MWB Business Exchange sponsors of THE MEETING PLACE IN BRIEF
• DARTMOUTH House in London’s Mayfair has installed a new venue space using a pop-up 'Crystal Courtyard' to keep its inner courtyard cosy during the winter months. Part of the Lime Venue Portfolio, the venue's new event space will 'set a sophisticated tone for the festive season with its beautiful decorations, oversized lanterns and crystal pea- lights dancing and reflecting in the courtyard’s fountain'. The new facility increases the venue's capacity for parties and events to 400 delegates over both floors.
• POPULAR meeting and events venue, Rudding Park Hotel, in Harrogate, has opened a new Follifoot Wing including a spa, gym, 14-seat private cinema and 48 luxurious bedrooms. A state-of-the-art, private cinema room is also now available, while four spa bedrooms and three suites feature either a private steam room, sauna or spa bath, allowing guests to enjoy the spa experience in their own room. Rudding Park sits in 300 acres of parkland three miles south of the spa town of Harrogate and is a Grade I listed Regency house with 90 bedrooms and meeting facilities for up to 350 delegates.
• THOSE tasked with sourcing a team-building day with a difference might consider a Murder Mystery Weekend at London's Park Plaza Sherlock Homes hotel. The four-star boutique property is a stone’s throw away from the famous detective's residence at 221b Baker Street and has decided to further capitalise on the connection. The new themed events include a treasure hunt – where groups are briefed on their mission before scouring the local streets to piece together clues and solve a crime – cocktail reception and three-course dinner during which guests observe a murder mystery unfolding before them. Teams must then question the suspects in order to solve the mystery. Prices start from £144 per person including overnight accommodation.
• THE Lords of the Manor property in the Cotswolds is now available for exclusive hire for team building events. Set in eight acres of landscpaed gardens, from now until April 2012 companies can book the hotel for their sole use at a price of £8,000 plus VAT mid-week, or £9,500 plus VAT at weekends, based on 50 guests staying. The rate includes a Champagne reception with canapés, a three-course lunch or dinner in the Michelin star restaurant and half a bottle of house wine. Meeting facilities come with broadband internet and ISDN lines, and The Garden Room can accommodate up to 30 delegates.
➔ Big Mac rewards HBAA UPDATE
PETER DUCKER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HOTEL BOOKING AGENTS ASSOCIATIONA (HBAA)
THE autumn is traditionally the period when business travel picks up again as people return to work after their summer holidays, but did it really happen this year? Global uncertainty affects every strand of our lives, it seems. Certainly in the conference and events sector there are all too few reasons to be cheerful, it seems. The only events whose numbers appear to be holding up year on year are the political party conferences – go figure! The market isn't dying – it’s just in
MACDONALD Hotels & Resorts is offering meeting and event bookers the chance to unwind in style with a luxurious lifestyle rewards scheme. 'The Experience' reward programme will give bookers 2.5 per cent of the value of any event booking over £1,500 that is reserved with any of Macdonald Hotels’ 45 four and five-star properties across the UK. Valid for any event or conference
that is paid in full before 30 March 2012, the booker can choose to receive their 2.5 per cent reward in the form of vouchers for use at either Macdonald Hotels or
www.love2shop.co.uk.
The programme also includes
spot prizes for which bookers who have confirmed an event will be automatically entered. Existing Macdonald Club Bookers will continue to receive their usual reward points for bookings placed with the group while also benefiting further from 'The Experience' incentive programme. Ruaridh Macdonald, sales and marketing director of Macdonald Hotels & Resorts, says, ”We greatly value the positive contribution our loyal bookers and agents make to the ongoing success of our business. This corporate incentive programme reflects our strong commitment to this market.”
ASCOTT ADDS MEETING ROOMS
limbo at the moment, with no signs of real growth either in the number of events or their size. Every agent and every venue is having to work harder than ever, striving to deliver more value and return on investment to their clients just to maintain the status quo. Many members are saying that their only real growth is through client acquisition rather than organic growth. The good news is that there seems to be evidence that as pressure grows on businesses to increase efficiency, more than ever companies are choosing to outsource their meeting and event procurement. There has been a lot of 'buzz' about procurement taking greater interest in meetings and events for a while now. Strategic meeting management, spend convergence, consolidation – whatever you call it, the trends within the largest organisations have been for the integration of meeting and event spend into the travel budget, and for meetings and events to be seen more holistically as part of the overall communications strategy. On the transient stay side, things
CITADINES Prestige Holborn-Covent Garden, London, has now launched dedicated meeting rooms following a multimillion pound upgrade at the apart-hotel property this year. One of six central London residences in the Ascott portfolio, the property now has five meeting rooms and will offer one of them free when eight apartments or more are booked. All five meeting rooms are located on the ground
floor and offer a combined capacity of up to 160 delegates. Three of them have drop-down screens and LCD projectors, with capacity for up to 35 delegates each. The other two rooms have wall-mounted flat-screen TVs and natural light, with room for up to 12 delegates. The Citadines property has
192 studio and one-bedroom apartments, plus onsite parking.
are looking brighter, but this picture is skewed by the key business destinations – there are many areas where demand is still slow. What does this mean for the months ahead? Agencies who are working hard to help their clients find value are looking closely at destinations for meetings and events – which are, of course, less location sensitive than transient guests, who must be near where they are doing their business. That’s where the value is for the forseeable future. As we move towards 2012, London and other hotspots will demand higher prices, but canny corporates will seek value where they can.
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