The Harrogate International Centre is one of the leading venues for conferences and exhibitions in the UK. It holds about 130 events of every description easch year, most of which are conferences or trade fairs.

Harrogate itself hosts over 3,500 conferences a year, with visitors attracted to the town by its profile as a destination for conferences at the HIC. The majority of these, however, take place in hotels and cater for 10 to 15 people. The HIC, therefore, is a key pump primer to Harrogate's economy, supporting directly of indirectly in business tourism terms around 5,000 local jobs but, equally importantly, it enables businesses associated with business tourism to reinvest back in to the twon and the district.

Harrogate as a business tourism destination benefits not only from the HIC, but also from the fact that all the facilities and hotels are in the centre of town or nearby. Aroung £240 million a year is put back into the local economy by holiday, leisure and event services.

Harrogate Borough Council, which owns the HIC, has invested over £10 million in the last six years with the aim of ensuring that HIC can sustain its competitiveness. A similar level of investment is expected over the next five years.

Because the HIC is owned by the council, it has an obligation to support tourism businesses in the Harrogate district as a whole and is currently re-examining how to market the district in conjunction with the Craven and Ricmondshire districts and the Dales National Park.

But tourism is an increasingly competitive industry and, unlike 10-15 years ago, Harrogate is now competing for the same toursit pound as the big cities.

With its major competitors being London, Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham, the HIC punches well above its weight in terms of its size.

HIC director Sturat Quin says: "It follows, therefore, that as an industry in the Harrogate district, we need to up our game to make sure we offer something that will attract the tourist year-in, year-out.

By sponsoring the Business Tourism Award, we are looking to identify those tourism-related businesses who can show that they too are raising their game in pursuit of that ambition."