28 conference & events venues
Burley Manor – breaking away from convention and the meeting room culture
Burley Manor doesn‘t offer conferencing facilities; just deer, forest and the space to eat, talk and think, says Michaela Lisle, MD of the New Forest Hotels Group
”I suppose we could have built meeting rooms with white- boards, wi-fi and boardroom tables and all the rest of it but look,” says Michaela Lisle, indicating the view before her.
Beyond the Manor‘s newly-created Italianate frontage; beyond the sward of lush grass, there stands a herd of red deer, noses twitching and ever-watchful, despite the security of living in their own sanctuary. ”Isn‘t it better for our business visitors to come here to enjoy all that?”
Those who do decide to quit the meeting room culture are in for a treat. Over the past 10 months Burley Manor has undergone a £1.8 million transformation – overseen by Lisle – comprising the entire accommodation, including 40 bedrooms and bathrooms, as well as the bar-lounge, a residents‘ drawing room and a dining area.
As a restaurant with boutique rooms, the facility has placed food front and centre of its operation and this, Lisle believes, is where businesses who book with them will reap the rewards.
”The menu is Mediterranean-inspired and lends itself to big, sharing bowls to spark the conversation,” she says. If that doesn‘t work, the afters board should do the trick – a beautiful piece of olive wood loaded with a sample of every pudding served that day, from home-made ice- cream to rice-pudding with prunes and coconut, baked in its wood-fired oven.
The oven is used for stone-baking and is at the heart of the Burley Manor eating experience. The adjoining Butler‘s Pantry – a formerly dead space re-discovered during the refit – can be booked by groups of six to eight, to enjoy a chef‘s table experience at the centre of the cooking action. ”It‘s that bit more intimate and because it‘s so different will become popular with small business groups who want to get away from it all but still enjoy a place to talk and innovate,” says Lisle, who does much of her thinking while walking and driving in the surrounding New Forest.
”Burley Manor has been a huge project but it‘s been an amazing journey,” she says. A self-described ‘accountant- turned-hotelier‘, Lisle has built on a solid business record, which started in Spain in 1984 when she set up her own property management company, furnishing and renting 70 apartments, at the tender age of 19.
Stints in sales, then accountancy and as an audit manager followed, until she joined New Forest Hotels in 1996 as financial controller and is now managing director.
”It does sound counter-intuitive to say that Burley Manor doesn‘t go out of its way to attract conference business and of course we welcome corporate dining and events in The Barn, our newly-refurbished wedding and celebrations venue which will be ready in early April,” admits Lisle. ”But we have four other hotels in our group which offer full conferencing facilities and I have a feeling that once tried, what we have here will prove popular because it‘s so different.”
Details:
www.burleymanor.com
www.businessmag.co.uk THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – SOLENT & SOUTH CENTRAL – FEBRUARY 2016
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