Newquay Business Week 2018 is back in October with the very best of Cornwall’s business experts and speakers sharing their knowledge and experience in some of Newquay’s premier hospitality and conferencing venues. Open to all businesses and their staff in Cornwall, as well as interested members of the public and free to Newquay BID members, Business Week was launched with great success in 2015 and 2018 is set to be the most successful year yet.

Newquay Business Week runs from Monday 8th – Friday 12^th October. The event brings an impressive roster of experts from all over Cornwall spanning a wide range of businesses from a variety of sectors, including digital marketing and creative content, tourism in Cornwall, GDPR and Brexit updates, business networking, branding, and small business tips. The schedule is packed with innovative, informative and practical sessions to motivate, inspire, support, and help businesses thrive.

With Newquay’s thriving business and entrepreneurial culture, Business Week has been designed by Newquay BID to provide a platform to help drive Newquay forward as a major business destination in Cornwall. Business Week offers impactful sessions and access to advice and resources from a dynamic mix of influential speakers at an extremely competitive rate and showcases Newquay as a genuinely flourishing town for commerce and trading. All sessions are free to Newquay BID members (including voluntary members): please contact the BID team for your discount code for the online bookings.

On Monday 8^th October all sessions take place at the Headland Hotel. The morning starts with Malcolm Bell of Visit Cornwall discussing the latest facts and figures relating to Cornish tourism – this will help your business discover new trends and areas of growth as well as make the most of Visit Cornwall’s predictions for the 2019-2020 tourism season. Next up are Charlie and Fiona from Cornwall 356 – Cornwall’s leading cultural tourism network, connecting arts and heritage organisations and tourism businesses to benefit the Cornish economy. Their session will be full of useful, easy and (mostly) free marketing tools for your tourism business as well as providing some great business contacts. Following Cornwall 365 are Michèle Poynter and Sam Taylor from Retail Fixers, focusing on ecommerce retail sales driven through marketplaces and how to utilise marketplaces effectively, enhancing growth for your business. Monday afternoon starts with John Harvey, founder of the Samphire Club. With over 30 years’ experience in business development and client management and one of the UK’s leading experts in the field of business networking, John will be explaining what business networking is and, more importantly, what it isn’t as well as how to make networking a central part of your business development strategy. Matthew Thomson from Fifteen Cornwall will follow, delivering a session on how experiences of trading, training and transformation can help businesses face unprecedented uncertainty and pressures. Mark Trevethan, Cornish Language expert, finishes the day with a discussion about how the Cornish language is being used by an increasing number of businesses in marketing, communications and branding and explains how companies can use Cornish to benefit their business.

Tuesday 9^th October sessions are located at the Lighthouse Cinema Newquay. Sessions start with Al Titterington of Cornwall Airport Newquay, discussing the airport’s growth and what the future holds for terminal and route development. Then Miles Carden, Spaceport Cornwall Director, will be talking about the very exciting partnership between Virgin Orbit and Cornwall that will deliver a UK horizontal launch solution in Newquay by 2021. On Tuesday afternoon it’s time for James Neale, Director at Idenna Creative. James will focus on the benefits of creating and promoting a brilliant story for your business through great content marketing, including identifying bold objectives, writing a brief and how to best connect with your audience. Then it’s Sara Pugh from Eight Wire helping businesses give their website an MOT so they can ensure it is performing at its best. Covering user experience, how visitors engage, how your site ranks in search engines like Google and with plenty of practical tools and tips, this was one of the standout sessions last year so book tickets quickly.

On Wednesday 10^th October it’s the turn of the Atlantic Hotel to host the day. First up is the ever-popular David McGuire of Radix Communications. David’s sessions are always a sell-out and this year he will be sharing his objective, structured approach to how businesses can improve their marketing content, including five honest questions that will transform their output. After that it’s another sell-out speaker, Aren Grimshaw from Minchin and Grimshaw. Aren will be looking at the vast amounts of data that businesses and their digital marketing strategies produce and drilling down into what’s really important in terms of driving business growth. VisitEngland follow, with an update on how their initiatives can help businesses grow, be more productive and improve visitor experience. This will involve the latest VisitEngland research and statistics and is definitely not a session to miss if you want to know what’s coming up in tourism for 2019. Then it’s Clare Howdle, co-founder of Stranger Collective. Clare will be sharing her secrets of how to create a successful tone of voice and content that connects, drawing on her insight and experience doing this for some of the biggest brands. Ending the day is James Strawbridge, well-known Development Chef and business expert, discussing his integrated approach for growth, how to make the media work for you and the importance of marketing and sales working together.

Sessions on Thursday 11^th October take place at the Hotel Victoria. First up is Kirsty McAuley from Coodes Solicitors, with a crucial update on the GDPR and further guidance issued by the Information Commissioners Office. Then it’s Katie Cavell, European Affairs Adviser. Exactly one week before the EU27 should be signing off on the withdrawal agreement to ensure the UK’s smooth exit from the EU, Katie will be shedding light on what this means for Cornwall and to what extent local businesses may be affected. Sonya Bassett from Coodes Solicitors will be presenting a session on making the most of your intellectual property: businesses need to be aware of different IP rights to ensure they protect what they create in order to maximise their competitive position. Then there’s a quickfire session with a range of speakers all aimed at supporting small businesses and explaining the range of services they have to help your business grow and thrive. Organisations include Cornwall Chamber of Commerce, Truro and Penwith Business Development, Accleration Through Innovation, Unlocking Potential and Hospitality Table Cornwall. The last session of the day is from Ann Vandermeulen, FSB Cornwall Development Manager. Ann will be explaining how to ‘eat the frog’ – a well-known saying that suggests dreaded tasks are best done first. Small businesses can have lots of ‘frogs’ so Ann will be discussing common issues that prevent them flourishing and how to get around them.

On Friday 12^th October, Business Week is at the Great Western Hotel. The morning starts with Neil Stark, Operations Director at the Eden Project. Neil will be sharing how the team at Eden strive to connect us with each other and the living world through a place that welcomes a million visitors a year. Then there’s another quickfire session with some of Cornwall’s most inspirational speakers and businesses, including Tania Clark from the Bedruthan and Scarlet Hotels, Simon Thomason from Glisten Camping, Manda Brookman from CoaST One Planet Network Tourism, Chris Knight from St Austell Brewery, Pat Smith from Final Straw Cornwall, Angela Waine from eCo Cornwall, Emily Stevenson from Beach Guardian and Laura Guy from Newquay Marine Group. The day finishes with a creative and thoughtful session from Nell Smirthwaite, of The Benevolent Business. Nell will be discussing how thinking about the structure of your organisation can lead to profound and creative discussions about what it is you are trying to achieve and how you can achieve it.

Booking is via Eventbrite – simply pop Newquay Business Week in the search bar to book your tickets for each session or see the link here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/newquay-business-week-2018-tickets-49037586742?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

For more information, contact the BID team at 01637 498599 or info@newquaybid.co.uk

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