/ Supporting our City and High Street Cambridge Business Improvement District:
Foreword from the Chair
It is often reported that the BID has had another busy year but 2023/24 has been extraordinary. A new Chief Executive, an office move, a new Chair and Vice Chair and at the time of writing this, a proposal to launch an Accommodation BID. The team have gone from strength to strength in their new offices in the Guildhall and their more central location has enabled them to be closer to more businesses and to get to them more quickly. Although the workload has increased, the team have remained fully committed and are full of enthusiasm for this summer’s events. This past year saw a full year of project delivery as usual with an added sculpture trail (Cambridge Standing Tall) and a new Arts Festival which the City most definitely enjoyed.
Tourism and the visitor economy remain of key importance to the City. The role that Cambridge BID play in managing and developing the Visit Cambridge brand, working to promote and manage the tourism in the City is both rewarding and demanding. At the time of this AGM, we will know whether the ballot for an A-BID in Cambridge has been successful or not but either way, it will benefit the BID in understanding the priorities of the hoteliers in the City. Cambridge remains a popular destination as shown by our footfall data and numerous press articles. The BID team has supported this position by raising the profile of the broad Cambridge offer through its Press and PR contract as well as attending travel trade events and building relationships with Visit England.
Part of the attractiveness of Cambridge is its evening and late-night offer which is promoted by having a safe nighttime economy. The work the BID carry out with CAMBAC ensures appropriate training is provided for venue staff and visitors have the information and guidance required to enjoy an evening / night out in Cambridge safely whilst enjoying all that Cambridge has to offer. This year we have a full Purple Flag submission with a verification visit arranged for August. I am confident that the assessment will recognise again that Cambridge fulfils its requirements as a safe night-time destination.
A new festive lighting scheme was introduced to the City this Christmas. This takes a huge amount of planning and co-ordination and I thank the BID team for getting this in place every year and for taking the added time to change it up.
Lastly, I’d like to acknowledge and thank the previous Chair, Roger Allen, who over many years steered the BID in the right direction and supported all of its activities. I hope I can achieve something similar.
Glen Sharp Chair of Cambridge BID
Outdoor Events
The City's outdoor event lineup is expanding and evolving, offering more opportunities for community engagement. Throughout the summer, Market Square hosts four film screenings, while Station Road becomes the backdrop for Wimbledon. These events aim to entice people to linger in the City after work, bridging the transition between daytime and nighttime activities.
In November, the festive spirit kicked off with the illumination of Christmas lights at two separate locations: the Station and the in Market Square. Collaborating with Star Radio, these events mark the official start of the holiday season in the City. On average, around 6,000 attendees gather at the Market Square event, creating a vibrant and celebratory atmosphere.
Cambridge Standing Tall
2024 saw the return of the City-wide sculpture trail, this time using Giraffes. The Break team in partnership with Cambridge BID and a number of sponsors installed 31 large and 62 small giraffe sculptures across the City. The trail was free to attend and designed to raise awareness and funds for the charity partner, Break. The trail was live March –June, therefore final stats relating to the trail are yet to be published.
Publications
Publications under both the Cambridge BID and Love Cambridge brands cater to diverse audiences. The Love Christmas Magazine, a staple for over a decade, highlights the City's retail offerings during the festive season. Its distribution strategically targets shoppers who might otherwise head to neighbouring destinations like Peterborough or Bury St Edmunds, promoting Cambridge as a premier shopping destination.
The Love Summer guide replaces traditional visitor guides. Packed with content ranging from dining and sightseeing
Experience & Welcome Experience & Welcome E rie c
recommendations to event listings, it encourages visitors to explore beyond the usual attractions and reinforces the message that Cambridge is more than a day trip destination.
The Love Cambridge Map was developed to support the City Ambassadors and give them a tool to use whilst helping visitors to the City. Conscious of wastage, we do not have these available as a free pick but have a stock that hotel concierges use in addition to our Ambassador team
Restaurant Week
Delivered in March, over 40 restaurants participated in this year’s Restaurant Week which is designed to help residents rediscover different places to eat by offering set menus at various eateries across the City. Restaurant Week also provides a marketing platform for eateries in the City, enabling them to reach a bigger audience throughout the campaign and beyond.
Street Cleaning
Our street cleaning efforts in Cambridge are aimed at keeping the City tidy and appealing to everyone. Working alongside the City Council, we coordinate additional cleaning sessions for each street, typically 2 or 3 times a year. Plus, our Rapid Response service operates seven days a week between 8-11am, meaning an operative will attend your site to clear up any mess you may encounter.
Festive Lights
2023 saw a brand-new scheme across the City, stretching from the train station, through the City centre up to Magdalene Street ensuring all corners of the City are dressed for Christmas. Working with Field & Lawn again means we can maximise our budget and ensures it works as hard as possible for us. Using the infrastructure that is available to us, we believe we delivered an impressive scheme that not only spreads Christmas sparkle, it also encourages people to visit and explore the City.
Field & Lawn are 100% carbon neutral and the lights that we use are LED meaning we work hard to reduce the carbon footprint of the festive lights.
City Dressing
Using some of the infrastructure that was originally installed for festive lights, we are able to add bunting and streamers to some of the streets which look great in the summer sunshine. They also create a nice back drop for social media posts.
City Ambassadors
The Ambassador team continue to grow and support the BID team with business interactions and correspondence as well as their Visitor Welcome role. They can be found located at the Train Station or Market Square with their electric bikes helping ‘00s of visitors per day.
Cambridge Art Festival
The inaugural Cambridge Arts Festival took place in early 2024 and served as a platform for promoting the City’s vibrant art and cultural scene, while encouraging community engagement and providing businesses and organisations the opportunity to connect with new and diverse audiences.
The week showcased a variety of workshops, walking tours, private viewings, networking events, family activities and much more. The Arts Festival will continue to grow and build a legacy giving businesses the opportunity to build into the brand and witness emerging creativity through year-round activities.
Visit Cambridge
In 2023/24 Cambridge BID continued to deliver a small amount of activity under the Visit Cambridge brand. The Press & PR activity continued through our contract with MMGY and we delivered 7 press trips and 3 influencer trips over the last year. We also strengthened our relationship with Visit England and Visit Britain and attended Destination Britain: North America and Britain and Ireland Marketplace – both significant travel trade events where we were able to highlight the offer in Cambridge to a wide range of operators, travel agents and OTA’s. We also pulled together key Visit Cambridge stakeholders for a networking event in July which focused on how the Visit Cambridge website and our Press & PR activity could support an extended narrative for our destination.
Cambridge Art Festival
Ambassadors / Visit Cambridge
Market Square Christmas Lights Switch On
Cambridge Standing Tall
4.9 95% Trust Pilot Review
Attendees would attend again
£104,614.65
£72,890.92 sales redemptions
Freshers Fayre Interacted with students600+ New Year's Eve incidents from Cambridge City Centre 0% Love Cambridge Gift Card
34% Follower increase
CAMBAC
54% £50k increase in incident reporting of stolen goods recovered
Station Square Switch On
Pot / Out of the Ordinary
Restaurant week Street Cleaning
924
100k+ voucher downloads businesses participated
people reached on social media
Christmas Lights City Ambassadors
6k+ 124 people in attendance at Big Switch On event lamp columns lit across City
865
Christmas Magazine
80,000
City Maps
50,000
42 28 15 78 54 163k 108k 88 75% 10
streets cleaned up-to 3 times per year
Grant Pot
570 Business Visits Conducted copies delivered copies distributed callouts Environmental Issues Reported
Rapid Response
318
City Meets Corporate
BID business stalls at tradeshow
Mystery Shop
businesses participated
businesses registered to attend of winners scored 100% events & festivals supported through Grant
Press Articles = 1.8million readership of AVE total Social Media Engagements
31% 530% Follower increase Follower increase
Gift Card
The Love Cambridge Gift Card is a City-wide initiative where it gives the consumer the freedom to spend their gift card in any of the 175 participating businesses within the BID area. Being part of the gift card scheme is totally free with no additional hardware required, and with annual sales of around £100k it gives businesses the ability to take a slice of that ringfenced spend. Work takes place each year to not only ensure the Gift Card is a preferred choice for consumers but also for corporate gifting at key times throughout the year.
Mystery Shop
Cambridge BID facilitates a mystery shop visit to participating businesses (around June / July each year), giving them a unique opportunity to understand how they are viewed by their current and prospective customers. The project provides businesses with a comprehensive breakdown of the mystery-shop visit via 1-2-1 online feedback sessions.
The Cambridge BID Awards are presented to those businesses that achieve the highest scores in their Mystery Shop visits and winners and runners up are awarded in each of the categories.
Grant Pot
Supporting City events and festivals is a key priority for Cambridge BID. There are so many creative people and organisations in the City working hard to ensure Cambridge remains a City of rich and diverse culture, it was an obvious choice for us to support both financially and supporting with the marketing and promotion. Cambridge BID were a key contributor to the Out of the Ordinary Festival, organised by the City Council in 2023 which was a weekend of on-street arts and street performances across the City.
Support Support & Connect
City Meets Corporate
As part of our quest to ensure people outside of the City are familiar with its offerings we held the first City Meets Corporate in September at The Graduate Hotel. Working in partnership with Iliffe Media, a trade show style event was held and businesses from various sectors were invited to sample what is on offer in the City.
Stall holders included venues, Christmas gifting retailers, restaurants and many more. The event is set to grow this year with speakers and break out sessions being introduced.
Make Music Day
Make Music Day is a national campaign, and in 2023 was launched in Cambridge in the CB1 area. The objective of hosting the event close to the train station was two-fold; to provide a nice welcome for visitors as they get off the train and to also provide some music and entertainment for those that work in the area during their lunch break and after work. Working in partnership with Cambridge 105, the event went out across the airways and proved a very popular addition to the area.
CB1 Events
In 2023 we hosted both a film night and the screening of Wimbledon in the CB1 area, events that are designed to encourage people out from their desks and enjoy the City in which they work. Both events were successful at achieving these objectives and Cambridge BID will look to see what other events and activities can take place in this corner of the City.
Performance Monitoring
Tracking footfall across the City enables businesses to identify any patterns and see developing trends across their City. The data is also crucial to the local authorities, large organisations, and developers when making decisions about inward investment.
CAMBAC
City Centre Retail Crime Forums run across the City centre to support CAMBAC members in relation to ongoing concerns, incidents, persons of interest and further training needs. These are organised periodically and usually take place in a shopping mall with all retailers in attendance, those outside of the malls are invited to a mutually convenient premises.
Business Against Abuse Accreditation training began in January 2024. Take up has been very strong with nearly 200 individuals being trained across over 40 premises. The first businesses have now been accredited and have received their accreditation pack. This BAA Plaque will be displayed within their premises promoting their commitment to reducing predatory behaviour, and ensuring welfare is a priority.
Open Space Guardians project started in March 2024 and was funded through Safer Streets 5. Two SIA licenced, BAA accredited and First Aid Trained supervisors patrol the green spaces within Cambridge City Centre. As part of the City’s promise to reducing violence against woman and girls and reducing predatory behaviour, concerning behaviour and individuals are brought to the attention of police and CCTV. First aid incidents and welfare concerns are reported to the relevant authority for further support and advice.
Purple Flag
The Purple Flag award was achieved in September 2019, renewed in October 2021 and is going for its third term in July 2024. Cambridge BID, in partnership with CAMBAC leads a steering group of cross-City organisations to develop and deliver the projects that ensure the Purple Flag status is retained and the City remains a safe, vibrant place for visitors and residents alike.
Projects that have been developed as part of this working group include:
• Night Map
• Street Pastors
• Taxi Marshals
• Ask for Angela
• Nighttime Economy Solution – Anti Sexual Harassment Training for licensed venues
• Open Space Rangers
• BAA (business against abuse) Accreditation Training
Connect
BAA CAMBAC
Wimbeldon
Mystery Shop
Make Music Day
Finance
Finances F c s
2023/24 Financial Snapshot
Income
Expenditure
Brought forward reserves
The following impacted on the 2023/24 budget
£224,442
• The move from Dashwood House to The Guildhall - extensive repairs and renewals took place at Dashwood House.
• Recruitment costs for the Chief Executive and additional staff costs.
A full programme of activities and events took place over the year, and in addition work started on developing an Accommodation BID for Greater Cambridge to support the development of Visit Cambridge. In July 2023 a new Chief Executive was appointed and in October 2023 the team moved from Dashwood House to The Guildhall. The team had been at Dashwood House for 10 years.
Reserves have been used to continue to deliver a comprehensive and diverse range of projects, which the Board of Directors have overseen to ensure value for money for levy payers.
Board of Directors
Nominated by the local business community and representing a cross-section of sectors from within the extended BID Area, our Board of Directors drives forward the agenda and ensures the team deliver against the five-year Business Plan.
The following Directors were in post at the end of March 2024:
Glen Sharp (Chair) Trinity Hall College (Educational)
Maria Manion (CEO) Cambridge BID
Roger Allen The Lion Yard (Shopping Centre)
Dominic Joyce John Lewis (National)
Simon Wallis Brookgate (Professional)
Valerie Lambert HCR Hewitsons LLP (Professional)
Nick Finlayson-Brown Mills & Reeve (Professional)
Jane Baker
Cambridge University (Educational)
Alison Wright Fitzbillies (Independent)
Philip Greer
Chris Douglas
Alice Gilderdale
University Arms Hotel (Visitor Economy)
Graduate Hotel (Visitor Economy)
Cambridge City Council*
Richard Howitt Cambridgeshire County Council*
*Local Authority Appointed
Looking ahead Looking ahead
At the point of the AGM I will have been in post a year, and it’s been something of a whirlwind.
I have been extremely privileged and honoured to work with a highly skilled and committed team of staff who in the past year have shown they can really adapt to immense change. As Glen mentioned after 10 years at Dashwood the team moved into The Guildhall. It is great being in a central location, the staff continue to work hard to ensure the different parts of the City still feel engaged with the team and Cambridge BID.
Given the importance of the visitor economy to the City, to spend, employment and creating a sense of place and ownership, Cambridge BID began to look at how we fund the development of Visit Cambridge and a Destination Management Organisation (DMO), plus the emerging Destination Management Plan (DMP), commissioned by the City Council.
Cambridge BID is currently funding Visit Cambridge on a day-today basis, but it is clear we need to do more, and we do not meet national requirements, which will by March 2025 limit our access to our key markets and any government funding should it become available. In 2023 it became obvious that we needed to rethink our approach to Visit Cambridge. In April 2023 Manchester successfully secured England’s first Accommodation BID (ABID) which places a levy on overnight visitors staying in the larger hotels. Following initial discussions with hoteliers and the Board it was initially agreed to undertake a feasibility study to see if this was a suitable model for the Greater Cambridge Area, the level of funding it would potentially unlock and if there was an appetite for the concept within the sector. Once the conclusions of the feasibility study illustrated the value and positive reaction to the proposal, discussions began in earnest. In December 2023 and January 2024 conversations started with hoteliers on the development of a Business Plan and continued through to May. The Business Plan was launched in June.
It is fair to say a huge amount of work has taken place over the past 10 months. Extensive conversations have taken place with the two local authorities, hoteliers, general managers and owners, making sure the Business Plan represents their aspirations, addresses the challenges being faced by the sector and the City, and presents the City as an overnight stay destination. This plan is about the needs of the Greater Cambridge area.
There is no doubt we are asking our hoteliers to take a risk, this approach is relatively new, but we could generate a level of income not previously seen in the Greater Cambridge area which could deliver our hoteliers aspirations. We would also be able to fulfil the requirements to become part of the national visitor economy structures and deliver the Destination Management Plan.
At the point of writing this the ballot papers have gone out, but we don’t know the outcome of the ballot. If successful we will deliver against the 5-year Business Plan, if unsuccessful we will have to review what and how we deliver across the BID area, with partnership working becoming increasingly important over the next three years.
Regardless of the outcome, a special mention needs to go out to Helen Hames who has worked tirelessly on the development of the ABID, to Becky Burrell who has ensured the BID continues to deliver the other projects outlined in the Business Plan and Natalie Cargill who has been working with her team to deliver all the comms for the BID and Visit Cambridge and has also started a review of our branding across the BID.
Finally, a massive thanks must go the Board and all the Directors who have in the past 12 months supported a huge amount of change within the BID. Glen Sharp as Chair has been there to offer professional guidance and personal support, which may have included listening to the odd rant! and to Chris Douglas who took on the new role of Vice Chair and has been there to listen and guide us through the ABID process along with other colleagues in the BID and hotel sector. A special mention should also go to Roger Allen (Lion Yard) and Dominic Joyce (John Lewis), both long serving Board Directors who retired from the Board in 2024, their commitment to the City and BID should not go unrecognised, and we thank them for their time and support over the years.
The next year will certainly be an interesting one, we will continue our commitment to delivering our 5-year business plan, plus extend our relationship with the creative and culture sector as well as looking at how we engage with the science parks and businesses on the edge of the City to ensure all employees and employers get the most out of the City as a place and as a destination. The next year will to some degree be shaped by the outcome of ABID ballot, it will allow us to work together on some large projects and plan further events for the City in the future. Whatever happens I am sure the team at Cambridge BID will continue to go from strength to strength.
Maria Manion Cambridge BID Chief Executive
Keep in Touch
To tell us what else you would like to see Cambridge BID deliver, or to comment on any of our projects, email becky.burrell@cambridgebid.co.uk
Connect with us on Social Media
For consumer-facing projects and events, where we regularly support social media campaigns run by BID businesses and organisations, visit:
@LoveCambridge_
@LoveCambridge_
LoveCambs
#LoveCambridge
@VisitCambs
@visitcambridgeofficial
OfficialVisitCambridge
#VisitCambridge
To receive regular email updates from Cambridge BID on issues relevant to your business, send your preferred contact details to info@cambridgebid.co.uk
For B2B messages, shared for and on behalf of businesses within the BID area, visit:
@CambridgeBID
@cambridgebid
cambridgeBID
Cambridge BID
#CambridgeBID
Contact Information
Cambridge Business Improvement District (BID) The Guildhall Market Square
Cambridge CB2 3QJ
01223 903 300 info@cambridgebid.co.uk www.cambridgebid.co.uk
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