What an incredible summer we've had in Newcastle this year. NE1 has put its stamp on the city and Newcastle on the map with some of the biggest events the city has ever seen.
The NE1 Newcastle Motor Show kick started nine days of back-to-back NE1 events. The two-day motoring festival brought the city to life with over £10 million worth of cars exhibited on the streets of Newcastle the world’s best cars in the world’s best city! The event closed with the Grand Depart on Sunday 4th August and the city awoke the next day to the 16th NE1 Newcastle Restaurant Week.
Both events are fast becoming synonymous with Newcastle – when people think of Newcastle they think of the NE1 Motor Show and NE1 Newcastle Restaurant Week. More participants and visitors are attracted to the city each time the events are held, adding incredible vibrancy to the city centre and delivering a major economic boost to businesses in and around the city.
The NE1 Newcastle Motor Show, the only event in the yearly calendar to close Grey Street, dominated the city this year and attracted record numbers of participants and visitors. For the first time, Blackett Street was added to the carnival of cars and was fully pedestrianised for the duration of the event. This changed the landscape in the heart of the city, providing an additional 1,000 square feet of exhibition space in the centre of the Motor Show.
It is still early days of post-event analysis, and the full facts and figures have yet to be compiled, but feedback from dealers, exhibitors and the public all suggest that we’ve beaten all records with this year’s event.
Footfall on Saturday is estimated to be up by at least 24% on the previous year with an extra 14,000 visitors, and an extra 10,000 visitors on Sunday, increasing footfall by 16.5%. 50% more private exhibitors attended with extra exhibition space on both Blackett Street and Shakespeare Street.
Although the event was held a month later than usual this summer it is clear that whatever weekend is chosen the show delivers a bumper weekend for the city.
People come from across the city, the region and further afield to enjoy the whole weekend and we know that some families have even started organising their holidays around it as well as extending the time they spend in the city to enjoy the event.
This year, the Motor Show running straight into NE1 Newcastle Restaurant Week transformed Newcastle at what would otherwise have been a quiet week in the summertime calendar.
Retailers, restaurateurs and businesses all benefit from the increased footfall and Newcastle becomes a magnet for visitors.
We are proud of the events and the platform we’ve created the Motor Show in particular offers a really unique opportunity for the city to deliver the biggest car show in the North of England from Edinburgh to Manchester there is nothing city-centre based on a similar scale. The event is growing exponentially and the opportunities are limitless. When we first launched four years ago we had four dealers at the top of Grey Street and 70 cars look at where we are now.
In terms of footprint growth we couldn’t even put a percentage on it the event has more than quadrupled in size and has started to register on a national scale with the return of Paul Swift’s stunt driving displays and the Mercedes AMG simulator for the second year running. This year’s star attraction, the Bloodhound SSC, the supersonic racing car aiming to break the world land speed record, drew in and wowed huge crowds. We even worked with world famous motoring illustrator, Guy Allen, known for his commissions with Porsche, Goodwood and Top Gear, to design the illustration for this year’s NE1 Newcastle Motor Show programme.
At NE1 we continue to have great ambitions for the NE1 Newcastle Motor Show and recognise that the event’s potential is boundless. We are continually looking for opportunities to grow the event and its audiences. The fact that it guarantees a bumper weekend for the city and its businesses and has extended its reach and impact is reason enough for NE1 to continue to explore opportunities to grow, develop and expand the event.
Adding more areas of the city is just one of the ways we are considering expanding the event street by street. We’re also seeking inspiration from other car shows in other cities to examine their successful formulas to determine how and where the NE1 Newcastle Motor Show could develop and expand. Events closer to home like the Great North Run also provide inspiration starting as a small half marathon it has grown into a world renowned event attracting international participants, hundreds of thousands of spectators and BBC televised coverage across the weekend.
We know we can improve on every single element of the Motor Show event and this is a great position to be in. It is already a great day out for the family, bringing people into the city and encouraging them to spend. But we recognise that not only can we finesse the format, we can revolutionise it and there are so many other areas to explore.
It can only get bigger and better….