Conference Centres of Excellence hold their first annual conference

This summer, Conference Centres of Excellence held their first annual conference. This successful event brought members of the association and industry colleagues together under one roof, providing a fantastic networking and learning environment, enabling benchmarking and best practise sharing opportunities and a real feeling of community within the sector.

The conference program included key note speakers, panel discussions and a variety of workshops with industry experts covering a wide range of hot topics including; innovative ways of using media and technology, achieving a competitive edge through quality benchmarking and the benefits of using a strategic PR approach. Conference Centres of excellence wanted to provide their members with informative and interactive sessions to help them gain an advantage in the market place.

This conference really highlighted the benefits of being part of such a prestigious and high profile association with over 40 members, providing a rich resource of expertise and experience.

'Very rarely do you get this amount of competitors in one place, all very focused in terms of sharing and discussing best practice within our industry. So it’s been a great networking opportunity to share ideas, come together and look at how the industry is moving forward and how we can collectively move the dedicated conference centre concept forward' - Paul Bunce, Marketing Manager at Conference Aston.



Conference Centres of Excellence’s annual conference was perceived as a rare but great opportunity to get so many venue representatives in one place networking and building relationships.'We were delighted by the way this event was received by our members and the support it received from both our members and those that have a stake in the provision of venues for conferences, training and meetings. This event could not have taken place without the support of the Sponsor and Speakers and we were delighted by their response to our invitation to take part, I’m sure it was our standing in the industry and the access to so many key decision makers at venues that made it worth their while in attending' says Anthony Lishman the association’s Executive Director.

Richard Harrison, Member and Chairman of Conference Centres of Excellence also commented 'The programme of speakers was a big draw, in these tough economic times you have to ask yourself whether you can justify time away from the office and whether an event like this can really deliver any new ideas that can be implemented back in the work place. I can genuinely identify some ideas and techniques that will help me improve my business and also an insight in to challenges that may present themselves in the future'.

Roy Sheppard, a business relationships professional speaker and author of 6 books including ‘Rapid Results Referrals’ gave a keynote speech on the art of networking and business influence. His interactive session provided practical tips, ideas and techniques to delegates, helping them realise how much they could do in being proactive about building relationships. Something which Roy believes will 'crucially add value to their clients and perspective clients'.

This is an annual event and will be repeated next year so if you want to take part or be involved in helping us design the programme for next year contact AnthonyLishman@cceonline.co.uk