The London Mayor's Office has announced the formation of a new business tourism group for London.
The London Business Tourism Group (LBTG) includes city stakeholders the GLA, LDA, Visit London, Tfl, BHA and BAA. ExCeL London has been helping to drive this initiative and has worked with Visit London to include other business-venue owners such as AEG and EC&O Venues.
The group, which has already had an initial meeting, will develop three main areas. It will strive to raise the profile of business tourism in London through support and profiling of key events; it will improve the attractiveness of London to global event planners and it will help raise London's rankings in the ICCA statistics from 19th.
Dan Ritterband, Director of Marketing at the Mayor's office will be championing the group. He said: "The LBTG is a key element, which the Mayor is keen to build and maintain. Business tourism is incredibly important for the city and we want to ensure that we do as much as possible to work with all the city bodies to ensure we have a co-ordinated and open approach. It is absolutely key for the Mayor and the city that we see some changes being made to business tourism and really help to strengthen London's offer as the world's greatest business destination."
Tracy Halliwell, Visit London Business Tourism Director, and also a member of group added: "London is a complex environment. It's in the top three of the most popular cities in the world, we're the financial capital of the world, our hotels run at a massive 85% occupancy, and we also have the world's busiest airport with Heathrow welcoming 90 million visitors each year. Visit London has already been working tirelessly to align all the key business tourism sectors and with this new LBT group in place and the support of the Mayor, we hope to drive even further business tourism to the capital."
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