Five Ways To Sell Liverpool: Meet The Beatles And More

With the death of George Martin, famed producer of the Beatles, earlier this month, it seemed rather appropriate that I found myself in Liverpool, home of the Fab Four when they launched their musical career.

When the Beatles began, Liverpool was a gritty port town, though it was also the birthplace of a whole new type of rock music, and where numerous other bands were discovered. Liverpool today is a modern British city of restored buildings, shopping areas, restaurants, pubs, and new hotels. It’s still a port city, serving as a port of call for a number of cruise ships, as well as cargo vessels.

The city has been spruced up and is now recognized as an attraction in its own right, joining such former industrial towns as Manchester and Birmingham as tourist attractions with their own unique set of charms.

I was in Liverpool to attend ExploreGB, VisitBritain’s annual gathering of travel suppliers from Britain and Ireland and buyers from around the world. But VisitBritain also gave the media a chance to experience the city and what it has to offer. So here, in no particular order, are five reasons why you should add Liverpool to your clients’ itineraries in England:

1. Meet the Beatles: This is clearly one of the top reasons to visit Liverpool, though it wasn’t always so. Not until the early 1990s did the city truly recognize what an attraction it was as the birthplace of the Beatles. Once it did, however, it jumped in full bore to develop venues that celebrate the group and its music.

First among these is The Beatles Story, where you can follow the history and development of the group from its early beginnings to its stint in Hamburg, then back to Liverpool and finally to America and the Ed Sullivan Show. The attraction, located in the restored Albert Dock, also details the group’s later period and breakup.

Visitors use a portable audio guide to hear the Beatles, George Martin, and others describe this history, as they walk through replicas of the Casbah Coffee Club, the Cavern Club, and studios where the group played. There are also exhibitions of photos (John Lennon in New York is being shown now) and the Beatles’ individual solo careers after the breakup.

Other attractions have been developed to allow visitors to tour and experience Liverpool through a Beatles eye. The Magical Mystery Tour is a bus tour that visits the sites of the Beatles’ first homes, where they went to school, and parts of the city that served as inspiration for their songs (Strawberry Fields, Penny Lane, etc.). The tour ends at the Cavern Club, the popular venue that served as home to some of first Beatles’ successful shows. The club today is a replica of the one where the group played, but it’s actually on the same street in the city.

Finally, visitors can experience one of the earliest places where the Beatles played at the Casbah Coffee Club, the basement of a suburban home formerly owned by Pete Best’s mother. Pete Best, of course, was the original Beatles drummer who played with them when they were known as the Quarrymen and later the Beatles. His half brother Roag Best actually gives the tour by appointment.

2. Enjoy the Football: One of Britain’s great attractions is sports, and few sports are as important as football, which we, of course, call soccer (the English will argue with you about the relative importance of rugby and cricket). Liverpool happens to have two top clubs in the Premier League, Liverpool (known as the Reds) and Everton. Both offer opportunities for visitors to tour their stadiums, and to learn about the history of the club and its achievements.

At Liverpool FC’s Anfield Stadium, for instance, you can visit a museum dedicated to the club, including player profiles, team history, and cups won. You also can tour the stadium and the locker rooms, or interact with a real Liverpool football star (I chatted football with Alan Kennedy, a player who was on the team between 1978 and 1984).

If you can get a ticket, you can experience the thrill of a real Liverpool match, complete with sometimes crude but hilarious cheers and songs, as well as the team’s signature opening song, “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” also sung by Jerry and the Pacemakers.

3. Stay in Themed Hotels: Liverpool is seeing a resurgence of its hotel product in recent years, including a couple of themed hotels and some brand new construction. Visitors can add to their Beatles experience by staying at the Hard Day’s Night Hotel, which features a John Lennon suite complete with white piano.

Alternatively, they can stay in the brand new Shankly Hotel, a property that honors a famed former Liverpool FC manager, Bill Shankly, which clearly caters to a football crowd. If visitors are attending an event at the Liverpool Convention Center, or just want to be closer to the water and the refurbished Albert Dock area, they can stay at the new Pullman Hotel, an Accor property that opened last month.

4. Visit Liverpool Cathedral: The giant Liverpool Cathedral, the largest in Europe, is an attraction in its own right. It remains a working religious institution of the Anglican Church, but it also has numerous public events and performances that make its gothic halls come to life. Indeed, at Explore GB, the closing dinner was held at the cathedral, complete with a performance by two women playing electric violins emitting laser lights and an opera singer accompanied by the cathedral’s giant organ.

5. Cross the Mersey: Liverpool is a port, so the best way to get a flavor of the city is to tour it by water. Mersey Ferries features colorful boats called Dazzle Ferries (decorated by the artist Sir Peter Blake) that sail up, down, and across the River Mersey, providing passengers with a view of the city and its 2,500 magnificent listed buildings and museums.

You sail past the former headquarters of Cunard Line, Liverpool City Museum, the restored Albert Dock (complete with giant Ferris Wheel), the Tate Gallery, the Port of Liverpool Building, and the iconic Royal Liver Building with its signature clock And as you sail along the Mersey, you’re treated to a recording “Ferry Cross the Mersey,” yet another Jerry and the Pacemakers tune. Liverpool is definitely a city of music!