Overview

Working in the Visitor Economy

The Liverpool City Region is clearly a place that many people want to visit, from elsewhere in the UK and from all over the world, and working in this sector can bring some great opportunities!

Fun facts –

• Liverpool had been the 5th most visited city in the UK by international visitors 
• In 2019, the region attracted approx. 60m day visitors – that’s the same as the entire population of Italy……

Wherever you go across the globe, people have heard of our city.

If you go back a few hundred years Liverpool was “the second city of the empire” and the docks were a thriving hub of trade, with ships coming in from all corners of the world, bringing in goods, people and culture which has made us unique.

In the years since, our Region has seen swings in fortune, from our maritime heyday to post-war decline and lack of investment, worsening in the 70s and 80s to rise again throughout the 90s and now once again a major city region, and one of the most popular stops on the cruise ship itinerary.

We’re famous – the list of things which people associate with our Region includes sports, such as our football and rugby clubs, the Grand National, the Open Golf, our musical heritage – especially the Beatles and the Merseybeat sounds, our architectural history including the iconic waterfront and amazing buildings, our history and culture, shopping, nightlife and academic opportunities, to name just a few.

We can offer visitors a taste of cosmopolitan city life and quaint rural villages, busy shopping areas and beautiful coastlines, art galleries and Iron Men, beautiful Victorian parks and a safari experience, built on top of a diverse, rich and vibrant history.

Many famous people have their roots here including comedians, singers, musicians, and actors, and it’s amazing how our distinctive Scouse and St Helens accents seem to pop up in almost every TV programme and film.

On average before Covid, the visitor economy alone contributes over £4.9 billion every year to local businesses which employ around 57,000 people. 

The visitor economy sector in the Liverpool City Region is bigger than you might realise and covers all of our constituent council areas across, Halton, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens, Knowsley, and the Wirral. 

It incorporates all the elements that make for a successful visitor destination for business and pleasure: the attractions, events and venues that make visitors want to come here ; the infrastructure such as transport links that helps to make them accessible; and services that cater for the needs of visitors such as hotels, guest houses, guides, tour operators and many more – all generating economic and social activity. 

This breadth and depth means that career opportunities with rapid progression routes are vast for those with a passion for high quality service delivery and the ambition to succeed. 

Opportunities to work in the sector vary enormously – including attractions such as Knowsley Safari and Southport Pleasureland, the many conference venues and hotels, guest houses, pubs, clubs and restaurants, and many more.

In addition, Cruise Liverpool has welcomed over 500 cruise ships since 2007, carrying over 1 million international passengers and crew, and generating £72 million to the local economy. As the city region welcomes an increasing number of passenger ships each year, we’re developing and investing in cruise facilities, including work currently undertaken on the new Liverpool Cruise Terminal and Hotel which will hold up to 3,600 passengers at the Princes Jetty dock site.

Jobs in this field can offer some of the most exciting, flexible and varied industries to work in, offering a wide variety of career opportunities and options to suit many different people, whatever their ambitions and skills, and many seasonal and part-time jobs are available from which people can develop their careers.

It is possible to progress quickly within these industries, for people who wish to do so, and there is scope to move into different areas of the business to gain knowledge, qualifications and experience.

To compete for these jobs candidates will have to have excellent ‘soft skills’  including team working, oral and written communication skills and in particular, customer handling and service skills, and literacy, numeracy and good ICT skills are also desirable. 

Businesses will also need people with good technical and digital skills to manage cyber security, data protection and marketing, and as technology develops new systems will increase the range of skills needed. 

Visitors now also want to engage with the digital potential of experiences – including apps that provide on demand information, to connected tech at hotels or immersive video experiences that bring cultural sites and attractions to digital life in ways we couldn’t have imagined a generation ago. All these aspects of the Visitor Economy need people with imagination and digital skills to support people’s experiences and develop the marketplace to take advantage of new technology as it develops.

As the economy opens up again post-Covid, the sector is now seeing visitor numbers rise very positively and tourism has started to blossom again as many people enjoy the renewed freedom to travel, creating lots of fantastic job opportunities and plenty of vacancies, offering flexible, varied and rewarding jobs with good career prospects.

If you’re interested in a career in the Visitor Economy, there are lots of links and videos on this site to give you more information.

Quick Facts

• Pre-Covid, the Liverpool City Region attracted more than 67 million national and international visitors annually -that’s nearly the whole population of the UK!
• Liverpool is the 5th most visited city in the UK for international visitors and 4th in England for domestic visitors.
• The Liverpool City Region has 141 hotels and over 11, 000 rooms available.
• Before Covid, the sector employed 57, 000 people, and as the sector recovers good jobs are readily available.
• Typically, 5 million passengers per year travel through Liverpool John Lennon Airport accessing flights to over 60 destinations in the UK and beyond.
• A larger proportion of the Visitor Economy workforce is under 25 than in any other sector.
• Knowsley Safari was the top paid attraction in 2019, with over half a million visitors.
• Since 2010 tourism has been the fastest growing sector in the UK in employment terms – it is predicted to grow at an annual rate of 3.8% through to 2025 – significantly faster than the overall UK economy and much faster than sectors such as manufacturing, construction and retail. In the Liverpool City Region this figure was closer to 6% in 2019, but this has been affected by Covid since.
• it is estimated that the UK will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK workforce.
• Over the last 5 years pre-Covid, there has been a 28% growth in the economic value of the visitor economy to the Liverpool City Region, rising from £3.83bn to £4.93bn – this is equivalent to an average growth of around 5% per year. Although this dropped by 58% during Covid, the sector is bouncing back strongly.
• In normal times, more than 100 cruise ships with an average of between 1500 and 3500 passengers come through the new cruise terminal in a year – that’s up to 350,000 people every year!

Helpful Links