C O N T E X T 9 9 : M A Y 2 0 0 7 11 IHBC North West Branch Conference Cosmopolitans, style hounds and traditionals Keith Parsons writes: Despite the rising temperatures that we have seen during recent British summers, it is not the UK’s climate that fuels the British tourist industry. Tourism depends on its so-called attractions, because these provide the reason for people to leave their homes in the first place. Tourism in Britain continues to be a boom industry. The turnover of shops in tourist centres like Chester andYork, for example, tends to be considerably higher than in other towns and cities. Heritage became the buzzword in tourism during the 1990s. Heritage tourism can be defined as tourism centred on what we have inherited, which can mean anything from the historic environment to works of art. The fortunes of tourist attractions, not to mention many tourism-related jobs, largely depend on the work of conservation and amenity groups. The IHBC NorthWest Branch organised a day conference on the theme of heritage tourism at the Liverpool Medical Institute. In his introduction, Graham Boxer of the Liverpool Culture Company set the scene by outlining the value of heritage in terms of heritage-led regeneration, through its role in identity, social cohesion and heritage tourism. He explained that Liverpool’s heritage assets made the city the place it was. Phil Reddy of the Northwest Development Agency (NWDA) said that seeing heritage as a springboard for regeneration was a key to the NWDA’s economic strategy. The NWDA saw the sustainable growth of heritage tourism as vital to the economy of places like the Liverpool world heritage site, Chester and the Lake District. Reddy drew a distinction between tourism and the visitor economy. The former was a people-centred concept, whereas the latter was a place-centred concept. Although there was a tension between economic benefit and heritage protection, ‘tourism people’ and ‘heritage people’ agreed that heritage mattered. Contemporary culture was anchored in heritage, Reddy said. It exploited places and spaces, and it went beyond that.We needed to raise our ambitions to achieve higher quality environments. Chris Brown of Visit Chester and Cheshire talked about development plans for sustainable tourism. Chester was now the third most popular historic city, behind Bath andYork. An integrated culture and visitor management programme had been launched with the aim of making Chester a ‘must-see European historic city’ by 2015. Brown recognised the need to increase the visitor numbers and improve the heritage product. Chester would face competition not only from Bath and York, but also from the emerging Eastern European destinations. The objective of the programme was to improve visitor management by encouraging visitors to discover other parts of the city, and developing and improving attractions. Brown outlined the vision of Chester as a ‘boutique city’. (Chester’s Place Marketing Strategy states that ‘the term “boutique” evokes an appealing combination of heritage, design-driven quality, and contemporary facilities in an environment that is compact, accessible and manageable from the perspective of both visitors and residents.’) This meant that Chester had to be world class, as well as being a historic city; it had to have economic energy and offer retail excellence. It was important to get different sectors to talk to each other and develop the visitor economy Leighton Hall, Carnforth, Lancashire, a privately owned historic property open to the public
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