£85 Million investment in Chester & Cheshire business tourism product

Chester & Cheshire has benefited from a massive £85million investment in its conference and events product in 2009 according to a membership survey from Visit Chester & Cheshire’s business tourism team.

The investment has been focused on the city of Chester and the surrounding Cheshire area, consisting of extensive venue renovations and refurbishments, including the addition of 179 new bedrooms and 18 state of the art meeting rooms.

The survey also reveals nearly £60million of planned investment on refurbishment due to take place in 2010, which would add a further 86 bedrooms, three restaurants and eight spa treatment rooms to the region.

Fiona Brown, Business Tourism Account Manager at Visit Chester & Cheshire comments: “The multi-million pound investment underlines our commitment to meetings, conferences and events and how, as a destination, we are working to attract business tourism by consistently improving delegate facilities. As a result of this investment we expect to see an increase in numbers of those coming to the destination over the next few years”.

“The figures also reveal a 25% increase in conversion rates from our members based on research we carried out in 2007. It really is an exciting time for business tourism in the region and we look forward to welcoming more and more events to our diverse destination” Fiona adds.

In particular venues such as the Queen Hotel in Chester and Doubletree by Hilton were among those with large developments and extensions during 2009, with Manchester Metropolitan University, Chester Zoo and Mere Golf & Country Club among those with large scale plans commencing in 2010.