Agenda and minutes

There were no declarations of interest.

a)  To agree the Minutes of the meeting held on 15 July, 2021

b)  Any matters arising

The Minutes of the meeting held on 15 July, 2021 were agree and signed as a true record.

There were no matters arising.

Report of the Director of Business, Investment and Culture

The Cabinet Member for Jobs, Regeneration and Climate Change considered a report of the Director of Business, Culture and Inward Investment which indicated that the Coventry Destination Management Organisation (DMO) Project seeks to initiate a proof-of-concept model (known as Destination Coventry) to test the viability of creating a formal public / private DMO entity for Coventry from 2023 onwards. The project is a collaboration between Coventry City Council and Coventry & Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce and will deliver both traditional and innovative destination management and marketing activities. The report sought the necessary approvals to initiate the model, noting the related expenditure in 2021/22 and 2022/23 from existing approved budgets.

Destination Management Organisation (DMO) is the umbrella term for arrangements in a place to support co-ordination and collaboration across the tourism sector’s many stakeholders. They differ across the country in scale, funding models and governance, from wholly local authority operated arrangements through membership schemes and private companies.  In Coventry, the Council’s Visit Coventry and Conference Coventry & Warwickshire operations make-up the DMO.  This in-house model is considered appropriate in places where the visitor economy is less well-developed and where the sector has few, if any, major operators.

Coventry’s Destination Management Partnership (DMP) was convened in 2019 as a result of recommendations made in the 2019-2023 Tourism Strategy. It is made up of senior public and private sector stakeholders from across the city’s visitor economy sectors.  In relation to reporting to the DMP, three working groups covering its core remit, were established – Visitor Experience, Product & Promotion and Visitor Economy & Skills. The DMP has provided opportunity for a regular tourism economy dialogue and created an appetite for exploring ways in which the current DMO could be more successful and effective in delivering the tourism strategy and growing the city’s visitor economy, especially in the build up to UK City of Culture 2021 and the Commonwealth Games in 2022.  The DMP has recognised that there is potential for improving impact through a new structural model for the DMO, with greater involvement and investment from the private sector businesses in the sector. 

The DMP convened a DMO Advisory Board to explore an alternative DMO model for Coventry. The group’s findings validated that a form of public / private partnership model can be successful in destinations where the sector is more developed and sector associations and collaboration are well established, as we are experiencing in Coventry.  The DMP considered that testing a proof-of-concept through the next two years, with the opportunities afforded by UK City of Culture and the Commonwealth Games would give the best chance to establish the feasibility of a new approach.

The report proposes an initiation of a proof-of-concept model (known as Destination Coventry) to test the viability of a more formal public / private DMO entity for Coventry from 2023 onwards. The model will take the form of a collaboration project with an existing membership organisation, namely Coventry & Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce (CWCC). Under a robust governance structure as set out in the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 9.

There are no outstanding issues.

There were no outstanding issues.

There were no items of urgent public business.