Business News Round Up (04/04/2022)
Two new 5G hubs for Scotland
Scotland 5G Centre (S5GC) has announced plans to expand its S5GConnect Programme by building two 5G innovation hubs in Aberdeen and Kilmarnock. The first new hub in Aberdeen will be created in partnership with Opportunity North East and be based at the ONE Tech Hub located in the former Robert Gordon University (RGU) administration building in the Schoolhill area of the city (pictured below). ONE Tech Hub also hosts Barclays Eagle Lab, Censis, CodeBase, the Datalab and RGU. Alongside this, HALO Kilmarnock will be the lead partner of the North Ayrshire-based hub that will be hosted in The HALO Enterprise and Innovation Centre at The HALO Digital & Cyber Innovation Park. HALO Kilmarnock is a £63m brownfield urban regeneration project on a 23-acre site, formerly the home of Johnnie Walker, the world’s leading Scotch whisky. The expansion of the S5GConnect Programme will create the fourth and fifth hub sites in Scotland, with the centre having already begun to build hubs in Forth Valley, Dundee, and Dumfries. According to S5GC, the new hubs will “support economic growth through the deployment and adoption of 5G technology” and will be backed by a £4m investment from the Scottish government.
http://www.landmobile.co.uk/news/two-new-5g-hubs-for-scotland/
Outbound UK tourism picks up while inbound travel still remains in the red, says WTTC
New research from the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) shows flight bookings for UK outbound travel to some of the most popular summer sun destinations have bounced back. However, inbound has largely failed to take off. The data revealed a huge disparity between forward flight bookings for outbound and inbound UK travel. The pent-up desire to travel shows in forward flight booking data for UK holidaymakers who are flocking to family favourites, such as Turkey (up 53%) and Greece (up 51%) over the busy summer period, compared to pre-pandemic figures. Spain, a long-time summer favourite and the most popular destination overall for sun-seeking British travellers, is also performing well and ahead of pre-pandemic levels (up 1%). Meanwhile, bookings during the same period to the US, which in 2019 was the fifth most popular destination for jet-setting Brits, remain ten per cent lower than before the pandemic. The data shows while inbound bookings for international arrivals are up by a staggering 1,453% compared to 2021, when severe restrictions to travel were in place, bookings to date are still well below pre-pandemic levels – down 45% versus 2019.
Three Scottish universities among top 20 UK spin-out generators
Three Scottish universities feature in the top 20 UK universities for total number of spin-out companies generated, according to the Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Hub and Beauhurst. The University of Edinburgh is the highest-ranked Scottish university at 7th place, with the University of Strathclyde and University of Glasgow featured at 12th and 17th respectively. Other Scottish universities successfully generating spin-outs include Heriot-Watt University (21st), the University of Aberdeen (22nd), the University of Dundee (25th), and the University of St Andrews (35th). Following the first edition published in 2021, the second report identifies Edinburgh and Glasgow as leading destinations for university-founded firms to locate. Edinburgh hosts 81 spin-outs, while Glasgow is home to 53 spin-outs in total. Scottish Enterprise was ranked the UK’s top investor of the last decade by the number of equity deals into spin-out companies. A total of 232 equity deals for spin-outs were participated in by Scottish Enterprise between 2011 and 2021, with the next top investor, IP Group, participating in 118 deals. The report revealed that there are currently 1,130 active spin-outs in the UK, as of January 2022, with investment in them almost doubling in 2021 at a record £2.54bn equity raised across 389 deals.
https://www.insider.co.uk/news/three-scottish-universities-among-top-26628328
Hospitality firms receive less than half of £635m Omicron support package despite fierce struggle to survive
New analysis has found that hospitality firms in England affected by Omicron have received less than half of the £635m support package promised by the Government. The Treasury announced funding in December to provide a lifeline for businesses suffering from mass cancellations and declining footfall over the Christmas period when the Omicron variant of coronavirus spread. Local authorities were entrusted to deliver the one-off grants, worth up to £6,000, for businesses in the hospitality, leisure, and accommodation sectors. Yet just £305m of the cash distributed to 309 English councils had been paid out less than three weeks before the final cut off for applications on March 18, Altus Group’s analysis of official government data shows. Some 29 councils had failed to distribute a single penny of the allocated grant funding to struggling firms, according to the new figures.