The creation of a major new arena and events venue in South Bristol is the ‘brightening light at the end of a long tunnel’ for the city’s hotel and hospitality industry, after years of austerity, Covid and stalled and axed projects.
Ashton Gate’s stadium bosses announced earlier this month they will be starting work next year on a new 5,000-capacity arena, which will be a new home for the Bristol Flyers basketball team and a flexible space for concerts, events and conferences.
And now the chair of the Bristol Hoteliers Association, which represents 40 hotels across the city, said his members ‘can’t wait’ for the ‘Sporting Quarter’ to be up and running, because it – and the long-awaited YTL Arena in Filton also in the pipeline – meant there is ‘cause to be extremely optimistic about the future’ of Bristol’s hospitality sector.
As well as a major new arena next to Ashton Gate Stadium, the Sporting Quarter plans include offices, a multi-storey car park, flats and a four-star hotel. Raphael Herzog, the BHA chair, said things were looking up for Bristol’s hospitality sector because the Ashton Gate project and the YTL Arena would mean events that bring people into Bristol from across the country who would spend money staying in hotels and visiting bars and restaurants too.
“The past few years have been extremely challenging, coping with the fall-out from Brexit, the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis,” Mr Herzog said. “We’ve been left disappointed by successive Government budgets, which have not given our sector the support we have been calling out for.
“But it’s not all doom and gloom, with these two developments alone signifying significant investment which will inevitably have a positive impact on existing hospitality providers in the city. We can’t wait for these new developments to be realised and for Bristol’s appeal as a go-to destination to be massively increased,” he added.
“These plans for the Sporting Quarter were first unveiled in 2018 and we’re delighted that the recent High Court ruling means that things can start moving forward and some top-class new facilities can be created in the south of the city.
“With the 19,000 capacity YTL Arena in the north of the city – the fourth largest UK venue – expected to be up and running by 2027, and potentially generating 300,000 ‘bed nights’, there is cause to be extremely optimistic about the future of Bristol’s hospitality sector.
““Business is still tough in the current climate, but there is definitely cause for optimism. The dismissal of the legal challenge to the Ashton Gate Sporting Quarter means there is a brightening light at the end of a long tunnel for the city’s hospitality sector,” he added.
The Sporting Quarter plan has been held up by Covid, then took more than a year to go through the planning process at City Hall, before finally getting planning permission in 2022. A year later, and Bristol Sport and Ashton Gate owner Steve Lansdown warned the entire project could be abandoned, because of a legal challenge by a local waste firm over the connected project to build 500 new homes near the stadium.
Waste firm ETM tried to lodge a judicial review, but in September this year, Bristol Live revealed that legal action had failed and there was no nothing stopping the new homes development at Longmoor Village, and then the Sporting Quarter project from going ahead.
Ashton Gate confirmed earlier this month that it would happen, and that work to begin demolition of the empty Wickes DIY store and the site of the former aerial platform firm next door would begin within 12 months, and work to start building the basketball arena should start at the beginning of 2026.