Music Tourism worth £1.4bn

Feargal Sharkey (one-time leader of the Undertones) is now CEO of UK Music, an organisation representing the collective interests of the UK’s commercial music industry. Today they published a report showing that music tourism contributes around £1.4bn to the UK economy. This represents a positive contribution of £864m (GVA) to the national economy and equivalent of 19,700 full-time jobs.

Their report shows that large-scale live music across all regions of the UK attracts at least 7.7m attendances by domestic and overseas music tourists and that although foreigners made up just 5% of music tourists in the UK, they were responsible for 18% of the spending.

The UK Music report found that iconic venues, such as the Salford Lads Club in Manchester (seen on the sleeve of The Smiths album The Queen is Dead) were attracting attention.

For some dedicated tourists, going to the Salford Lads Club or wal;king on the Abbey Road pedestrian crossing, is just as important as a visit to Buckingham Palace and Stonehenge!

From these findings UK Music has issued a list of recommendations to Government – including the implementation of a national live music tourism strategy, with the immediate goal of increasing the number of overseas music tourists.

The research, undertaken by Bournemouth University’s International Centre for Hospitality and Tourism Research, follows the Government’s Plan For Growth, published alongside the Budget. This specifically identified the UK’s creative industries and tourism amongst sectors with the greatest potential to drive economic growth.

Research leader, Professor Adam Blake said: “This is the first time that a comprehensive study of music tourism has ever been undertaken in the UK. The data on where music-goers come from confirms that large numbers of them do travel around the country to go to music events, and significant numbers come from overseas. However, it is important to note that our definition of a music tourist is hugely conservative, and that we did not analyse the vast numbers of non-ticketed or smaller capacity events. Subsequently, the true value of music to UK tourism will be much higher.”

A word of caution however, after 10 years of growth, the live music industry stuttered last year, there was a drop of 6.7% in UK live music revenues. The sector's revenues rose by 9.4% in 2009 and 13% in 2008.

Down load the full report here