Category: Investments & Renovation

Broadway House earns elite AIM Gold status

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Broadway House, a conference venue located directly opposite St James’s Park tube station, has achieved Gold in the stringent Accredited in Meetings (AIM) assessment – the nationwide kitemark for accredited venues and service providers in the UK meetings, conference and events industry. It is now one of only 17 UK venues to have achieved AIM Gold status.

Part of EEF Venues, this historic venue features 12 distinctive meeting rooms, with a maximum room capacity for up to 120 delegates.  Technology is state-of-the-art, including unlimited high speed internet access, complimentary WiFi, DVD and audio visual conferencing technology.

The Process

Three years ago, Broadway House gained entry-level AIM accreditation because, according to Amanda Sutton, venue manager at Broadway House, it gave the venue all of the member advantages of being part of the mia and it gave the venue a competitive edge, helping it to ‘stand out from the crowd’.  Over the course of the last three years, EEF Venues has continued to invest in and make improvements at Broadway House, such as upgrading its washrooms and adding another room to the venue’s portfolio – The Stephenson Room, which is the venue’s largest room with capacity for 120 people.

Earlier this year, the Broadway House team decided to go for AIM Gold accreditation.  The application required a substantial portfolio of evidence detailing all aspects of the operation from legal requirements, including health and safety, data protection and disability, through to commercial performance, business planning, investment, staff and contractor management, customer service and sustainability.

The venue’s AIM Entry Level verification visit three months ago highlighted areas which needed improvements, such as the security levels in four of its meeting rooms. This was immediately addressed by EEF Venues in preparation for the assessor’s return.

The all-day assessment for Gold involved an interview with Amanda Sutton, individual interviews with all staff members and an in-depth inspection of the venue.

“It was a very truthful process,” said Amanda. “When I briefed my team in advance of the visit, I just told them to be themselves and tell it as it is.”

The assessor’s report clearly outlined the venue’s impeccable standards, highlighting the efficiency of the business operation across its sales processes, its high customer levels (Broadway House holds BDRC Gold Standard with 97% score for ‘good’ and ‘above average’ customer feedback) and its strong relationships with staff and contractors.

In August of this year, EEF Venues will begin a major upgrade all of all public access spaces and conference areas within Broadway House. This will include lighting, décor and new carpeting throughout.

David Vaughton, director of venues for EEF Venues, said: “This refurbishment project is a considerable milestone for us. We view it as a huge vote of confidence in EEF Venues and also in the marketplace itself, which despite challenging economic times, is still buoyant.  Competition from other venues, particularly within the Westminster area, is strong. However, as approximately 75% of all of our business comes from repeat bookings, this drives the business during difficult times. But there is no room for complacency; it’s vital to keep improving facilities and investing to meet increasingly high delegate expectations.”

Events staff supplier commits £100k to skills training

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Events staff supplier and training provider Off to Work has pledged to invest £100,000 into the training of its casual staff team this year, as announced at the company’s recent Event School.

Inspiring service staff, hospitality and events professionals to be more creative in the way they style, design and market all aspects of their events offering was central to the theme of this year’s Event School, an initiative created and run by Off to Work to deliver a programme of practical skills training to its staff teams, clients and to students and the wider events and hospitality industry.

Event School saw workshops in event photography, wine buying for events and designer cocktail mixing combine with lessons in persuasive copywriting, proposal crafting and effective use of technology and social media, all hosted at Off to Work’s dedicated London training academy, the London Irish Centre, in Camden on 9th and 10th April 2013.

“We understand the huge steps many of our clients have been making in the development of their service product and it is our commitment to provide them with a staffing resource that mirrors their service standards,” said Robert Persson, director of operations for Off to Work.

“We have always been 100% committed to the training and mentoring of our team and this year we’re pleased to pledge a £100,000 investment into training initiatives especially for our casual staff team. While people may work for us on a casual basis, their commitment is far from casual and so we are eager to give these ambitious staff, at all levels, the opportunity to develop their experience and career with Off to Work.”

Workshop speakers included Simon Owen, director of Red Photographic, Miriam Staley, former finalist on The Apprentice and now managing director of speaker sourcing agency MakeWaves, Carlos Blanco of Blanco & Gomez Wine Merchants, David Wise from Wise Productions and events consultant Emma Boardman of The Lovely Party Company. Off to Work was also delighted to have the involvement and support of ISES, with operations manager Toni Griggs leading the workshop on event marketing technology.

Former Off to Work employee Keri Moss, winner of Masterchef: The Professionals and now head chef at The Corner Restaurant at Selfridges, also joined Nick Mead, director of Eden Caterers, Vicky O’Hare, managing director of Party Ingredients and Gerald Aberdeen, executive head chef for Table Talk, in a lively panel discussion about the challenges of designing menus with locally sourced produce when the UK’s seasons are so temperamental. They also discussed the opportunity the events industry has to speed up how quickly it takes lessons and influences from the food and dining trends paved by the fashionable restaurant set.

Sharing positive feedback on her experience at Event School 2013, Jada Johnson, events manager for Eden Caterers, said: “We all found it to be informative and worth our time. I really enjoyed my two classes. The copywriting class was really good, with some good techniques I will be putting into practice in our blog and in my proposals. I’m sure you were all really pleased with the increased turn out on last year. The list of attendees also meant that I met some interesting people.”

The workshop programme was followed on the evening of 10th April by the Off to Work London Staff Awards, a special celebration of the star performers within the Off to Work staff team. Prize categories ranged from Staff Member of the Year – won by Himali Ginige Palihawadana – and Best Event Porter (Peter Korkhill), to Best Supervisor (Vittore Zanardi) and Most Improved (Alessandro Riccarelli).

New TWC website launches to provide effective venue sourcing for events planners under pressure

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Robin Parker, marketing director for The Westminster Collection, talks us through the design decisions and brand new features of the venue collection’s new website, which launched officially this month.

Venue choice in London can be overwhelming as there are so many locations, building styles, budget options and varying degrees of quality to consider. We know from our clients that efficiency at the venue sourcing stage is absolutely critical, because that’s often the most time consuming part. You have an event theme, an intended date and a full marketing plan ready to get off the ground for your event, but until you find the right venue, very little of it can get underway.

Efficiency for the event planner was central to the rebuild of The Westminster Collection’s brand new website, which I’m pleased to launch this month.

Saying it quickly, saying it well and making it easy to enquire are important aspects of the new design of the site, which was built by Design Incorporated. Event planners were telling us they wanted a speedy foot in the door to some of London’s best and most centrally located venues, and that their initial decisions about which venues to book are driven by venue location, capacity and style.

Taking that feedback, we stripped down our original site and took it right back to basics. Location is a huge lure for The Westminster Collection but the boundaries of this borough are often misunderstood. The City of Westminster is home to some of the finest meetings, conference and events venues in the capital, and it accounts for a huge area of Zone 1 central London, encompassing major landmarks, world famous shopping streets, beautiful parks and an assortment of restaurants, attractions and entertainment.

It borders the London Borough of Camden to the east and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to the west, incorporating districts including Bayswater, Belgravia, Hyde Park, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Marylebone, Paddington, Pimlico, St James’s, St John’s Wood, Soho, Victoria and the famous West End.

With a responsive design that makes it compatible with mobile and tablet devices, venues can now be browsed and selected from an interactive, Google-based map, which emphasises the breadth of the City of Westminster and the wealth of venues available within it. Venues are pinned to the map and when clicked, give the user the option to view the full profile.

Explore and compare venues side by side

The site’s new venue shortlist facility now enables event planners to add one or more of their preferred Westminster venues to a shortlist, from which they can then compare venues side-by-side according to location, size, room specifications and accessibility. If they’re happy with their selection, they can click ‘enquire with selected venues’ to complete a brief form which will then distribute this single enquiry to all of these venues.

The site is very image-led, which is a way for us to showcase the unique attributes of every one of our venues. Through photography displayed on the venue profiles and with our dynamic, dashboard style homepage, we have developed the website as a full-screen experience to maximise the accessibility from the large array of devices that people use to browse the internet today. The website features a considerable number of interactive features that have been built using JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3 to ensure that they are usable across as many devices and browsers as possible.

Integrated news and special offers

The special offers page of the site now syncs smartly with the individual venue profiles, so if you view a profile, you’ll see the venue’s most recent corresponding offer appear in the left hand toolbar. The news page is also much more user friendly, with an attractive layout and the ability to share individual articles across social media channels – a feature we now expect when we access content online. Readers can also comment on articles and perform a keyword search of the site’s blog content to find relevant posts.

The project team

A particularly rewarding part of the build process of the new website is that the project has been steered by a specially formed committee of representatives from venues within the collection, led by Craig Wallace, conference and events manager at 1 Wimpole Street, with support from Anna Glazebrook at One Great George Street, Clare Hodgkinson at Church House Conference Centre, Maria Schuett at Central Hall Westminster, Petra Bones at The Banqueting House and our marketing and communications agency Custard Communications.

What we have now is something we’re very proud of and feedback during our recent soft launch demonstration phase at Confex is proving valuable. Although we’re confident the website is a much stronger tool for events planners, we will not stop the site development here. We’ll continue to polish and refine features and site functionality and we look forward to the platform this now gives us to better communicate with the events community and those looking to do business in Westminster.

Any feedback and suggestions are welcomed. Please email [email protected].

No.11 Cavendish completes £250k refurb

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The refurbishment of 10 meeting rooms at No.11 Cavendish Square is now complete and event organisers are invited to enjoy the spruced up surroundings at this centrally located venue, near Oxford Circus.

New carpets, re-painted walls and new blinds complement a collection of contemporary photographs of iconic London scenes hung on the walls, including views of the Shard, the London Eye and St Paul’s Cathedral.

One wall in each of the meeting rooms is now magnetised, enabling delegates to attach free-standing magnetic flip charts as required. Low wattage lighting and energy saving LCD panels also now feature in each room.

The £250,000 refurbishment, which includes renovation of the Marlborough and the Maynard Theatre and their adjoining break-out rooms, sees AV upgraded to include state-of-the-art, 55-inch slimline LCD monitors with wall-mounted sound bars. These provide high quality, easy-to-adjust audio without the need for data projectors and screens. Clients connect directly to a floor box for user-friendly, slick presentations.

Popular room The Orangery now boasts multi-colour LED lighting throughout, which can be used to colour match a brand or create a theme. The lighting is controlled from an iPad or via a wall-mounted control panel.

For more information on No.11 Cavendish Square click here, or to discuss your next event, please email Lucy Johnson Brown or call 020 7307 2488.

Glamorous £40k Waterford Crystal chandelier installed at Chandos House

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An ornate, Victorian chandelier by Waterford Crystal, valued at £40,000, will welcome future visitors to Chandos House as the venue’s glamorous Terrace Room becomes home to the stunning showpiece.

Moved from sister venue One Wimpole Street, which has undergone extensive renovation, the arrival of this historic and opulent chandelier at the Grade I listed events and wedding venue is a perfect complement to The Terrace Room’s Venetian windows and French doors, which open out onto the Terrace Garden.

In celebration of the chandelier’s installation, Chandos House commissioned the design and build of a bespoke bar, stained to match the existing and original wood, making the room ideal for cocktail receptions and parties.

Nicholas Dennis, house manager at Chandos House, said: “The Terrace Room has been transformed. What was always a beautiful, but understated room has now become somewhere that reflects the rest of the glamour and opulence for which Chandos House is renowned. I look forward to the coming months, which I expect will be very busy and I look forward to seeing the new bar in full swing with some fabulous cocktail and drinks parties taking place.”

Chandos House is an intimate venue ideal for meetings, conferences, formal dinners, private parties, product launches, wedding receptions, civil ceremonies and partnerships. Located in the heart of London’s W1 between Portland Place, Oxford Circus and the fashionable Marylebone Village, it offers six beautiful function rooms each with dramatic period features, 17 designer bedrooms and a secluded garden terrace.

For more information about The Terrace Room at Chandos House, please call 020 7290 3861 or email [email protected].

RSA completes £3m refurbishment and restoration

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The RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) has completed a £3m nine-month restoration and refurbishment of RSA House. The venue’s Great Room, Benjamin Franklin Room and ground-floor spaces have been developed in close collaboration with the Fellow-led RSA House Development Committee, Matthew Lloyd Architects and other specialist consultants. The refurbishment amplifies the original appearance of the 18th Century building, whilst providing a technologically advanced space it for the 21st century.

Fixed seating was stripped from the Great Room and replaced with movable seating, transforming the space into a multipurpose area that can be used for a wide range of events including conferences, exhibitions and dinners.

The Great Room staircase is enhanced with a new lighting feature by Troika and includes restoration of the glass mosaic floor discovered under the previous carpet. The ground floor areas now offer a more flexible open plan space which incorporates new informal meeting rooms.

All the rooms at the venue have the latest in technology, from high definition cameras for video streaming and simultaneous recording of live images, to 15 channels of discreet audio, capable of 7.1 surround and beyond alongside HD cinema capable projection.

The refurbishment has improved the technological facilities for visitors, including a bespoke, multi-touch interactive wall within the foyer created specifically for the RSA by Vanguardia. It provides the ability for Fellows and guests to interact with the RSA’s rich content whilst also relaying events live into the space from the Great Room.

Another multi touch wall is featured within the central meeting area, based on an interactive projected image and user gesture recognition.  Events can now be streamed across the web in HD, creating real-time links with audiences in the UK and internationally, with the added provision for external guests to connect in to the event itself.

RSA House comprises 13 event spaces and can cater for large events for 200 and intimate events for between 14 and 50 guests. The House boasts 18th Century Georgian design and was purpose built for the Society in 1774 by the celebrated Scottish architects Robert and James Adam.