Conference Centres of Excellence, the UK’s leading consortium of specialist conference and training venues, comes to HRD 2010 with yet another choice for training organisers. Its latest member is 76 Portland Place, the successful venue in the centre of London.
Conference Centres of Excellence currently has more than 40 members, spread across the country. Together they provide a complete spectrum of venues, residential and non residential, town/city centre and rural, traditional and purpose built. The group includes many of the country’s best recognised and most successful specialist locations for training and development. To achieve membership, a venue must achieve stringent standards of quality and service across all aspects of its activity, from facilities to on-site support and overall customer support.
As a significant support for training organisers, the consortium offers a completely free venue-finding service, called ‘Hotline’. Brought in-house in the spring of last year, the service provides a comprehensive, personal and completely free ‘one-stop-shop’ service, linking organisers with member venues. The team can provide immediate guidance on facilities, availability and rates (usually obtaining quotes within two hours), and can arrange visits. It can also help identify appropriate venues for specific events, obtaining proposals and progressing negotiations up to and beyond the point of exchange of contracts.
While parts of the venues sector have been significantly affected by the recent downturn in demand for off-site training, Conference Centres of Excellence members have in general resisted the trend. “ Organisations still know that there is no better guarantee of totally effective training than locating it in a specialist venue with no ambient distractions,” says Executive Director Anthony Lishman: “We are pleased to see that, while of course there has been downward pressure on rates, the pure focus that our members provide has helped sustain their business in the sector.”
The Hotline team can be contacted on 0845 230 1414, email
info@cceonline.co.uk . Details of the consortium’s services, and of each of its member venues, can be found on
http://www.cceonline.co.uk/ .
Further information
At HRD Anthony Lishman Stand 330
General media inquiries Michael Kennedy 0121 605 4048
michaelkennedy@talk21.com
Conference Centres of Excellence widens choice of Training Venues
