Tell Keir we’re here

Peter Heath, founder, Venue Performance, calls on the UK government to recognise the role that meetings and events play in the wider economy.  

“We’re seeing nervousness in the economy at the moment, which is causing pause over spending in the hospitality sector as a whole, but events are currently strong in the face of a challenging environment.  

“This is a resilient sector, because there is an insatiable desire for human beings to meet up and come together. You chat, you discuss ideas, you do deals, you sate your need for socialisation and and what the pandemic taught everybody is that we missed that. Pre pandemic, events were seen as expensive, now they are viewed as a necessity. 

“Events, which is what Venue Performance benchmarks, are holding up quite strongly. There's a little bit of bump in the road, with Easter in March last year but April this year, but on the whole if you look at March’s figures in terms of the number of sales that happened, it’s down around 5% and in terms of the number of events that took place, it’s a drop of around 6%. 

“That's not a massive swing in terms of the big picture and we are also seeing a lot of hotels turning their focusing on conference and banqueting now that beds are softening. So there are a lot of reasons for everybody to feel really positive about events in the UK. 

“So why don’t we see more appreciation from the government? The reason why the government doesn't understand the value of events to the UK economy is because events are spread out over a huge number of SIC codes (Standard Industrial Classification of economic activities). The steel industry has one code. But there aren’t any SIC codes for exhibition centres, or conference centres or unique venues, or a hotel that's got some conferencing facilities. 

“So the sector gets lost, government doesn’t know where it fits. And therefore they just turn a blind eye and carry on. 

“The All Party Parliamentary Group for events is trying to get the government to understand the value of events to the UK economy, but it needs all of us to speak up. We’re a big sector. It’s time for government to recognise us.”