The full line up of guest speakers has been announced for the city’s Annual Business Breakfast and now includes expert speakers from the official tourist board for England, Visit England, and the City of Liverpool.
The breakfast will take place on Thursday, September 28 (8.30am – 11am) and is sponsored by The Halls Wolverhampton. Investors operating in the food and beverage, entertainment, leisure, arts and culture, and hospitality sectors are invited to attend to hear about the huge potential growth prospects of Wolverhampton’s expanding visitor economy, how it is driving wider regeneration in the city, and the exciting opportunities available for businesses.
The event will be held at the newly-opened The Halls Wolverhampton following its multi-million-pound transformation into a new music, entertainment and conference venue. Its opening season attracted over 50,000 visitors to the city, boosted the local economy by almost £1.6m and created more than 250 jobs. The new venue is projected to attract 300,000 visitors a year and inject £10m into the Wolverhampton visitor economy annually.
Recent investment in city centre projects, including £48million in The Halls and more than £22million in the west of the city centre to create public and event spaces, are examples of the major transformation that is improving Wolverhampton as a visitor destination – and there’s more to come. The respected line up of speakers include Lyndsey Turner-Swift, Deputy England Director at Visit England; Steve Homer, CEO at AEG Presents - the new operators of The Halls Wolverhampton; Claire McColgan CBE, Director of Culture Liverpool; Maggie Grogan, MD at Muse; Katie Trout, Director of Policy and Partnerships at West Midlands Growth Company; Simon Cooke, Director at Apam - the new owners of the Mander Centre; and Tim Johnson, Chief Executive at City of Wolverhampton Council.
Councillor Bhupinder Gakhal, Cabinet Member for Visitor City at City of Wolverhampton Council, said “Bringing visitors to our city is an important part of our plan to grow the local economy. We have some fantastic assets – the Grand Theatre, The Halls, Wolverhampton Racecourse, Wolves FC and much more.
“We’re keen to grow and better connect this because our city and town centres need that wider offer and great experiences to attract people who then spend their money with local businesses, bringing jobs. I would encourage businesses who operate in our region’s visitor economy to come and visit us and we’re particularly keen to speak to investors and developers.”
The breakfast, which will be hosted by Midlands Business Insider, is the showpiece event of the city’s annual Business Week which will run from Monday 25 to Friday 29 September and will include a range of events hosted by the council and city partners across the week.
These include ‘An introduction to West Midlands Social Enterprise Boost Fund’ with Access to Business on Monday 25 September, for anyone looking to start up a Social Enterprise / CIC or who needs support with an existing project; ‘Molineux Meets’ on Tuesday 26 September, a business networking event at Molineux Stadium with a feature spotlight on helping businesses to unlock opportunities; ‘Wolverhampton Wednesday’ with City of Wolverhampton College on Wednesday 27 September, with an introduction to the brand-new T-Level qualification; ‘Protecting your business against cyber-attack’ with University of Wolverhampton on Wednesday 27 September; and ‘Let’s Talk Climate Action’ at the National Brownfield Institute on Friday 29 September. More events are set to be announced in the coming weeks.
