Monday Insights – March 21st

This Monday’s Insights feature brings you the industry headlines you may have missed from the last week.

Headlines

IATA’s Director General, Willie Walsh, has confirmed that “The world is largely open for travel.”

In a news release on www.iata.org, Walsh continued: “As population immunity grows, more governments are managing COVID-19 through surveillance, as they do for other endemic viruses.

“That is great news for a growing number of destinations that will receive a much-needed economic boost from the upcoming Easter and Northern Summer travel seasons.

“Asia is the outlier. Hopefully, recent relaxations including Australia, Bangladesh, New Zealand, Pakistan, and the Philippines are paving the way towards restoring the freedom to travel that is more broadly enjoyed in other parts of the world.”

View the published IATA survey of travel restrictions for the world’s top 50 air travel markets here.

Contracts have been signed for Derby’s new £45.8m events venue. The 3,500 capacity entertainment and events venue will be built on the site of the former Pennine Hotel, Laurie House offices, multi-storey car park and Pink Coconut nightclub in Colyear Street and Padley House in Becket Street.

The new venue will be owned by Derby City Council. It will be leased to and operated by ASM Global. AMS’s portfolio includes OVO Arena Wembley, AO Arena, Utilita Arena, Bonus Arena, first direct Arena, Olympia London and OVO Hydro.

The venue will be a scalable space capable of staging a range of concerts, family shows, exhibitions, and business events. Construction work on the venue is due to start in January 2023.

Read more on Derby City Council’s new pages.

A collective of hospitality industry representatives has launched Lunch4Ukraine in order to raise £100,000 for the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Ukraine appeal.

JW Marriott Grosvenor House will host the event , London, on 5 April. Read more on Conference News. 

A new Chair of ACC Liverpool Group will help drive the venue’s post-pandemic recovery.

Kate Nicholls OBE takes over from previous chair, Max Steinberg CBE, who’s reached the end of his three-year fixed-term contract.

Nicholls says: “I am passionate about driving the events and hospitality sectors forward and my ambitions are very much aligned to those of the organisation and city-wide.

“Through my networks and industry insight, I am ready to provide the team with the best possible support and guidance as the business moves forward through recovery and on to the next phase of its development.”

Doubletake

The latest Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) select committee report has revealed a lack of overall vision or direction to the Government’s events policy.

According to mitmagazine.co.uk (M&IT), the report says: “The Government is spending a lot of money on this year’s major events. Yet while individual occasions may well deliver memorable moments, we see no golden thread linking the events or tying them to a vision for the future of this country.

The committee has also criticised the funding for DCMS’s flagship UK City of Culture programme.

Read M&IT’s coverage of the report here…