Venues of Excellence announces four new members

As Venues of Excellence, formerly known as Conference Centres of Excellence, launched at The Meetings Show at Olympia yesterday (14th June 2016) on Stand No H700, the consortium announces that it has gained four new members in recent weeks.

Venues of Excellence Board Members at The Meetings Show 2016

The four new venues are The Lensbury four star hotel in Middlesex; Manchester Conference Centre in Manchester; Yarnfield Park in Staffordshire and Jurys Inn Hinckley Island in Leicestershire.

Before joining the consortium, venues have to meet stringent criteria in terms of quality, facilities, accommodation and customer care.

A previous member of the consortium, The Lensbury four star hotel and awarding winning conference centre at Teddington Lock, has made the strategic decision to re-join Venues of Excellence in recent weeks.

Ivor Turner, general manager of The Lensbury, explained: “Following a £14.5million investment in upgrading our facilities and training our staff to the highest standards, we feel the timing is right to re-join the consortium.We are delighted to be back in the Venues of Excellence family and look forward to participating in educational exchange, networking and sharing of good practice with other quality-driven venues to deliver exceptional conference services to our clients.”

Stuart Websdale, chairman of Venues of Excellence, said: “The rebranding to Venues of Excellence has been a strategic step to broaden our footprint within the wider hospitality and events sector.

“The quality and calibre of our new members is testament to our reputation and to the work we have done over the past 24 years in providing marketing support, networking and impressive lead generation to our members.”

The consortium’s goal is to grow membership to 50 members by 2020.

With the journey towards having broader representation and increasing value to members already underway, Stuart Websdale is confident that other quality-driven venues from within the wider industry will want to endorse their venue with a badge of excellence synonymous with the Venues of Excellence brand.

He said: “Many of our members are independent players with a shared quality ethos and vision. What we offer is sharing of good practice, idea exchange and benchmarking to drive quality and to deliver excellence to our end users. The strengths of the consortium are many, not the least of which are our emphasis on transparency of relationships and understanding of buyers’ needs."

Venues of Excellence is currently exhibiting at The Meetings Show with six partners: Cranfield Management Development Centre, Bedfordshire; Golden Jubilee Conference Hotel, Glasgow; CIM | Moor Hall, Berkshire; Henley Conferences, Oxfordshire; Missenden Abbey, Buckinghamshire, and one of its newest members, Jurys Inn Hinckley Island, Leicestershire.