Cambridge City Council’s Community Services Scrutiny Committee, which meets on 19 March during English Tourism Week, will consider a report that recommends that councillors agree to set up a DMO as a private sector-led, public-private tourism partnership and a not-for-profit company.
The visitor economy is an important part of the economic success of the city with 5.3million visitors per year bringing around £583millon to the Cambridge economy and 17% of local employment*.
However, many visitors only stay for one day and the new DMO would focus on encouraging people to stay longer and explore the local area in order to increase the value from our visitor economy.
The council currently runs Visit Cambridge as the official tourism service for the city and surrounding areas, and it works with partners locally to promote tourism.
The new DMO would replace this and develop a long term strategy for tourism in the city and surrounding areas. Over time this would reduce the cost of tourism to the council.
As well as increasing investment in tourism and support for the local tourism industry the DMO would also focus more on visitor experience and promotional marketing activity.
Over five years the new arrangement for tourism could save the council £160,000, mainly by allowing the council to review its central support services costs. Council staff would transfer to the DMO under TUPE regulations.
Cllr Carina O’Reilly, Executive Councillor for City Centre and Public Places, said: “A DMO would be a big boost for tourism in the city and surrounding areas.
“It would bring extra investment to improve on what’s already on offer, support the many tourism businesses that we have and reduce costs to the taxpayer.
“It would also help to make tourism services sustainable in the longer term which is really important given the major contribution the visitor economy makes to the city’s overall economic success.”
The report will be discussed at Community Services Scrutiny Committee on 19 March and Cllr O’Reilly will make a decision on the recommendations.