efore the pandemic took hold , conferences and meetings were worth £ 18.3bn to the UK annually in direct spend , making up the single largest portion of the total £ 84bn events industry .

Yet , the way this business is brought in , much of which comes from overseas , is inefficient and ineffective . That is how it is described by Nick de Bois , former MP and chair of the Event Industry Board , who was commissioned to write an independent report on Destination Management Offices ( DMO ) in England , and how they can be better shaped and structured to help shape the UK ’ s post-pandemic recovery .

When David Cameron took office in 2010 , DMO funding was effectively stopped , and that gave rise to far smaller and far less well equipped DMOs who , try as they may , have not always been successful in bringing big event business to their respective regions .

“ This report has been a long time coming ,” says de Bois “ By essentially having abandoned regional development agencies in 2010 , which had a key role for creating tourism boards , which most people think of as leisure , but

of course had responsibility for the business tourism , including events , DMOs started popping up all over the country . By my count there are between 150 and 160 so-called DMOs in England .”

De Bois says these DMOs are funded differently , and they operate differently . “ Some of them are very small , some of them are large , and virtually all of them duplicate , overlap , and often under achieve , not through a lack of effort on their behalf but because their very structures are designed to limit the potential .

“ The problem is that the Government had been working on a lazy assumption . Our sectors have

Nick de Bois

grown between 2010 and up to the pandemic . You will have seen something like a 20 % level of growth in the visitor economy .

“ We ’ re talking about our business visitors , our conferences , our meetings and our incentives . And , of course , the leisure sector . That lazy assumption is that they ’ re doing alright . And yet , when you examine that , particularly as I did , when I looked at what was happening internationally , and how DMOs and governments interacted , it ’ s quite clear that we ’ re underachieving compared to our competitors .”

De Bois says that it ’ s “ unacceptable ” that the UK has