Awards highlight outstanding performance amongst venues and suppliers

Conference Centres of Excellence has announced the winners of its second annual awards. 

Presented at a dinner prior to the consortium’s annual conference at imago Burleigh Court, the awards recognise excellence from within the Conference Centres of Excellencemembership, and also in categories for non-members - ‘best booking agency’, and ‘non-CCE venue most admired by members’.

Submissions were invited from all members of the consortium, which is the UK’s leading group of specialist conference and training venues with over 30 members. The judging panel comprised impartial, independent industry experts selected for their expertise in relevant areas, and was chaired by Executive Director Anthony Lishman.

Awards involving member venues were as follows:

·      Business in the Community Award – Awarded to Wellcome Trust Conference Centre as the venue which demonstrated an engagement with the local community, making a difference to the environment for the benefit of local people.

·         Best In-House Training Programme – Awarded to AshorneHill who demonstrated effective use of an innovative training programme for their venue staff.

·         BDRC Continental VenueVerdict best value Conference Centre of Excellence – Awarded to Engineers House, EEF Venues which recorded excellent performance as identified by online customer feedback during 2012.

·         Best Non-residential Venue - Maple House, etcvenues. A relative new comer,  Maple House has set a standard in Birmingham for other Non-Residential venues to follow. The best facilities backed up by people who genuinely care for the needs of their customers. 

·         Best Residential Venue - imago, Burleigh Court. In the judges’ opinion Burleigh Court exemplifies what it means to be a Conference Centre of Excellence. A consistent high level of service delivered over the last 22 years by a team of highly motivated people. 

The other categories allowed members to express their opinions on third-party organisations which were themselves not part of the consortium.  In the case of ‘Best Booking Agency’, the only requirement was that nominated companies must have an ongoing relationship with one or more Conference Centres of Excellence members. In the case of the ‘non-CCE venue most admired by members’, submissions were open to interpretation, and could be for service, quality, innovation.  The winners were as follows:

·         Best Conference Booking Agency - Calder Conferences, nominated by Farncombe Conference Centre

·         Non member Venue most admired by Conference Centres of Excellence - Highgate House

Anthony Lishman, Executive Director commented "Our awards are an ideal opportunity to recognise excellence within our group of specialist, dedicated venues, and we were delighted to once again have had such a high standard of entries to present to our independent panel of judges this year.

Conference Centres of Excellence has been promoting quality standards for over 21 years, and as the opening event of our annual conference, the networking dinner was a great opportunity for some healthy competition between our members."