Travel Articles

Last year 75% of new visitors to Liverpool admitted that the city’s Capital of Culture status was a definite factor in their decision to visit. Hotel occupancy rates averaged 75% in 2008; outstanding for a Northern city. At this point all the millions invested in the city’s hotels and attractions would seem to have been well spent.

High profile events were unquestionably a success: the tall ships regatta made £8.2 million and Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Sound concert brought in a respectable £5 million. No wonder Professor Sir Howard Newby, Vice-Chancellor Johns Moores University, expressed the hope that 2009 would witness further ‘ripples’ of success for Merseyside. However for the first quarter of 2009 occupancy rates have already fallen to around 66%. For the same period London’s Hotels were at least 80% full on average.

While few would disagree that Liverpool’s elevation to European Capital of Culture in 2009 also brought a shedload of kudos to Merseyside recent indicators underpin a more sobre assessment. HolidayCheck is a major European review site for the leisure and travel sector and only 2% of British hotel reviews over the last month relate to a stay in the Liverpool area.

On the face of it this is a pretty dismal showing but, amongst the English cities, Liverpool actually fares better than Birmingham (0.6%) and Manchester (1.2%). Nationwide, Edinburgh achieves 3% but London is surely unchallenged as the city break numero uno for visitors to the UK. 73% of all British hotel reviews on the HolidayCheck site refer to a stay in the capital. By any measure, it would take a pretty hot program of special events and a whole raft of flashy designations to approach those kind of figures.

Mark Parry
Site Manager

HolidayCheck AG is one of Europe’s leading hotel review sites with a database of over a million reviews and thousands of holiday pictures and videos. Visit our site at http://www.holidaycheck.co.uk