Transport issues were listed as the top influencing factor of venue and destination selection in the British Meetings & Events Industry survey last year. CN took the temperature from some leading industry figures on what needs to be done. Giselle Ripken, divisional director, Grass Roots M&E says transport infrastructure has become more important to organisers, particularly those in charge of large scale congresses. “For many, private transfers are no longer relevant, instead they like to make use of public transport, particularly high speed options such as rail and metro services,” she says.
Ripken describes Crossrail as “a real boon” for the capital, which is well behind many of its global counterparts when it comes to the easy movement of large groups, she believes, pointing out that London suffers from the fact that, “the largest venue is located far to the East and the hotel stock far to the West. Crossrail should solve this problem but until we see it in action there are no guarantees.”
London’s Barbican sits right on the site of a Crossrail station and the venue’s head of sales Jackie Boughton says it offers a big chance to increase international visitors to the City once it completes in 2018.
“Crossrail opens up an even wider variety of business opportunities, including growing the market for large-scale association events in the City,” she says.
Hasham Soliman, GM at InterContinental London – The O2, says that given the Brexit vote, it is “vital” for venues to promote the message that London is still open for business and welcomes the Night Tube due to open on the Jubilee Line from 7 October. Delegates coming to his venue can travel via the river and even the Emirates Air Line.
North of the border, Kathleen Warden, director of conference sales at the SECC in Glasgow, says that journey time between the city and Edinburgh could be halved with a high speed connection. “It could offer us the opportunity to host even bigger international conferences and would mean we could more easily share accommodation and open up opportunities in both places.”
Etc.venues’ MD Alastair Stewart says the big questions are how we use our national infrastructure programme strategically to boost economic performance and points out that we trade up to 20 times more with countries where we have a direct air link. “Without additional runways, our ability to grow our trade and exports will be limited,” he says, noting a dearth of connections to many non-EU countries such as China.
“By 2030 the South East will have no spare runway capacity. We need to build more runways and we need to build them now,” Stewart adds.
Research by KPMG for Let Britain Fly revealed that 50 new runways will be built in global cities over the next 20 years. China will build 17. “We are struggling to commit to just one new runway to enable the UK to connect to future growth,” says Stewart. “That’s how far behind we risk getting left.”
We do not need to spend £42bn on HS2, he believes, describing it as “a terrible return on investment to save 20-30 minutes travel time to Birmingham”.
He rather advocates adopting new digital train signalling technology such as the European Train Control System (ETCS) that sweeps away signals completely.
Stewart would invest the £42bn in roads and rail infrastructure which, he says, will generate a much higher UK economic multiplier effect and investment return and support trade and tourism here.
CN welcomes readers views on the transport issue. Send any thoughts to the editor: pcolston@mashmedia.net
