Harrogate Borough Council's cabinet is due to meet at 5.30pm tonight with just one item on the agenda: the renovation of the town's conference centre.

The council is likely to vote to proceed with plans to invest £46.8m on a major overhaul of the 40-year-old centre.

A full renovation would be one of the council's biggest ever financial decisions. The proposal has been welcomed by the town's business community but criticised by politicians and business representatives in Ripon, Knaresborough and Pateley Bridge, where the benefits would be felt less.

John Gallery is a former Harrogate hotelier. He is chairman of the Business Visits & Events Partnership’s research and business intelligence group, a former chair of VisitYork and a former vice-chairman of the Meetings Industry Association, He currently works as a business tourism consultant.  

We put a series of questions to Mr Gallery: 

How does Harrogate rank as an events venue?
Harrogate’s conference centre does need to raise its game as it has lost out to a number of destinations with newer facilities. The sums seem huge, but in the market it is in, it will continue to decline if it does not keep pace with, or indeed, get ahead of these shiny new competitors.

What difference would a £46.8m renovation make?
As has been seen in other locations, investment makes a difference, not only to the fortunes of the venue but also to the wider local and regional economy. The value must be judged in that wider context and not just on the profit and loss of the centre. If the centre were simply to break even then it would be doing its job as a lever for all the other benefits. Better of course, that it also makes profit so that investment can continue over the long term.

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Read more:

• EXCLUSIVE: Leaked report reveals dire financial state of Harrogate Convention Centre


• District businesses dismay over plans for £46.8m convention centre upgrade

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Is the council best placed to provide investment?
A private sector operator would probably be better. Ownership could remain in the public sector but hand operations to a private operator with a dynamic profit motive and things would change quickly. Having said this, Harrogate has probably relied too heavily on the conference market for the 40 years since the centre was developed. Too often there is feast or famine in terms of demand for hotels, bed and breakfasts, restaurants etc. It was like this when I first worked in the hotel business in Harrogate in the 1980s. So Harrogate Borough Council should also focus on stimulating demand with a stronger, more broad-based appeal that would attract visitors throughout the year.

£46.8m is a huge sum but is it enough to revive the centre?
It’s a large sum but in terms of the market the centre operates in, it needs it. It was controversial when it opened but some of the new plans do seem to make sense in terms of linking directly to the Royal Hall and re-imagining the space outside the main building. I don’t think it is a lost cause but £46.8m will probably be just enough to regain a strong place in the market. It needs to be a co-ordinated effort with the hotels and other accommodation providers, local travel companies and so on to make the best impact.

What should the long-term strategy be?
The centre should be the focus for events but be part of a bigger picture. The centre should work together with the Yorkshire Event Centre to attract bigger, international co-located events. Harrogate should up its game. The competition is overseas as well as Brighton, Bournemouth, Manchester, Liverpool and Edinburgh etc. Think of Barcelona, Geneva, Frankfurt, Las Vegas, New York, Sydney, etc. Some of the money announced recently by Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, to improve transport in the north should be chased by Harrogate. Improve the direct rail link to York and Leeds for example. With the canny Yorkshire approach I am sure they can do it.

How badly has covid affected the events sector?
The £70bn per year UK events sector has been one the worst affected and it is likely that demand will not return quickly in the short-term. Harrogate can look this year at the loss of so many events at both the convention centre and the Yorkshire Event Centre due to covid but the impact this has had on the other parts of the economy in these businesses is also severe.

How should the town respond?
Counter-intuitively this may be the opportunity to pivot the centre to be part of a broader tourism offer that still attracts conferences but with greater emphasis on the leisure and pleasure offerings in the district. For example, introduce delegate incentives to bring partners and families. Be more adventurous about what can be done. It’s a spa town so it should be attracting people for this purpose as it did when it was first invented as that. The convention centre could be the hub of the town’s tourism sector and business done at the centre might steer more towards the family market at weekends and holidays and business events midweek. There are a lot of possibilities. It needs a broad vision for both business and leisure.