The North East Regional Tourism Pilot
Wednesday 30th November, 2022 by hs-admin
The North East has been chosen for the first regional tourism pilot receiving £2.25 million from the national government covering a period to March 2025. This is a regional collaboration between the Newcastle Gateshead Initiative, Visit Northumberland and Visit County Durham.
The initiative is an incredible opportunity to unlock the untapped potential in the North East of England, attracting more visitors, creating new experiences, targeting new markets as well as creating jobs and opportunity.
Host & Stay’s impact on the local economy
From 2021 to 2022 Host & Stay have had a sustained impact on the local economy; turnover has increased by 121%, employee count has almost doubled from 127 to 230 employees. Host & Stay offers luxury serviced accommodation properties all across the North East and Northumberland Coastlines, they plan to make a difference in the places and communities they operate in.
The North East’s visitor economy is the 4th biggest regional employer and pre Covid contributed £5.2bn to GDP (2019), yet still receives the lowest amount of spend of any region in England. The ambition is to double the value of the visitor economy over 10 years. This could support the provision of more than 25,000 new jobs in the sector.
Delivering local economic growth
Sarah Green, CEO Newcastle Gateshead Initiative, comments: “As the first Destination Development Partnership, we will work with our partners in Visit County Durham and Visit Northumberland to ensure the tourism sector is supported and grows across all seven local authorities in the region. Our region will act as a blueprint for the rest of England, and we could not be prouder to help shape the future landscape of destination management organisations, working in partnership to deliver local economic growth through the visitor economy.”
The initiative includes the local authorities in the North of Tyne Combined Authority (Northumberland, North Tyneside and Newcastle) and those in the North East Combined Authority (Sunderland, Gateshead, South Tyneside and Durham). This geography was chosen as evidence suggests that these locations have heavy tourism. The chosen area has the diversity of city, coast, countryside, villages and towns that would enable a successful pilot. Finally it reflects an established institutional and political geography enabling the partnership to work more effectively with other economic development institutions.
Host & Stay is part of The SDDE Smith Group and is committed to pushing boundaries to create better places to live, work and stay.
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