Dipping in to the pool

Football supporters and Beatles fans aside, Liverpool is not on the average pleasure-seeker's map of Britain. The city has certainly suffered more than most over the decades. Lack of business investment and the decline of the local shipping industry have both played their parts in fuelling high unemployment and widespread urban decay.

The result has been limited demand for hotel beds from tourists and business travellers alike. Consequently, scant new hotel development has been witnessed over the past 15 years.

However, Liverpool's luck may be turning. Merseyside's qualification for £190m of European Objective One funding has helped to draw several new investments into the region, regenerating the city's image as well as its streets.

According to Pam Wilsher, general manager of the Merseyside Tourism and Conference Bureau, the inevitable follow-on from such economic recovery is a leisure and entertainment revival.

Next year, Liverpool city centre will see the launch of two major four-star establishments, both nudged along by public funding. Several major refurbishments are under way or have already been completed - sparked, some say, by fear of the competition. Indeed, Wilsher says that the last time Liverpool saw such a wave of hotel development was in the 1970s.

Liverpool's docks may hold the key to the city's industrial past, but they are also an important part of its commercial future. A four-star Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza is now under construction at Princes Dock, next door to the landmark Liver Building, on a formerly disused site. The 174-bed, four-star property is being built by the Princes Dock Development Company (PDDC), a partnership of the David McLean Group and the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company. It is due to open next September, with £4.5m of the total £14m cost being donated by the Merseyside Development Corporation.

Bill Addy, business development director of David McLean, says: "The dock was one of the main points of departure for the USA. We believe it is now one of the prime sites in Liverpool."

While Albert Dock, former television home to daytime hosts Richard and Judy, is a tourist venue with attractions such as the Tate Gallery, Princes Dock is a more business-orientated location. The Holiday Inn is part of a larger £150m redevelopment of the dock by PDDC. This includes a new five-storey office complex housing high-profile names such as KPMG and Coopers & Lybrand. Addy believes the hotel will cater for this business sector in particular, adding: "There is a shortage of quality hotels in Liverpool."

Wilsher agrees Liverpool sometimes suffers from a perception of that lack. "There has been a feeling that a lot of people from the business market have chosen not to stay in the city centre and have patronised hotels in the suburbs instead," she says, "so they are not terribly happy with the quality of hotels."

Pipping the Holiday Inn to the finishing post next July will be the new 146-bedroom Swallow Hotel on the city centre's Queen Square. This four-star venue will form part of another major regeneration project on derelict land. Of the £14m being invested, £3m has come from Objective One funding, while English Partnerships has donated a further £2.4m.

Queen Square itself is a 650,000sq ft, £95m, mixed-use scheme under the auspices of high-profile local developer Neptune Developments, which is also a 50% equity partner in the new hotel. The scheme, the city's largest since the 1960s, will include offices, bars and restaurants as well as several new shops.

Peter Hynd, chairman of Neptune Property Group, says: "The exciting regeneration of Liverpool continues to boost confidence within the city. This has been matched by the number of tourists visiting conventionally popular attractions, and the rise in tourism to witness the dramatic improvements taking place in Liverpool. The Swallow Hotel on the Queen Square site will provide the accommodation necessary both to meet this increasing demand and to complement other hotels within the city."

Wilsher admits that not everyone has been delighted about the prospect of Liverpool's latest newcomers. But the new arrivals, she believes, "are expanding the market rather than displacing it. Holiday Inn in particular will bring in its own brand and its own clientele."

Whatever the reason - fear of competition or a general upturn in economic fortune - there has undoubtedly been a spate of redevelopments and expansions in the town. For example, the Atlantic Tower Hotel on Chapel Street recently underwent a refurbishment to upgrade a number of its rooms, its restaurant and cocktail lounge, and its conference facilities. The Liverpool Moat House hotel on Paradise Street also recently underwent a £3.5m refurbishment, and the budget Campanile Hotel at Chaloner Street on Queen's Dock is now undergoing an expansion, due for completion in April and adding 20 rooms to its existing 80.

Meanwhile, Liverpool has, at least, gained one new hotel within the past year - the three-star Devonshire House Hotel, on Edge Lane, in March. The 55-room hotel was converted from Holly House, a Grade II-listed building formerly used as student accommodation. Marcia Hughs, of Devonshire House, explains the benefit of its location: "We're two miles outside the city, but equally we're just outside the M62 too."

Of course, the impact on Liverpool of John, Paul, George and Ringo can never be underestimated. Now there are plans for a hotel themed around the Fab Four in the Cavern Quarter. Cavern City Tours, owner of the Cavern Club, the Cavern Pub and the Magical Mystery Tour, has purchased an old office block known as the Central Building and has planning permission to convert it into a three/four-star, 125-room hotel complete with rooftop conservatory.

Each room in the Hard Day's Night hotel would follow a Beatles theme, and its launch may even presage a chain of Beatles hotels reaching New York, Hamburg and Tokyo. However, no opening date has been unveiled as yet.

One question remains - will Liverpool be seeing any more major hotel developments in the near future? Well, several hotel operators are said to be scanning the area, and there are rumours that a budget brand operator is looking at a site on Albert Dock. There has also been some talk of another four-star hotel in the city, but Wilsher says: "It is too early to say at this stage. I think people will wait and see how the others perform."

While Liverpool achieves a reasonable level of occupancy, around 66%, Wilsher says that developers until recently have been deterred by the high cost of investment. "The problem has not been occupancy but the room rates achieved," she says. "They are still lower than for other big cities. Liverpool achieves around £15-£20 less per night than your Manchesters or Birminghams."