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Venue Searching by Conference Venue Agencies in the UK

By Mandy Chagger

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 14May2010 Word count: 810 Viewed: 167 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

After a bit of venue searching online, an events organiser will find that the United Kingdom is filled with diverse venues. Football stadiums like Walkers Stadium in Leicester and racecourses like Ascot Racecourse in Ascot, Berkshire offer distinct amenities to traditional venues for conferences and events. The venue searching process will present many temptations for event organisers who are looking for distinctive places to host upcoming conferences. An exploration of the virtues of football stadium, racecourses, hotels and conference centres can help any organiser find the right venue for his event needs.

Walkers Stadium, West Ham United Stadium and other football stadiums offer several advantages to event organisers. These stadiums are built to house multiple tiers of ticket buyers from the public to well-heeled fans in private boxes. Industry groups can hold individual meetings in private boxes to add touches of luxury to their annual conferences. Political parties can use football fields to speak to supporters and the public by the thousands, eliminating the need for smaller meetings that take up valuable time.

Organisers in the midst of venue searching can find other virtues of using football stadiums. British residents may be committed to a football team and find the experience of sitting in a friendly or opposing stadium exhilirating. Corporate sponsors associated with stadiums may offer giveway items, stadium tours and financial supportfor events upon request. Conferees in the area will be able to locate stadiums easily compared to the complications of finding hotels, small conference centres and other venues.

If an event organiser has overlooked the benefits of planning an event at a football stadium, the virtues of a racecourse may have eluded him as well. British racecourses present great opportunities to mix entertainment with business in an environment that is sizable enough to handle thousands of people. Racecourses have luxury boxes, concession stands and resources to help event planners stop their venue searching in quick order. The obvious benefit of a racecourse is that attendees and presenters can enjoy the races once the day's agenda is over. This onsite event can be enjoyed by most participants as they pick up snacks and view the races from the stands.

After an event organiser has finished venue searching in stadiums and racecourses, the search can head to venues that are more conventional. The obvious choice for most conventions and conferences is a full-service hotel complete with ballroom and computer lab. Most UK hotels have lobbies that are large enough to facilitate registration of invitees as well as convenient waiting areas for registered visitors. Once invitees are registered, they can head up to their rooms and settle down before the convention starts in earnest. The convenience of hosting a convention in a hotel turns the focus of venue searching to finding the best location rather than the right type of venue. The typical full-service hotel offers plenty of amenities to conference organisers looking for a great venue. Every hotel has at least one conference room, meeting space or banquet hall that can be used to house conferees. Modern hotels have expanded beyond basic accommodations and services to offer computer workstations, wireless connectivity and presentation equipment for busy professionals. Event planners can take advantage of these modern technological capabilities to stage their conferences for tech-savvy invitees.

In order to find the best hotel possible for a conference, event organisers should use several criteria to limit venue searching. While hotels may have halls and rooms available for conferences, organisers should figure out how many people will attend to find the right venue. The location of a hotel near public transit lines, attractions and exterior meeting spaces can maximize the value of the reservation cost. Event planners should first and foremost focus on the customer service offered by a hotel including service staff, managers and venue owners.

While hotel are ideal for national and international conferences, budget-conscious organisers can look to conference centres for their events. These centres may be adjacent to chain hotels or separate entities with meeting rooms and spaces used exclusively for large events. The costs of reserving conference rooms and spaces in these centres vary but it is often less than hotel reservations due to the absence of onsite accommodations. Conference centres are often designed with multiple room sizes including interior spaces and exterior halls with windows in an appeal to different tastes.

The venue searching process should be adjusted when moving from hotels to conference centres. The scaled-down approach of a conference centre may be appealing financially but organisers must find out the centre's technical capabilities before reserving space. Once the technical issues are resolved, an event organiser should also look at nearby accommodations to meet the needs of out-of-town visitors. Event planners should look at past events held at conference centres to determine if major organisations and businesses have frequented their spaces in the past.

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