Bath Tourism Plus (BTP) held its first Business Tourism Forum at the Kingston Drawing Room in the Roman Baths.  The event was an opportunity to bring together venue members and suppliers who are all involved in bringing business tourism to Bath.

The Forum updated the forty attending members on planned marketing activity for the year ahead and also included a presentation from guest speaker Carol O’Reilly from Liverpool Convention Bureau (LCB), where since its development in 2008, LCB has put Liverpool on the map for national association and corporate conferences.

Aiming to support members with new programmes and marketing tools, BTP’s Business Tourism Team discussed the re-launch of the conference website - bathconference.co.uk – and a new Ambassador Programme which will support experts, business leaders, academics and innovators from every field when bidding for conferences, meetings and exhibitions.

It is planned that these Forums will go on to be held every quarter to keep members up to date with BTP’s activities and for sharing ideas and networking.

In 2009 it was estimated that the value of business tourism brought in around £21.2 million to Bath. However, Nick Brooks-Sykes, Chief Executive at Bath Tourism Plus said: “Bath Tourism Plus aims to provide leadership, marketing tools and market intelligence in order to grow business tourism by 9% by 2014, but it will only be successful through strong collaborative and partnership working. The day was an opportunity to demonstrate to our members how BTP is working hard to drive more business tourism into the city.