Financial Times Tuesday December 7 2004-12-07

Losses in conference business ‘a disaster’

London is losing £27 m worth of business a year because of inadequate conference facilities, according to research commissioned for Ken Livingstone, the mayor.

The capital has been eclipsed by other European cities with bigger and better centres, according to Grant Thornton, the accountancy firm.

The survey will fuel the drive by the London Development Agency to set up a giant conference venue.

Last year the agency, which prepares the mayor’s business plan for London, set up a commission to look at the benefits of such a development.

The commission is looking at possible locations, designs and funding.  The report by Grant Thornton suggests London is falling far behind unlikely competitors such as Vienna.

Last year London hosted 144 conferences, compared with 272 in Paris and 188 in Geneva.  This was a fall of 0.2 per cent from 1991, compared with 7.1 per cent growth in Rome.

Most London venues are too small for conferences of many thousands of delegates.  Most had been forced to turn away many inquiries, the report found.

For gatherings of 3,000 to 5,000 people, London has only 6 per cent of the market, compared with Paris’s 26 per cent.

Gerry Acher, the chairman of the commission, said: "To be turning away valuable business of this magnitude is nothing short of a disaster."

An international conference centre would place London on the map for such gatherings and improve the city’s business reputation, he said.  It would also act as a "gateway" for visitors to the rest of the UK.

London is also handicapped by its relative cost, working out at 5 0per centre more expensive than Barcelona and Copenhagen, and almost twice as expensive as Vienna, according to the report.