Still fab 50 years on: Why The Beatles still worth a fortune to Liverpool

Monday, July 14, 2014

Back in the late 1970s, before the Beatles industry was even in its infancy, if you’d fancied a Fab Four tour of Liverpool it would have been a uniquely intimate experience.

“The Tourist Information Centre used to call Allan Williams (the Beatles’ first manager) if they got a group of people in,” reveals Dave Jones, one of the directors of Cavern City Tours. “He used to do a private tour in his own car.” Fifty years since screaming crowds jostled for a glimpse of them on the Town Hall balcony, and 35 after those tentative first tourist steps, Imagine – a new report on the value of the UK’s music heritage – has put the benefit of the Beatles to the city at around £70m a year. And, according to those at the heart of Liverpool’s tourism industry, we’re still yet to fully realise the special value of those ‘four lads that shook the world’. “Is £70m a great figure, a bad figure?” ponders Chris Brown of Marketing Liverpool. “Could it be £170m? I think there’s a debate around that issue.”