 Hello, good afternoon. My name is Judith Mason, and I would like to welcome you to today's webinar express COVID-19 impact on the promotion of place and the role of destination marketing organisations hosted by CIM North West. Before we get started, I'd just like to go over a few things so that you know how the event will work and how to participate. The presentation will last for approximately 30 to 35 minutes, followed by a short 10 minute Q&A session. You'll be able to post any questions you have by typing into the Ask a Question chat box in the Q&A panel, which you'll see on the right hand side of your screen. You can send in your questions at any time during the presentation, and we'll attempt to answer as many as we can during the Q&A session at the end. If you want to share your thoughts on social media, we're using the hashtag CIM Events. The webinar is being recorded, and we will share a link to the recording with you over the next few days. You'll also be emailed a short feedback survey after the event, which we'd love you to complete. It'll only take a few minutes. All survey responses are anonymous, so please do let us know your thoughts. I'd now like to hand you over to Chris Brown from Marketing Liverpool, who is our guest speaker today. Over to you, Chris. Yes, good afternoon. Everybody greetings from Liverpool. I hope you're all safe and well, and delighted to have the opportunity today to give you a bit of an insight into all things Liverpool and particularly the ever-changing nature of COVID and the pandemic. It's probably reflective of the pandemic that were in the middle of the moment that I could have probably changed this presentation three or four times. Indeed, if you look at that title slide there and you look at the huge volumes of people who came out into the city less than a year ago now to welcome the giants back into the city, one finds it hard to imagine at the moment when such a scene will be replicated again in the future. Things that fundamentally make a city like Liverpool the exciting and vibrant place that it is that I've had all those things removed. So maybe as we go through this presentation and I give you a bit of an insight, you'll be able to reflect on that as well in terms of particularly the role that cities play in attracting such things. So just to kind of work out how we're going to go through this, just a bit about myself, then it would be wrong to talk about where we are without sort of having a look at Liverpool's re-emergence and positioning over the last 25, 30 years or so, and how that's affected the work that we do. And indeed, therefore, what COVID is bringing to us and whilst it's bringing a huge amount of challenges to us, there are also opportunities that come out of a crisis as well. So we should look at this context in as a half a glass full perspective, not purely from a negative half glass empty. So from my own perspective, you'll probably recognise from my accent that I am not a scouser, I'm a kind of Scottish scouser. Now I'm originally from Glasgow, my career primarily started in hotels. I was a graduate of the Scottish Hotel School at the University of Strathclyde, too many years ago to remember now unfortunately. And then I moved into destination management here in Liverpool actually having come here initially as a hotelier back in the year 2000. And at that time, Liverpool hotelier is a very different place and a very more challenging place than it is today. And then I left Liverpool in 2004, just shortly after capital of cultural announcement and undertook a role at the Cheshire and Warrington tourism board, which was interesting enough set up through to the housing days where we used to receive significant funding through the Northwest Development Agency. They remember the days of the RDAs who provided massive strategic support for the tourism sector. And then I came back to Liverpool to start up marketing Liverpool back in 2013. And I've had a very enjoyable time promoting and sort of working with this great city of Liverpool and its wider city region. So that's what I'm going to cover. So if we just go back a little bit, I mean, I think what we're in the middle of the moment is a sort of symptomatic really of Liverpool really. It's a city that has got its charter a way back in 1207. So we just celebrated its 813th birthday a week or so ago. And it's gone through a roller coaster of highs and lows and successes and failures. And it's probably within the UK, I would say, a city that has seen the highs of success and recognises the highs of failure and decline. And that was no more than that took place certainly in the 60s, 70s and early parts of the 80s. And it's just worth reminding ourselves what Liverpool did look like 30 years ago in terms of where it was at. This was the Albert Dock in the late 80s, a desolate place. This was the King's Dock waterfront back in 2006. Only 14 years ago in terms of it just gives a scale of really how fast and how quick the regeneration and re-transformation of the city has been over the last number of years. And if you put those two slides into context, that is the Albert Dock today. Probably the Albert Dock, I would say, was where the renaissance of Liverpool started. Those who know Liverpool will know it very well as being a very much of a red city, it's a labour heartland. Yet it was a Tory, it was Michael Heseltine, who fundamentally came to Liverpool, believed in Liverpool, saw a vision for Liverpool and the manifestation of the Albert Dock was really the start of that. And Michael Heseltine is much revered in these parts and is always warmly welcomed back into the city. And that King's Dock photograph that I showed you now sort of forms the part of what we progressively talk about a convention city with the large-scale arena at the forefront there, the exhibition centre, the new exhibition centre at the back of the pool motel built in 2016, and a transformed waterfront. And I think Liverpool as a city recognised after many years of decline that the waterfront and the water was one of its greatest and strongest assets. It turned its back on the water back in the 50s and 60s because the port that generated all those great success stories for the city and made it the biggest port in the empire nearly. It fundamentally had been the root of its failure and therefore people blame the port, they blame the water that had brought success and therefore took a long time to actually get back to recognising that the waterfront and the assets within that waterfront were actually the differentiating and distinctive assets that we needed to rebuild the city around because those are things that every city clamours for. What makes us different? What differentiates us? What makes us special? And the waterfront I would suggest in Liverpool is one such component. But every city needs a seminal moment. It needs a moment where the tide turns, where your views move from half glass empty to half glass full, where you have hope, where you believe that something is better ahead for you. And no two doubts about it, that the turning point for this city was Liverpool 08, the European Capital of Culture in 08, which was awarded to the city in 2003. The fact of getting European Capital of Culture per se was not so much about the event itself, it was the catalytic effect it had on the mood of the city. The catalytic effect it had on regeneration where probably 20 years of regeneration took place between 2003 and 2008 and the mood of the people changed. So, as I'll kind of highlight a few times during this presentation, taking the people of your city, taking the people of your place with you on the journey is absolutely imperative and that Liverpool 08 was as much for the people of Liverpool as it was for the product of Liverpool. And indeed, actually, if you look back now to why was Liverpool successful, because when it bidded for Capital of Culture, it did it initially purely as a positioning statement. It had no real belief that it would actually win Liverpool 08. In fact, Newcastle was by far in the way the favourite for that. It was more about getting Liverpool back on the map again. But actually what won it and why the judges chose Liverpool was that they could see in the eyes of the people of Liverpool that they wanted it, they needed it and they would do something with it. And I think that is as true then as to why when we won that as it is today. But that was the turning point for Liverpool without a fear of a doubt. But as everybody will ever know when you win a major award or you have a World Cup or you have an Olympics or you have anything, then fundamentally it's what you do with the legacy of that event. You can run a great event, as Liverpool did in 2008, but as we see many, many times, those events are sometimes then not followed through. There is no legacy, stadia, things that were used to put on the major event go into basically into mothball. They're not used effectively enough. And I would have to say under the leadership here of the city, particularly the mayor, Joe Anderson here, he saw the value of culture very early on. He saw the value of major events and he saw them as differentiating factors that could position this city and really, really, really ignite the passions of this city. And over that next 10 years up until 2018, he used major events and he used culture as a way of putting Liverpool on the map. And that is why Liverpool has undertaken a major, major event transformation, fundamentally driven a great deal by its visitor economy. But fundamentally, because that legacy was in place, because there was a very clear vision, then we were able to capitalise and build on 08 and make sure that 08 was seen in the context of what we wanted to be as a turning point, but not a finishing point. And then I use this slide primarily just to demonstrate the changing world we're in. There you'll see the brilliant Liverpool waterfront and you'll then see the cruise liner, you know, birthed in the middle of the Mersey there, but right in the middle of the city centre. And this year we would have welcomed 101 cruise vessels to the city. We have ambitions to build a new cruise terminal over the next two or three years. And the impact of Covid was to completely wipe out the entire cruise seasons or 101 planned and zero turned up. That's the sort of, you know, when you have a health pandemic, the implications of that are huge and 40 or so million written off our accounts as a result of that. And back of clarity now perhaps about how the cruise industry will come back, but we still have the great ambition to go ahead and rebuild the cruise liner terminal in the new place that we wanted to do combined with a new Isle of Man steam packet terminal as well. So those, what I'm saying in that context is because we have a short term problem, because we have an issue that has been affected by a health pandemic shouldn't take away your aspiration and your belief about what you really want to achieve of the place. And I have no doubt that Liverpool will go ahead and we will rebuild that that cruise liner terminal in the manner and ambition that we wanted to do it. And we will probably welcome cruisers back. They may be differently, differently orchestrated, they may be differently managed, but the sort of fundamental ambition will still be realised. And we have used the cultural context and then here you see a picture of the tape, which was one of the very first buildings that came into the Albedoc. We have begun to use culture in a different way and that is primarily to link it into the whole sense of place. So in many cities, in many places and in many places I get involved in in terms of who I look at and how they do their branding, how they do their positioning. It's quite often in a kind of silo way. So there's a kind of different model for investment and a different model for tourism and a different model for culture and a different model for sport. And actually what I think has happened over the over the number of years is that all these issues have become very much more blurred in the minds of the audiences that we're trying to achieve. So for us to try and create a city where talent is attracted to, whether that be to our high class universities or whether that be to work in our life sciences offer. It's not just about the quality of the life sciences job or where the offices or what the subject matter may well be. It's also about what happens when you walk out of that building at five o'clock. What do you move into? What is your next set of experiences? We believe very much in the city that fundamentally connecting those experiences together, having a vibrant, exciting city that is culturally rich, is also good to attract young talent, retain talent because talent wants more things to do than just work. It wants to have a great work life balance. It wants to have a great quality of life and culture in our opinion and the wider tourism economy and those things that make a city special all add into those things that make it attractive for a place to invest. And I don't know if you've ever, you know, some of you will know the Anglican Cathedral in the city. I often say to people that the Anglican Cathedral for me is not only an absolutely magnificent building, but it's a probably symptomatic of one of the most entrepreneurial setups I've ever come across in that field of faith. This is a place where you can turn up at seven o'clock in the morning for the purpose of that building, which is primarily faith. You can go to a dinner or a car launch. You can go to a concert. You can go where they've had hot air balloons in that business and then return the next day at seven o'clock in the morning and it will be back to what it was as a place of faith. It's an absolutely shiny example of how a building can fundamentally be used for so many different purposes, but still stay rooted in the course that it was set up for. And of course you wouldn't expect me to do a presentation on Liverpool without talking about sport. Here's the kind of picture of Liverpool here and of course when I talk about Liverpool, I must talk about Everton as well. But when we were sitting down in January, we were planning a parade at that stage for Liverpool hopefully winning the Premier League, which they ultimately went on to do. And we were planning that parade as being around attracting about a million and a half to the city. And we knew that that was conservative because the year before when Liverpool won the Champions League, we had a million people come to the city for that particular parade. And to think that those plans in January completely evaporated and actually when Liverpool did get around to winning the Premier League, it was celebrated in an empty stadium with a couple of thousands who decided to go to Anfield on the night. But it was going near the scale of ambition that we had set. It was a significant after 30 years since they won the league. It was a great moment, but a sad moment in many ways as well. But it demonstrates the actual power, the power of sport in that space. And if I then sort of now look at other events that we would celebrate, this particular one is of the entry, the home of the Grand National. The Grand National attracts a multi-billion audience in terms of some people who watch that race. It's a massive economic driver in the city. It was obviously postponed this year because of COVID. And even as we sit here today, we are not confident at this stage that the Grand National could run in April next year because of the uncertainty around the pandemic. The ability for us to build as a city on those things that have made the city special, those things that are the real demand drivers of the city, the things we rely on every year. And that other cities rely on every year for their core product, all of that taken for granted, things that will always happen every year, things that are always in the calendar. All of that has been thrown into a completely different orbit. And we all have to know, I think, realise that these things that we take for granted necessarily we can't take for granted. We have a similar conversation going on in the city at the moment about the return of people coming back to the offices. People back into a city centre again. And in a way reminding people that if people don't come back into a city centre, then the things that made that city centre special, whether it was a corner shop, sandwich shop, whether it was a little restaurant or a little bar or a place that you used to go to after work. Those things can't be taken for granted anymore in the context of what you may or may not come back to in the context of what you experienced when the city pre-March and pre-COVID. And we already had, this is a picture of Liverpool One. And when I mentioned earlier on about the impact of winning capital culture in 2003, Grovener estates built Liverpool One. They built it really cleverly at that time because they built it not as a mall but as an open air shopping complex that fundamentally has done well actually during, since it reopened in June after lockdown. But also that was built in five years. And you could never imagine actually prior to that that Liverpool would have had such a great offer. But retail, even before COVID, even before COVID, we were starting to talk about the future of retail, the dynamics of retail, the issues associated with online retail. Why would you go into a city centre anymore when you could buy it from the luxury of your armchair? And that had taken us around and is kind of thematic about creating experiences, reasons why you should go to a place. How you animate a city, how you animate a city centre, how you animate a retail offer both inside the retail offer and outside the retail offer. And we were beginning to do a number of different initiatives and I'll talk about one of those in a minute or two around COVID. That actually gave you a reason to come to a place that wasn't just primary because you wanted to buy something because you wanted to be immersed in that wider experience. And retail for us will continue to create challenges with seeing that across the country. But it's about how you adapt and how you amend and how you get a balance in a city between the high street brand and this particular case you're looking at Hugo Bosson, you're looking at Harvey Nichols. But actually in Liverpool we've got an immensely strong, vibrant, independent community, superbly managed by our bid teams. And fundamentally that gives you the differentiator between the real kind of Liverpool experience and the high street brand experience. I believe that those independence will play an increasingly important role in this city as we go forward because they are inherently connected, passionate about the city and passionate to stay and develop their businesses in the city. And of course it would be also wrong for us not to think about music. You'll all recognise and understand the context of the Beatles and Liverpool, but Liverpool is very much a music city. The Beatles are inherently and continue and will always be a massive part of that music story. But they have generated off the back of the Beatles a huge music industry in this city which at the moment, fundamentally in lockdown, many, many inspirational, innovative, creative musicians who have set up developed businesses here and brought a whole vibrancy to this city are fundamentally unable to carry out their work. We believe that they will come back to do that, but music is an absolutely inherent part of our city offer and fundamentally we can't wait to welcome it back. And if you take why I use this particular story of the Beatles story is that the Beatles story, great success in the city, 80, 85% of its business is international. Fundamentally they are a hub for our international visitors and they now are 80, 85% domestic working off lower capacities to be very honest in terms of what they can do. But it's a good sign of how a business has been able to adapt, change focus, think about a new market, look at how they can basically maximise the circumstances that they're in and create a different offer. And yes, we would hope that they will get back to the times that we wanted them to be in, which is fundamentally about driving international traffic, but shows that businesses can be flexible and can do different things. And although I've shown you this slide previously, this is more to reflect the importance of business tourism to our city business tourism and events. Obviously we await further guidance from government on the reopening of events, which was due obviously on the 1st of October, but events, exhibitions, concerts, these are all the things that fundamentally are so important for a city like Liverpool and for big cities. And their absence and walking round as I did yesterday around the complex and seeing it deserted is just so surreal. We should just be on the verge now of welcoming the Labour Party to the city. The Labour Party would bring conservatively £10 million of economic benefit to our city. It would fill every hotel for miles around across the city and the city region. And at the time when the Labour Party should be here, we will be quiet and there will be nothing taking place in that centre. And we need to use and recognise and realise that these assets can't be taken for granted. They have to be basically, we have to get through survival with them and then we have to rebuild. And we need to rebuild by being innovative and creative about the different types of events that will take place. And recognising that actually the whole context of developing hybrid using technology like we're using today in many ways can reach audiences of even larger proportions. So, you know, we know from some pilots that have run in other parts of the world that they've been able to attract many, many thousands of delegates to fundamentally listen to a virtual conference and they'd ever would do on a physical conference. So there are opportunities in the hybrid model it needs a bit more thought about, but to consider that we would just return back to what we had before, this is not going to happen. So we need to be geared up, we need to be ready, we need to be innovative, we need to make sure that we have the technology in place and the expertise in place to be able to fundamentally take this forward for us. So when you look at our destination performance as at, you know, where we were heading. And when you look at this, you have to take in context that the visitor economy, the Liverpool as I said earlier, is being the kind of cornerstone, the bit that fundamentally is reestablished the city and rebuilt the city. And up until 2019, the end of 2019, we'd had 10 years of continuous growth off the back of Capital Culture. We were, you know, going only in one direction at that time. And fundamentally, you know, that 4.93 billion that we generated in the city region, 3.3 of that coming out of Liverpool. Well, conservatively for 2020, we're looking at 35% of that in terms of the impact of that. That's not just an impact at economic terms. That's a massive impact at employment level. And what Liverpool has sought to do is to rebuild an economy that encourages young people, not just to go to university or go to college or go to school and then disappear as people did many years ago, which is why you see many scousers around the world, because they were educated in Liverpool. We didn't stay in Liverpool because there was nothing really for them to do. Now there is lots of things for them to do. And my worry in that area is about the loss of young talent, particularly the visitor economy sector, and where does that young talent go and how do we retain and give hope to that young talent going forward. So those are figures that we will not be looking at with such, you know, through growing spectacles this time next year when we start to look at what the impact of 2020 has been. And what Liverpool has started to do, and I've mentioned it a couple of times, is that it's begun to start to use that visitor economy over that 10 years. So when we celebrated Liverpool in 2018, 10 years on from 08, we didn't have that as a party to celebrate it 08. We had that as a marker for what the next 10 years was going to represent. What the period from 2018 to 2028 was going to look like, how was that going to be epitomised? And what we've started to find is that by joining up that strong cultural visitor economy that made us so successful from 10 to 18, then fundamentally we've attracted the likes of the Royal College of Physicians who are creating their northern base in Liverpool and will open in the year or so. And we now have around £2 billion, even in COVID terms, there's still £2 billion of work undertaking going on in the city in terms of building around life sciences, around maritime, around automotive, around a whole bunch of sectors that fundamentally will build upon that great cultural offer that we have. So our future in that respect is very good and we anticipate that many of those schemes will still project their onsite at the moment and they will still go forward. And the reason why I showed the picture of the spine is that that really should be an epitome that will be one of the world's healthiest buildings in terms of sustainability and climate. And all the factors that we were starting to look at are what makes a sustainable city, what makes a place that much different. And of course, even when we got to 2019, this is just a stat on our hotel performance, when we got towards 2019, we were starting to see some changes going on and many of those changes we were starting to put down to Brexit. And it's hard to believe that we still got that challenge to come around the corner that would have dominated if I hadn't been for COVID then Brexit. I'm sure we'd be dominating much of our conversation and what the impacts of that are going to be. And we started to see then that there were some challenges in the supply demand equation. So that was the first year where we saw a little dip and a little marker of the things that are still to come around the corner. And of course, we also started to see prior to COVID that nothing was sacrosanct. This is the Mexico tourism board that was basically demise. And then we also started to see, and this is very relevant to today, that if you take your residence for granted, if you don't take your residence on the journey with you, then fundamentally you're going to be in trouble. And we started to see that in Amsterdam, in Barcelona and other cities, that fundamentally not taking your residence with you was fundamentally going to be a problem. Airbnb was another factor within that space that suddenly started to see that residents had party nights staying next door to them. They couldn't get into their local restaurants and bars because they were surrounded by tourists. So this mass tourism model, the mass tourism model, which was a high end of a debate in 2019, hard to think that we're talking about mass tourism now. But that was a factor at that time. And we were starting to think about that in Liverpool, about how we ensured that we got the balance right. About attracting people, but making sure that our residents felt compelled to be basically because they are the ambassadors of our city. And we have found through COVID that they have responded brilliantly to the challenges that the city has had. And then on our brand, very quickly on our brand, our brand is very important to us. This was the encapsulation of that brand for us. It was this point that I've made a few times during this presentation about the challenge between voyage, tragedy, rebirth and the quest. We are in that latter box now around the whole quest and how we take the city forward on that journey. And that quest now has become markedly harder, but it will be underpinned by these values and these are the values that take us forward. And they are inherently the same now as they will be post COVID. I think changes in that regard. They are still fundamentally aspects of life that fundamentally make Liverpool the place that it is, a place that will take challenge on, a place that is not scared to shout and make its voice heard. And it's also very much principled in the pace about taking a stand in daring to dream. We all need to dare to dream quickly now. Just one of the things that we started to see as a destination management organisation is that what we say, it's critically important what we say, but fundamentally it's not about what we say, it's about what our audience is saying. This doesn't matter whether it's a visitor audience, an investment audience, a student audience, the power of social media, the power of digital tools and the ability for that to amplify or indeed send out negative messages about your place critically, critically important. So how we curate, how do you curate that market very, very differently is very, very difficult I should say. But it's a fact that actually means that every city now has to have authenticity at its heart. If you try to tell a story that isn't correct and I know through my early days in destination management when before the internet, you were able to say a lot of things about your destination, a lot of things that people would never really know whether they were true or not. Now you can't do that. So you have to be very authentic and very real and truthful about what you say, good, bad, all in different. And painting a rosy picture about everything is not the track to go down. I won't dwell on this too much, but what it really builds on is that what we are targeting all our work around now is about those audiences and getting a message to those demographics in the language that they will understand about the things that they're interested in. So segmenting those audiences in terms of their likes and then maybe packaging up the things in our city that we know they will be interested in. So not saying come to Liverpool is great on everything. It's basically fundamentally about making sure that we fundamentally get the message out to the audience in the language that they understand through the medium that they understand. And these are characters that I've put up here from Glasgow, my own home city, Norwich and London. These are real people. So in the past, sometimes we've used actors, we've used others to bring our promotional ideas to life. Now we don't do any of that. We will only ever now use real people to tell real stories about real experiences. And sometimes you have to take that in the context and sometimes it's a bit more rough and ready. Sometimes it's not finely polished as you would get through a production. And sometimes it tells you a few things that you don't want to hear. But fundamentally it's authentic, it's real, it's believable and that I think is so important and so much more important now as we go forward. So I'm coming towards the end of this now and I'm just going to pick up on a few things around that we need to kind of think about and reflect about as we go forward. Particularly this battle around, there isn't a battle in my mind, it's not a battle in the true sense but it is around survival versus growth. Making sure that as much of our businesses survive as we possibly can in order to allow them to be able to grow going forward. Managing the health challenges and the economic challenges is immensely difficult and I've no doubt that in Liverpool as it isn't going to be in a lot of cities that challenge is right in front of us. But actually the national and local leadership factor, I think we've had great local leadership, I'm not too sure we've had great national leadership. But one of those things out of local leadership is that we've had fast decision making, we've had things that have been happening. We were able to pedestrianise areas in our bid areas, streets in our bid areas we've been talking about for years about pedestrianising. We were able to do it very, very quickly because the crisis demanded it. So we created this concept called Liverpool Without Walls, giving businesses the opportunity particularly in the hospitality sector to expand onto the streets. We gave out 230 pavement licences inside two weeks whereas normally we give out six a year. So fundamentally we were able to work at speed and that's because of great local cooperation between the private and public sector and I think that's going to have a significant impact. We as a destination management organisation, massive impact on us, our commercial and demand drivers evaporated overnight. We've had to do a whole pile of different things but it's maybe reminded people that actually destination organisations like ours are not just about marketing campaigns, they're not just about that. There's lots of other things that we get involved in. Without walls is an example, this was the picture we took in the August time of Castle Street, one of the busiest streets in the city centre. Fundamentally you can start to see what the impact of that outdoor dining, European style that fundamentally if we were to take in this picture the year before, that's not the picture you would have seen. We've been much more indoor and not enough outdoor so these are things that will come and be part of our reimagining of our city as we go forward. And then those changing future influences as we go forward, I've mentioned a few times about the importance of residents. We had a long conversation when I did this presentation in the Isle of Man earlier in the year about the importance of cities and towns and that towns necessarily felt left out because of the importance that were seen to be given to cities. And now actually through COVID towns have actually done better as people have stayed local, realise what they have on their local doorstep and actually the challenges move back to cities about how cities are going to reinvigorate themselves. And as part of that we will have to show great vision. I do not strongly believe this is the time for long drawn out strategies. It is vision and action not strategy and it will be driven by inspiration, creativity and innovation and we have bucket loads of that here in our city. And to recognise that if we just think that actually in time and hopefully this pandemic goes away, we'll just go back to the old demand drivers that always made our things, our football, our Beatles industry, our music industry, our events, all those things will just come back and life will go back to normal. We will be making a very big mistake. We will have to use this opportunity to look at all of the facets that make a city special and create new reasons to come to our city, not just rely on all things coming back as they were. And just in terms of finishing here, and this is my last slide, I would implore on government and others to think about the medium to long term short term initiatives like Eat Out to Help Out were great. But what does Eat Out to Help Out? What's the replication of that in the autumn and winter months where we have another set of challenges? We need a different view. We need government to understand that for us as a destination management organisation and marketing is a key part of that. But it's not our only function where there is a much more wider and much more wider need to understand what we do and how we do it and what the impact of that work that we do is on the public and private sector. And I think building what I said earlier, our public and private sector have worked immensely well together over, there's been new relationships forged, new things forged together that I think will make massive differences to how people undertake roles and responsibilities going forward. And we must make sure that as we do that that COVID is not something that we then just go back to the way we used to do it. We need to learn from what we've learnt through this crisis, build on it and build a better city. Take the city forward with the same ambition and the same pride and passion that I had post COVID and I've no doubt that we will be able to do that. So I hope that fly through of Liverpool, I can talk about it if I'm not so to be honest, has given you some insight into what we're doing, how we're changing, how we're reimagining, but how we still retain the same ambition and pride in this city that we did even before COVID stuff. Great, many thanks Chris. We're now going to have a short 10 minute Q&A session as a reminder you can still submit your questions via the chat box in the Q&A panel. The first question for Chris is from Joe, wondering how easy it was to get all of the different parties that you've mentioned, investment, life sciences, education, tourism, et cetera, all working together and aligned in their activity to promote the city. How has this achieved and does it still happen? Well, what I would say is that it's never done, it's never done and dusted, it's an evolving scenario, you need good leaders in that space who see the bigger picture. We're quite fortuitous, we have a number of those in the city. It's a kind of collaboration or principle, there's great collaboration in the city, but fundamentally we will have to continue that journey. And it's more challenging now, I would have to say, as we start to look at what the city looks like going forward. But I've absolutely no doubt that what COVID has done in many ways has laid the whole ecosystem very bare and it's laid out very clearly how everybody relies on everybody else. So whether you're in the tourism economy, you rely on the theatres, you rely on the convention centres, you rely on retailers, you rely on football and other factors. If you're running a local cafe in the middle of our commercial district, you rely on the officers who basically people that go to that office can come back out and use your premise. So actually, if there's ever a rationale for making sure that we have a joined up approach and that everybody recognises and realises the challenge that each of us face, now is that time. We started that journey. We must continue it and continue it with the same degree of passion and belief that we had prior to COVID coming. And then we've got a question from Steve from Swansea City Council. Do you have an agreement with your private sector partners to provide you with the data that you need to report on performance? It's a very good point. It's a very good point data and intelligence. I would say that what we've certainly been looking at and we've been working with colleagues in Liverpool One and the bid and with private sector partners and the council and the combined authority about how we develop a much more informed approach to what we want to do primarily by using intelligence and data better. And we started to put a few pilots in place for that to begin to measure, particularly using mobile phone technology and credit card technology to be able to work out who's coming from where, what are they spending, how is their dwell time. We've got a lot more work to do in that. And I would say to Steve and Swansea that we've got a lot of work to do in that space. It's really, I think it's sort of shown how important it is and that actually data and intelligence is going to be a critical factor. We knew it was going to be. We know always know it's important, but the raw data of a hotel has 80% occupancy is really absolutely no use to us. It's who's made up that 80% of business basically is attracting 100 staff. Where are they coming from? Why are they coming? What are they doing? So there's a journey and a half there on intelligence and it's absolutely going to be critical for cities and for any business I would suggest to basically put more resource and thought processes into developing and creating high quality data on intelligence. I've got a question next from Helen. Has Liverpool implemented any promotional changes to encourage people or office workers back into the city once lockdown measures were decreased? Yes, well we which I should have mentioned in my presentation actually when we when we when we had the initially the reopening of the retail economy in June and then the hospitality sector in July. We ran that concurrently with a campaign called love your Liverpool and the principles of love your Liverpool had a very strong safety message alongside them. So it was about being being responsible being you know being being sort of you know kind to people, but also fundamentally about inspiring our residents because actually as it will be for the next six, seven maybe a bit longer months. We will rely very heavily on a domestic audience and we needed our residents to come out and show their passion into the city, which they've done in spades. But we need to we need to build on that and we need to you know make sure that we continue that going forward. So a lot of our thinking has changed a bit and it's a bit like when I made the illusion to Amsterdam and Barcelona who necessarily cities that are brilliant cities but maybe put their economy ahead of their social values that this whole essence of inclusive growth about ensuring. So that knowledge economy building I showed you about the spine 100 meters away from there is one of the most deprived communities in in England. And we have to find ways of making sure that those communities feel that such a building like that spine is going to bring benefit to them and that needs really clever clever thinking about how you make these things happen. So we found very much that you know making sure that our residents are with us that they're supportive of us is is really important and clearly that they feel that the city is a safe city because that amplifies our message. So we will continue to work very much as we have done on that campaign and to develop that, but we will we will be very cognizant now of the importance of our residents. If they ever were if they ever needed reminded about ensuring that they're on that journey and they're connected to our journey as we go forward. I've got a question from Jane. How do you think other cities in the UK are coping some good some bad has COVID brought them together? Well I think it's very difficult because every every city is in a different space and you know if I look at our friends in Manchester. Manchester has probably been slightly harder than Liverpool in many ways because because of the airport because it's a very much more of a business city than we are and they've got large corporate areas and that's affected their dynamics. We have lower levels of corporate business here in terms of you know national and international chains. We have a lot of independent businesses here that has meant that our footfall during the periods of July and August has been quite strong. So each city has a different dynamic. I think all cities have recognized that they you know the importance of them is about collaboration. It's about sharing experiences and I think in the north we actually have a very good sharing culture with with our cities are comparative cities. The days of us competing with the likes of Manchester have really gone. I mean we'll always compete with them on the football pitch by the way but not so much necessarily in terms of business or attracting. We work very closely with them as we do with Leeds and Newcastle and Hull and York and other cities across the north. So I think every city has its own position and its own challenges and many you know will have to deal with those in the way they do. But I would think that this will definitely drive up a new spirit of collaboration both internally and externally within your city. And I've certainly seen that in Liverpool in spades and it's been great to see in our city that those public and private sector will come together with a common cause which sometimes hasn't happened in the past. Thanks and I think we've got time for one more question. Has the Covid pandemic set back the ambitions that the city has and our plan projects now likely to be cancelled? Definitely not. I mean I think we see this as definitely a period where clearly our aspirations have been delayed and they have been challenged. But that doesn't take away from our vision about what we want to achieve with the city. It doesn't take our ambition away. It mean purely delays the transformation of that into action. And it would be very important I think that we send that message very loud and clear to our residents, to our businesses and to those who are interested in doing business with the city. That we remain open for business. We remain open to attract business and we remain ambitious. Once you start taking away those pillars of ambition and aspiration and start to feel that you're going back into a period of decline and we're all doomed. Then fundamentally I think you're on the wrong side of the curve and we have to accept the difficulties we're in but we most definitely do not displace that vision ambition we have. Excellent. Thank you very much Chris. That's all the time we have now for our Q&A session today. I'd like to say thank you to Chris for today's presentation. Say I am North West for organising the event and a thank you to you all for attending. We hope you've found it interesting and worthwhile. Our next webinar Express will be leading and managing through change on Monday the 21st of September at 1pm hosted by CIM Yorkshire. You'll find it listed on the events page on the CIM website where you can find out more information and register for the session. Once again you'll shortly be receiving a survey on today's event and we really appreciate it if you could provide your feedback. So on behalf of CIM thank you for joining us and we hope you enjoy the rest of your day.