Lancaster joins Universities' Tourism Partnership
Lancaster University is one of four higher education institutions in the north-west which have joined together to launch the Universities' Tourism Partnership.
The University is to work with Manchester Metropolitan University, the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and St Martin’s College in Lancaster in a new initiative to offer expert help to tourism and leisure businesses across the region.
Funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the Universities' Tourism Partnership will involve the four institutions collaborating for the benefit of small to medium businesses.
Alan Heywood of Lancaster University’s Tourism Centre, which is based in the Geography Department, said: “Together we can provide a whole range of support to the visitor economy across the north west. Here at Lancaster, the concentration is on providing marketing support while at Manchester Metropolitan their specialism is Human Resources, at UCLAN outdoor sports and at St Martin’s College Information and Communications Technology. Together we can offer whatever help businesses need and the benefit is really to the businesses because it gives them access to a wider range of support activities.”
The criteria set by the ERDF means that shops and restaurants do not quality for help but hotels, festival and events organisers do.
“There’s a large market out there which could access this support. We’re committed to supporting businesses from across the region so if a business wanted help with marketing, then we would help them no matter where they are as long as they are within the ERDF’s Objective 2 area which covers most of Cumbria and a large part of Lancashire.”
The Universities' Tourism Partnership was launched at Preston North End where representatives of each university spoke about how they can deliver business support.
“We deliberately chose PNE for the launch because it’s the home of the National Football Museum which houses one of the premier football collections in Europe and is a great visitor attraction.”
Any business wishing to access the help available from the Universities' Tourism Partnership should call the Lancaster University’s Tourism Centre on 01524 594947
www.thetourismcentre.lancs.ac.uk