Arena chief to cast net wider to fill exhibition space

ACC Liverpool is shifting its marketing efforts towards attracting more European and worldwide conferences to make use of the proposed 97,000 sq ft conference centre due to open in 2014.

The company, which has just filed accounts for 2011 showing its first annual profit, said that it also expected to appoint a contractor to deliver the exhibition space in the spring.

Chief executive Bob Prattey said the £40m centre would be funded via bank loans, “so it needs a lot of business coming through it”.

“It also needs to be flexible enough to stage sports events, concerts and conferences. we want it to be as future-proof as we can make it.”

Recenty-filed accounts for ACC Liverpool show that in the year to March 31 2011 it made an inaugural pre-tax profit of £244,704 (2010: £10,046 loss) as it it grew turnover by almost 12% to £14.5m (£13m). It employs around 120 full-time staff.

“The original business plan before we came on board was prepared by consultants, and I had a look at the forecasts for where they expected us to be at this stage,” he said.

“They had predicted a turnover of £6m, but we’ve more than doubled that. We feel that says it all about the amount of activity we’ve generated here.”

The venue has also been profitable since midway through its second year, which Prattey again said was way ahead of forecasts.

He added that convention centres are generally not expected to generate significant profits, arguing that they are usually owned by city, state or regional governments who are happy to run them at a loss so long as they boost economic activity within a region.

ACC Liverpool has managed this, he argued, generating £100m of Gross Value Added to Liverpool’s economy in 2011, bringing the total to date to around £500m.

“The trick has been to keep revenue coming in what has been a difficult period economically,” he said. “But then we’ve known no other trading conditions.”

The convention centre brought in 95 events last year attracting over 56,000 delegates and although the arena concert market generally was impacted by a “continued downturn in the amount of quality touring acts”, ACC Liverpool still managed to stage 132 events attracting almost 600,000 visitors.

Prattey said that the ACC Liverpool has become a firmly-established part of the nationwide arena circuit, drawing on a population base stretching from North Wales through to Cumbria in the North.

“A lot of what we’ve been doing has been about refining the programme and keeping the business we already have. The retention rates have been phenomenal and we have contracted business until 2025,” he said.

However, he added that the exhibition space was necessary if it is to attract the larger, international conferences which require substantial exhibition space in order to fund them.

“Traditionally, we’ve used the Arena for exhibition space but this comes with an opportunity cost as it means we can’t offer the space for concerts.”

He added that some conferences require the exhibition space for 3-4 days prior to an event to build stands and for at least a couple of days afterwards to dismantle them.

“The Labour and the Liberal Democrat conference all used the space in this way and although these are great opportunities in terms of profile, from a business point of view, there is the challenge of the Arena being put out of action.”

The centre will comprise three spaces of 2,700 sq m each, which can open out into a single space of 8,100 sq m.

“These will be buildings of significal architectural merit that will take advantage of the waterfront location. For me, this will be the best-looking exhibition space in the UK, if not Europe,” he said.

“The city is very much behind this.”