BUSINESS EVENTS SPECIAL REPORT
Support for Marketing Edinburgh has come from across the city, including Brigadier David Allfrey, Chief Executive of The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo
via the public consultation on the council’s website. Sadly for Ferguson’s unit – and Marketing Edinburgh as a whole – the vote passed albeit with a last-minute counter-proposal reducing funding by £300,000 from April 1st, not the original £567,000. One of the stipulations of the reduced settle- ment was that the agency would have to produce a business plan by the end of June; Ferguson said the document would need to illustrate how the agency could in future move from being an arms length organisation (ALEO) of the council to becoming ‘zero-funded’. When asked how that would
be achieved, for example through existing industry backers who have supported the ‘Make it Edinburgh’ digital business tourism cam- paign (the likes of the Edinburgh Hotels Association, the EICC, the Edinburgh Tourism Action Group (ETAG), the VisitScotland Growth Fund, Edinburgh Airport and the Royal College of Surgeons), Fergu- son added: “All options are on the table.” A number of high-profile organi-
sations and figures did, however, offer their public support for Marketing Edinburgh as the plight of the agency became clear; Andrew Wilson, the former MSP and chief author of the Scottish Govern- ment’s Growth Commission Report, said the spending reduction risked ‘cutting the very muscle we need to grow and succeed’, whilst Brigadier
David Allfrey MBE, Chief Executive of Te Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo said it was “imperative” that the city remained competitive on the world stage and Adam Wilkin- son, Director of Edinburgh World Heritage, warned the cut would be a “backward step”.
IN TOTAL, more than a hundred businesses joined the campaign to save Marketing Edinburgh, which meanwhile played host to the Euro- pean Cities Marketing (ECM) spring meeting at the Sheraton Hotel in the city; welcoming over 200 con- tinental colleagues from 80 cities should have been a proud moment for any destination marketing organisation (DMO), but instead the event was overshadowed by the funding wrangle, prompting Dieter Hardt-Stremayr, President of European Cities Marketing and Managing Director of Graz Tourist Office, to say: “I am shocked that leaders of any city would dismiss and undervalue the role of a DMO in contributing to its ongoing and future success. Such a drastic cut is unheard of in our circles.” Having secured support from the
destination marketers of Europe, it was a little puzzling, then, to find that Scotland’s own national business tourism arm – Business Tourism for Scotland – was silent on the issue of a looming cut to the convention bureau, which feeds a city second in size and stature in the UK only to London.
28 | EVENTSBASE | SPRING 2019
Judy Rae, Chair of BtFS and
“WE HAVE A LOT TO GET GOING FOR 19/20; WE’VE GOT DESTINATION EDINBURGH COMING UP AND TWO SALES MISSIONS AT THE END OF MARCH”
Amanda Ferguson, Head of Business Tourism
former Head of Events at Glasgow Science Centre, passed our inquiry to Marc Crothall, Chief Executive of Scottish Tourism Alliance, under whose auspices BtFS operates but Mr Crothall declined to comment. Ferguson at Convention Edinburgh also reached out to Rae, but had been unable to secure any kind of meaningful engagement; Karen Tocher, Business Tourism Manager at Dundee & Angus Convention Bureau, said an email had been sent round to BtFS members can- vassing support and the intention was to make that sentiment felt after the council decision was made final.
TO ADD to the confusion, Neil Brownlee, Head of Business Events at VisitScotland, said that a let- ter warning that the cut would be a “catastrophe”, which was later published in the Edinburgh Evening News, had not apparently come from him. When the dust eventually settles
on a decision which could still leave Edinburgh as the “only major developed city not to have its own destination marketing organisa- tion”, questions will remain over why Business Tourism for Scotland, an industry body whose explicit aim is to “develop destinations and conferences across the country”, chose not to voice its support at a critical time for the future of Edin- burgh’s business events industry. n
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