Thursday 20 December 2012

An exclusive insight into how specialist venues are embracing opportunities, and tackling challenges ready for 2013


 
Conference Centres of Excellence is the only sales and marketing consortium in the UK with a wide range of dedicated meeting, training and conference centres.
Our 33 members include many of the country’s most respected providers, enabling us to reveal a comprehensive and up to the minute insight into industry trends as we look towards 2013.

Investment

Recognising the importance of an outstanding quality of facilities, our venues are continuing to invest with plans in 2013 for major refurbishment programmes, adding bedrooms and increasing capacity and flexibility of meeting space, ensuring that their facilities remain at the very forefront of meeting and event requirements.  
Our venues are consistently improving their venues, with major capital investment for substantial projects, and amongst this they never overlook the smaller details. For example, with trials of furniture to ensure all-day comfort of delegates currently taking place at Conference Aston.
See more details of some of the venues undergoing continued improvement projects in 2013:

Technology

Heavy investment in technology and continued improvement to Wi-Fi/ AV capacity opens up opportunities for internet based events where connectivity is vital to success.  With the rise of streaming, twitter feed boards and twitterfalls, contribution from ‘virtual attendees’ or ‘virtual speakers’ can bring added benefit to those on-site event delegates, and widening the audience.
All Conference Centres of Excellence venues offer free Wi-Fi to delegates but many go much further, with greatly increased capacity allowing reliable, consistent, fast broadband with a dedicated secure connection for individual events.
This has been demonstrated at several of our venues, including the award winning Wyboston Lakes. Please click for further details:

Quality Standards

Despite continuing pressure on rates -  the majority of event organisers are facing the challenge of ‘doing more for less’ – our venues remain focused on offering the best possible service and driving standards up.
The majority of Conference Centres of Excellence members have embraced BDRC Continental’s VenueVerdict, demonstrating their commitment to quality by having their service standards independently audited.  At the end of Q3 2012, 7 of the CCE portfolio had achieved VenueVerdict’s Gold Standard Accreditation, given only to those venues delivering consistently excellent meeting experiences over a twelve month period.
For a selection of other awards and achievements across the group:

Anthony Lishman, Executive Director of Conference Centres of Excellence commented:
“2012 was a fabulous year for events and whether you believe that the various spectacles put the UK in a very positive spotlight or were just welcome distractions, it means that 2013 can only benefit from UK Plc getting back to business and ultimately that means more meetings, training and events.
Certainly enquiry levels are significantly ahead of last year at this time, so customers are already investigating and budgeting for more events in 2013 / 14. Whether that is training to support an increase in employment, up-skilling the existing workforce, or larger and more frequent company communication meetings –the forecast is looking good for occupancy levels.“


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