conferences.
“The Labour Party is the biggest conference we have staged to date. There are over 500 fringe meetings.
“We have set up marquees on the car parks to stage fringe meetings.
“They have taken every nook and cranny, even store rooms have been equipped out as meeting rooms. It has pushed our boundaries to the maximum because of the complexity of the event.”
The venue has had to put 1,200 staff through security vetting to have enough people to work on the event.
It is estimated the five-day conference will create a £15m economic bonanza.
The summit, which begins on Sunday, will see more than 11,000 delegates converge on the city.
In addition, 2,000 journalists and media staff will also arrive.
It will dwarf the Lib-Dem conference which was held in Liverpool last year and generated £10m for the local economy.
Mr Prattey added: “It’s an extremely competitive environment in terms of attracting these events.
“That is not just because of the direct economic impact.
“But because there will be positive messages coming out of Liverpool, the city will be shown around the world.”
Delegates for the biggest convention ever staged in Liverpool arrive tomorrow, as City Editor David Bartlett reports
Mr Prattey admits that the city’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2008 helped give the Arena and Liverpool as a convention city a head start.
“Events like the MTV Europe Awards and the BBC Sports Personality Awards would probably not have come, had it not been Capital of Culture.
“Now Liverpool as a convention city is delivering to the extent people want to come back.”
ACC already has plans to expand and is planning to build an exhibition hall nearby.
Tenders will be sent out in February, and it is hoped the new facilities will be built by 2014.
“Who knows, by 2014 maybe we will be welcoming back either Labour or the Liberal Democrats, or the Tories.
“We are still in dialogue with the Conservative Party, we are in regular contact.”
Monthly meetings have been taking place between Mr Prattey’s team, The Mersey Partnership (TMP) – the official tourist board – and the Labour Party to make sure the conference runs without hitch.
Carol O’Reilly, manager of TMP’s Convention Bureau, said: “It is certainly the biggest conference to date that has been held in Liverpool.
“In terms of tendering for the conference, we had to prove that we had the capacity for 10,000 delegates to stay within reasonable travelling time.”
She said the economic benefits for hotels, restaurants, and bars will spread well beyond Liverpool city centre.
There are 5,000 hotel beds in the city centre, so people will be staying in Southport and the Wirral.
“To all intents and purposes, the city centre is now fully booked, apart from the odd cancellation.
“One of the more unusual requests has been to find a place for a crèche, we don’t usually get asked for that.
“This is probably one of the biggest national conventions, after this we would have to look internationally.
“When the exhibition hall opens, there will be the possibilities for really big events – the next step up is 13,000 delegates.”
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