Where Is the Best Place to Host an Industry-Specific Event or Conference?

Why the location of your event or conference is so important

Before we delve into the best places to host events for specific industries, we first want to emphasise the importance of location.

When it comes to making your event or conference a success, location is a crucially important factor.

As the phrase goes, ‘It’s about location, location, location…’

The location of your conference or event will impact everything from who attends your event (both attendees and speakers), the amount they are willing to pay to attend, the total volume of people that attend and the type of event that you are able to run.

Location influences a great deal about your conference or event.

Location: it’s about more than just the venue

Now, when we talk about location, we’re not referring solely to the conference or event centre itself (although that is important).

We’re also referring to the broader locale and region that surrounds your event venue.

For example, if you want to run a life-sciences focused event, then you’ll want to hold it in a location where there are nearby life sciences facilities, centres of excellence, laboratory facilities, experts and more.

Having these relevant industry assets nearby will help you to broaden the scope of your event to include site visits, lab tours, meetings with local experts and even social events to help build inter-UK or even inter-continental networks.

By locating your industry-specific event in a location which has a strong base of businesses, organisations and educational institutions associated with your industry, you’ll be able to attract far more attendees, provide a much broader, more interesting event, and provide lasting value to your attendees.

In other words, you want to host your industry-specific event in a location which has a strong base of relevant people, organisations and institutions.

So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at the best locations for industry-specific events and conferences.

Where is the best place to host an advanced manufacturing conference or event?

Advanced manufacturing is one of the UK’s most important industries, employing over 2.7 million people, contributing 11% of GVA, representing 69% of all business research and development (R&D) and a total value of sales of £358.7 billion in 2020.

Advanced manufacturing is big business.

So, if you’re planning a conference or event focused on advanced manufacturing, you’re going to want to host it in a location which is rich in opportunities to see advanced manufacturing in action, to meet and network with industry-leaders and with a large base of people who could be potential attendees.

Cities such as Liverpool are perfect for hosting advanced manufacturing conferences and events as they are home to thousands of relevant companies.

For example, the Liverpool City Region (LCR) which includes the Wirral, St. Helens, Sefton, Knowsley and Halton, is home to 3,000 advanced manufacturing businesses employing over 50,000 people.

Amongst these companies are some well-known giants of the advanced manufacturing world including:

Jaguar Land Rover.
Unilever.
Pilkington.
INEOS.
AstraZeneca.
Getrag.
Johnson Controls.
ABB.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The Liverpool City Region is also home to many advanced manufacturing centres of excellence and research institutes including the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), the Materials Innovation Factory at The University of Liverpool, Sensor City (a global hub for sensor technology) and many more.

The possibilities for broadening your advanced manufacturing conference out to include site visits, networking opportunities and to draw in a large crowd of highly-relevant attendees are almost endless.

To find out more about hosting an advanced manufacturing conference or event in Liverpool, click here.

Where is the best place to host a built environment conference or event?

The built environment is all around us; literally!

Defined as “the human-made space in which people live, work and recreate on a daily basis”, the built environment industry encompasses a wide range of disciplines and businesses, ranging from architects and engineers through to town planners, landscape designers, urban designers and more.

It’s a booming industry too. The UK Government is expected to spend over £600 billion on built environment projects over the next ten years.

Here in the Liverpool City Region several high-profile built environment projects are already underway, including:

Peel L&P’s ambitious Liverpool Waters and Wirral Waters projects.
The roll out of a new £460m fleet of new Class 777 trains across the Merseyrail network.
The deployment of a city region-wide project to install 220km of ultrafast digital infrastructure.
The development of a world-leading tidal power project - the Mersey Tidal Power Project.

Those are just a few of the projects which are and will be carving out a new city region over the coming years.

In addition to these projects, Liverpool and its wider environs are home to some major tier 1 and tier 2 contractors, businesses and institutions from the construction and built environment industries, including:

Faithful & Gould.
Walker Sime.
The Virtual Engineering Centre at The University of Liverpool.
Stephenson Institute for Renewable Energy.

With the Liverpool City Region also becoming a major centre for renewable energy generation, transmission and distribution, it really does cover all the bases when it comes to finding a location which is a thriving hub of built environment activity.

To find out more about hosting a built environment conference or event in Liverpool, click here.

here is the best place to host a creative industry event or conference?

The creative industries make a significant contribution to the UK economy, with the Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) estimating that businesses involved in these industries contribute almost £13 million an hour to the UK economy.

Whilst you may quite rightly accuse us of being based, it’s widely recognised that Liverpool is the best place to host a creative industry event or conference.

Why?

Well, you don’t really need to ask why.

If you’ve even a passing familiarity with popular culture, then you’ll know that Liverpool is home to such global cultural icons as The Beatles, as well as a swathe of cutting-edge digital and creative businesses.

With creative and digital businesses as varied as the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA), and Sony Interactive Entertainment, Liverpool now boasts approximately 4,400 businesses in the creative and digital industries, employing over 22,000 people and contributing over £1.8bn to the economy.

Major projects that are building upon this foundation include:

The Depot - a new ‘Hollywood of the North’; two world-class 20,000 sq ft studios which will provide the very best film and TV production facilities.
The Shakespeare North Playhouse, the creation of a £30m, 470 seater theatre which will form the third part of a Shakespearean triangle with Stratford-Upon-Avon and London.
The reimagining of Tate Liverpool, a £25m programme to completely renovate this internationally renowned gallery.

If those projects don’t convince you that Liverpool is THE place to host your creative or digital industry conference, consider the following stats:

Liverpool is the most filmed city in the UK outside of London.
UNESCO has awarded Liverpool ‘City of Music’ status.
Liverpool is home to one of the top 25 highest performance computing systems in the world.
The University of Liverpool is a UK centre for world-leading computer science research.

So, if you’re looking for somewhere to host your creative or digital industry conference, choose Liverpool.

To find out more about hosting a creative or digital industry conference in Liverpool, click here.

Where is the best place to host a life sciences conference or event?

We know we may have a bias, but Liverpool is a global leader in life sciences.

The facts speak for themselves.

Across Liverpool and the wider city region, a plethora of organisations, research institutions, academic bodies, and more, are pursuing innovations in the following areas:

Infection.
Precision medicine.
Children’s health.
Veterinary science.
Independent living.
Big data, sensors and the Internet of Things.

Just because Liverpool is pushing innovations in these areas, doesn’t mean that its life sciences sector is niche or small.

Quite the contrary in fact. The north west of England is the UK’s third largest life sciences sector by employee numbers.

Liverpool and its surrounding environs is not only home to hundreds lifes sciences companies, but is also home to the Liverpool Knowledge Quarter; a life sciences hub that includes the University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and the Royal Liverpool University Teaching Hospital.

It’s also telling that Liverpool is home to a major European bio-manufacturing cluster, the highest concentration of category level 3 laboratories in the UK, and such life science giants as:

AstraZeneca.
Allergan.
Baxter Healthcare.
Bristol Myers Squibb.
Lilly.
Nestle Health Science.
Seqirus.
Unilever.

If you’re looking for a location for your next life sciences event or conference, it’s hard to beat Liverpool.

Where is the best place to host a medical conference or event?

From the earliest days of public health pioneer Dr Duncan through to today’s cutting-edge research undertaken by Liverpool Health Partners and others, Liverpool has led the way in medicine.

Which makes it the ideal place to host a medical-focused conference.

Because of Liverpool City Region’s burgeoning medical economy, there is ample opportunity to attract a wealth of attendees from a broad range of sources, from academics and researchers through to practising doctors and other medical professionals.

But, don’t just take our word for it.

To give you an idea of the sort of medical attendees you can attract to your conference, consider the organisations, businesses and institutions that are located nearby:

Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.
Academic Health Science Network.
Clinical Research Network.
Centre for Process Innovation.
Sci-Tech Daresbury.
Northern Health Science Alliance.

The Liverpool City Region is also home to the highest number of specialist hospitals outside of London.

As you can see, there’s a constellation of organisations and institutions to tap into, and a wealth of opportunities to arrange site visits, tours, lectures, networking events and more - plenty of ways to create a fantastic legacy for your conference.

To find out more about hosting a medical conference in Liverpool, click here.

Where is the best place to host a professional services conference or event?

Are you looking to host a professional services conference or event in a hub of private sector activity and growth?

Then Liverpool could be the perfect location.

With over 12,000 businesses calling the Liverpool City Region home, there’s a huge base of potential attendees to draw upon - 93,000 to be precise.

Many of the UK’s leading professional services firms maintain considerable bases in the region, including:

KPMG.
DLA Piper.
RSM.
Morecrofts.
Hill Dickinson.
Weightmans LLP.
Lloyds.

Beyond these names, you’ll also find leading financial firms such as Santander and Deutsche Bank as well as industry-leading eCommerce firms such as Shop Direct and TJ Morris.

Liverpool is also strategically connected with Europe’s other major business hubs, so if you’re looking to attract international attendees to your professional services conference they can easily reach ACC Liverpool by land, sea or air.

To find out more about hosting a professional services conference in Liverpool, click here.

Where is the best place to host a logistics conference or event?

If you want to host a successful logistics conference, it helps to locate it in a major logistics hub.

And, that’s exactly what the Liverpool City Region is!

Traditionally viewed as the gateway to the Atlantic and home to the world’s first commercial wet dock, Liverpool continues to be a major centre for logistics, with Liverpool 2 set to become one of Europe’s most advanced container terminals.

As the busiest port on the west coast of the UK, Liverpool has myriad logistics-focused businesses, centres of excellence and institutions on its doorstep - all of which provide a rich source of potential attendees and speakers for logistics conferences and events.

To give you a flavour of the logistics talent and expertise that dwells across the Liverpool City Region, here are some of the high-profile organisations located there:

Liverpool John Moores University Maritime Academy,
Lairdside Maritime Centre.
Port Academy Liverpool.
Maritime and Engineering College Northwest.

The city’s maritime heritage is also the reason why five of the world’s top six shipping lines maintain a presence in Liverpool; NYK, CMA-CGM, Maersk, MSC and Hapag-Lloyd.

Other shipping lines that call the region home include ACL, Bibby Line, ZIN, Stena Line, CSAV and ICL.

Major industry body Associated British Ports also maintains a base on the Mersey.

Don’t think that Liverpool’s logistics expertise is confined to the seas though. Liverpool City Region is also home to the 3MG Mersey Multimodal Gateway, a 200 hectare site in Halton which links national road and rail connections to deep sea ports.

So, if you’re looking for the ideal location to host a logistics conference, you’ve just found it!

To find out more about hosting a logistics conference in Liverpool, click here.

Where is the best place to host an education conference or event?

When you’re looking to host an education conference or event you need to select a location which has a strong track record of hosting such events.

Liverpool is a popular choice for education-focused conferences, with the city regularly playing host to conferences and events from the likes of the British Educational Research Association (BERA), the British Educational Leadership, Management & Administration Society (BELMAS), the National Union of Teachers (NUT), the National Education Union (NEU) and many more.

In addition to a track record of hosting some of the UK’s biggest education conferences, the city region is also home to historic education institutions such as Edge Hill University, which opened in 1885 as the first non-denominational teacher training college for women.

The University of Liverpool meanwhile, holds the honour of being the inspiration behind the term ‘red brick university’ and is today one of the UK’s top higher education institutions.

So, if you’re looking for the ideal place to host your education conference, look no further than Liverpool!

Liverpool: the ideal location for your industry-specific conference or event

As you can see, Liverpool has a lot to offer event and conference organisers; especially if you’re planning a conference focused on one of the industries that we’ve detailed above.

There are a number of venues available, but one name stands above the rest: ACC Liverpool.

Since opening in 2008, ACC Liverpool has hosted a wide array of national and international events, from shows to conventions, business gatherings to showcase exhibitions.

Our world class campus boasts a talented management team, delivering a winning combination to event organisers, delegates and visitors alike.

To find out more about organising your industry-specific event or conference at ACC Liverpool check out this page

You can also speak to the ACC Liverpool team now

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