London & Partners' Tracy Halliwell
Like most major capitals, London was impacted heavily by the Covid pandemic, but a recently launched £6m tourism campaign aims to bring back visitors and business events to the city.
We have so many great London participants at inVOYAGE so we decided to catch up with Tracy Halliwell MBE, Director of Tourism, Conventions & Major Events at London & Partners, to find out more about the campaign, what’s new in London, and how the organisation is getting the message out to international planners that the capital is safe and ready for business as soon as travel restrictions ease…
What has your main focus been as an organisation over the past 12+ months since the start of the pandemic?
We focused on two things – the first was finding a way to still talk about London but in a sensitive way, knowing that people had a lot of other things on their mind and didn’t want the whole destination sell. We very quickly pivoted to digital and launched Virtually London which was our tourism showcase and off the back of that, we did Virtually London for conventions. We curated lots of video content so that people could still keep in touch with London and look around hotels and venues from their own home.
The other really important part was business resilience, which was about supporting our members, partners and the industry to get through the pandemic. We established ourselves as a source of information, sharing what the rules and regulations were, and best practice and advice on how to become Covid safe. We have put ourselves out there as much as we can to try and help everyone survive.
The #LetsDoLondon campaign was launched last month. Can you tell us more about it? What are the main objectives from a business events perspective?
The campaign is aimed at a domestic audience, and first and foremost at the London audience. We want to encourage people to get out and see London during the summer. From a business events perspective, it’s just the same. We want people to come into London for their business meeting and make the most of everything the capital has to offer.
There are so many amazing places where people can get together and have those face-to-face interactions and strategy meetings that they have missed because everyone has been working from home for so long, not to mention the wealth of team building activities on offer.
How have you adapted the way you communicate with event planners over the past year?
As well as the Virtually London content, we have held quite a few virtual fam trips which have been received really well. We are continuing to evolve them to make them fun and engaging, so one we did recently in the US was styled as a Good Morning London show. It was more like a news programme than a site visit, which featured gossip and what’s happening in London and what’s new. The intent is to host more of these on a regular basis.
We have also been a lot more active on social media and have increased our audience and reach as a result. We have focused on sharing messages around the events industry and the help they needed, new hotels and venues, as well as positive stories from our partners that were helping and supporting the NHS.
Agencies say their biggest challenge right now is client confidence in booking events. How can L&P help boost confidence?
The Let’s Do London campaign has a large element of safety and security messaging and we have joined forces with Transport for London (TfL) to work on that. A lot of the TfL messaging externally is all about how safe it is and how much extra cleaning they are doing to get customer confidence back.
We have been working with Visit England and Visit Britain on the We’re Good to Go scheme and See It Safely, which are both industry-wide standards that are now recognised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) so that people feel safe. We are also constantly referring people to government websites so as well as telling them what is happening, we can back this up via official sites to avoid any confusion over the rules and what is allowed with regards to events. And we are encouraging our partners to do the same, so that all our hotels and venues are saying the same thing and have all the right information to hand.
We have done really well in terms of our vaccination rollout and that has been received positively by clients. If international clients are looking at London versus another European destination, the fact that we have vaccinated our population quicker could work in our favour. The more we roll out the vaccinations, the more people are feeling confident that it’s okay to get out and meet people again.
How are you keeping the destination front of mind for international buyers?
We have maintained a full team throughout, so we have continued to take enquiries and work with agencies all the way through, as well as all those virtual fam trips and roundtables. We have a team in New York, so they have been working with a lot of their associations. We are intending to be at Imex America this year and will continue pushing London on social media. There are lots of great stories about new hotel openings and refurbishments.
I have four heads – one for the UK market, one in Europe, one in the US and one for associations, and they are all out there supporting and helping clients and making themselves available to keep London in the mix.
When do you expect international business to resume?
We have international events booked from September onwards. There is a lot of interest from the US, and if we do manage to get a travel corridor in place with the US, I think there will be an immediate influx of enquiries and bookings. We have an association event for 1,500 people in October and we are anticipating at least 500 people will be live, with the rest hybrid. We have a healthy pipeline for 2022 – with sales conferences and association events among those that seem to be coming back first.
Is London prepared for the expected growth in hybrid events?
The digitisation of London has been fast forwarded hugely. A lot of venues have invested in gearing up their tech and hybrid offering so they are ready for that in the future. We have some phenomenal hybrid event set ups in London now with a few smart stages, lots of green screens and many venues have increased their broadband bandwidth.
We want to put London out there as one of the global hybrid hubs of the world. I am very optimistic we will come out of this well. People are going to be thinking twice before they get on a plane and before they attend events. But the ones they do pick to attend are going to be really key events in appealing destinations such as London, where they can combine attending an event, with business meetings, and maybe some leisure as well.
What’s new in London?
As well as all the new openings and refurbishments, of which there are plenty, there has been so much innovation going on behind the scenes. For example, theatres that are rethinking their business models so they can offer more than just two performances a day, and museums and galleries that are working on providing a better experience.
Councils are investing in spaces – they are reimagining Oxford Street and building viewing platforms at Marble Arch, which is really exciting, as well as opening a lot more outdoor dining opportunities and making London a more outdoorsy city. We are also looking at reimagining the high streets and how we can use shops that are now empty as a result of the pandemic as pop-up spaces for retail and events.
If you are interested in finding out more about some of London’s top luxury hotels, we have a strong London contingent taking part in inVOYAGE Mykonos later this year.
Our London partners include The Savoy, The Ned, Kimpton Fitzroy, The Royal Lancaster, The Lanesborough (Oetker Collection), Sea Containers London & One Hundred Shoreditch (Lore Group), The Biltmore Mayfair & Conrad London St. James (Hilton Luxury Hotels), The Carlton Tower Jumeirah & Jumeirah Lowndes Hotel (Jumeirah Hotels & Resorts), The Bloomsbury, The Marylebone & The Kensington (Doyle Collection) and The Cadogan, a Belmond Hotel.