Belfast monopoly leaves Derry with "crumbs"
Millennium Forum bosses warn of a sharp drop in major corporate conferences as Belfast dominates the market
The Millennium Forum’s CEO says Derry is getting “crumbs from the table” as a conference destination compared to Belfast.
During an annual update deputation to May’s Derry City and Strabane District Council’s Business and Culture Committee, the Forum’s CEO David McLaughlin said its turnover was over £6.1 million last year, with 159,362 people attending and a “substantial” three percent increase in audience members from outside the council area, compared to 2024/25.
However, General Manager, Paul Mason, warned that the number of major conferences coming to Derry had dropped “quite significantly” since last year.
“We work very closely with Visit Derry as our partner for delivering conferences. As the major destination within the city centre, those eight and nine hundred-seat conferences just really aren’t coming,” he said
“That’s a worrying trend because we’re very conscious that the theatre and conference business is a huge economic driver for the city; it welcomes people in to the hotels and then obviously there’s a positive impact, where people will come back to the city with their families.
“Major conferences in the city, those that are the seven and eight hundred delegates, where you see the city being taken over and the restaurants and the bars at night being full of people wearing their corporate lanyards, they’re definitely in decline.
“That’s not least because a lot of those conferences aren’t coming out of Belfast.
“That’s definitely having a major impact on ourselves, but mostly it’s also having an impact on the city.”
Mr McLaughlin added: “With regards to the conference business we have to be a wee bit more proactive [in] how Belfast in particular treats the city.
“I’m on about the powers that be and we have to stop accepting crumbs from the table, because basically that’s the approach that I see they’re adopting.”