Imagine: The value of music heritage tourism in the UK – UK Music (2014)

Author(s): UK Music
Publisher: UK Music
Date: 2014

Imagine is a report which looks at the unrealised potential of music heritage tourism in the UK.

Millions of music tourists make pop pilgrimages to museums, take tours and visit the homes of the UK’s most loved bands every year. UK Music’s report examines how music tourists translate pop into pounds.

Liverpool has been a standard bearer with The Beatles Story and The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour. Each year The Beatles and their music heritage generate £70million to Liverpool’s local economy.

This report explores how other cities in the UK have harnessed their own unique musical heritage to tourism policy,

• Hull which like Liverpool will become the City of Culture in 2017 boasts the only museum dedicated to night clubbing and is home to David Bowie’s backing band, the Spiders from Mars.  In 2013 their Museum of Club Culture, hosted a temporary exhibition celebrating David Bowie’s most famous stage-persona Ziggy, drawing 30,000 visitors to the City, all of whom added to Hull’s economy.
• After hearing of Japanese tourists in Coventry, asking “where is the 2-Tone?” Pete Chambers, curator of the Coventry Music Museum, “realised that the music I loved was, in fact, a global brand, and that Coventry should be doing more to promote this”. The museum recently welcomed its 1,000th paying visitor who travel to Coventry for its music heritage from Japan, Australia, Malaysia and the USA.
• We consider that Sheffield might do more to capitalise on Jarvis Cocker and the Arctic Monkeys.  Uncommon People, a popular and successful online guide to Sheffield’s bands, artists and musicians could be replicated across the UK.

If Liverpool and The Beatles were replicated across every city in the UK there would be an additional £4bn generated for UK GDP.

Click here to read or download the report.

Click here to read the report’s entry on the UK Music website.