Marketing Sheffield is to lead on a new plan to make the city a “world-class destination for visitors.”
Sheffield City Council has announced the new tourism strategy, which it hopes will boost the local economy as well as opportunities for local people and businesses.
The Destination Management Plan (DMP) will be led by Marketing Sheffield.
“It’s great to see Sheffield adopting a strategic plan to grow tourism and support the visitor economy,” said Councillor Martin Smith, Chair of the Economic Development and Skills Committee.
“It will help fill more hotel rooms, sell more cups of coffee, fill more restaurants and see more money spent with local businesses.
“We have an ambitious plan and look forward to working with partners across Sheffield to deliver it.”
The DMP strategy has 5 key objectives, including developing Sheffield’s city breaks offer, growing the conferences market and diversifying and strengthening the city-wide events programme.
Events will play a key role, with the Council supporting the development of a new “Major Events Plan” to help bid for them. The UK events sector was worth around £42.3bn in 2022.
Tourism in Sheffield already makes a major contribution to the wider local economy. In 2022, visitor spending brought in an estimated £1.35bn to the city and supported 13,285 full-time jobs.
Previous campaigns from Marketing Sheffield include Your University City, to attract students to the city; and its City Breaks campaign, which targeted potential visitors from London, Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham and promoted Sheffield’s music, culture, outdoors and opportunities for extended business trips.
Since the campaigns have been running, website visits have increased from an average 2,000 per day to 8,000 per day – around 2.9m visitors per year.
