Marketing? It’s a piece of cake! - by Natasha Rahanu

As those of you who know me are aware, as well as promoting the sale of delicious food all around the University care of our delivered catering, I’m no stranger to the inside of a kitchen myself.

My forte is desserts, specifically cakes (past triumphs have included an elephant lemon cake and a 3D train cake complete with carriages stuffed full of gummy bear passengers).

So the other weekend when I went to my niece’s  (Imogen, or Immy for short) fourth birthday party and my sister asked me to make the cake I was only too happy to oblige. Little did I know at this point that the design of the cake was to be a scaled down version of the gym in which the party was taking place!

Anyway, following a day spent with Immy watching films and making things out of paper and glitter, at 5pm I started on the cake, finally finishing at 2am the morning of the party!

Cake or gym - which is which?!

It was all worth it when Immy saw the cake but to top it off, shortly after we arrived at the gym, the manager approached me and asked for my permission to put a photo of the cake on their website as part of their promotional campaign for parties.

Oh okay... one square apple pie coming up!

My first conference as a delegate! - by Natalie Ruecroft

November 2nd-4th 2011 saw me attend my first Venuemasters conference (also my first ever conference!) in the beautiful, but freezing cold, city of Edinburgh. The cold didn't bother me that much as I spent most of my time indoors drinking tea or sparkling wine!

I’d just like to say:
Firstly: what a fantastic conference! Plenty of great speakers and a chance to mingle with fellow academic venue conference sales types.
Secondly: What a beautiful city Edinburgh is.  Not quite as good as Leeds (obviously!!) but full of very welcoming people who made our stay very comfortable.

The conference really was great, it provided really useful workshops throughout the day and a chance to relax and meet new friends in the evening. Also a chance to dress up as Bonnie and Clyde with my favourite Head of Sales and Marketing, Richard Handscombe.

I took away some great sales tips and advice, especially from Adrian Webster who delivered a humorous, highly energetic and, at times, emotional speech on delivering extraordinary customer service. In fact, his TNT (tiny noticeable things) idea has spurred me on to add a little personal touch to my ‘Getting Venue Finding Agencies to Book Leeds’ campaign!
 
I am currently in the process of handwriting very attractive and glittery Christmas cards to each of the agents who have used us and thanking them for choosing the University of Leeds. I did contemplate sending a photograph of myself with a beard saying "Ho, Ho, Ho" but decided against this!

Merry Christmas everyone!

MEETinLEEDS goes Mobile- by Matt Hamnett

Over the past couple of months we've been working on a mobile version of our website.

It’s been something that we’ve wanted to do for quite some time – we know that we get a lot of delegates on campus who use their mobile phones to access our website to find out more information about the venue that they’re visiting.  We’ve also seen over the past year or so that more and more people are viewing websites on their mobile phones, and our web statistics are backing this up.

So with this in mind we knew we wanted to make visiting our site as easy as possible no matter what device our customers were using.

I started by doing some research into the mobile future of the web and found some interesting statistics.  There are 5.3 billion mobile users globally, that’s 77% of the world’s population, and the mobile web is predicted to overtake desktop figures by 2013/14.  Clearly we needed to be aware of how our customers saw us on-line.

Of course www.meetinleeds.co.uk was, and is, accessible via any mobile phone that had an internet browser, but were our customers getting the same sharp experience that we’d expect them to have if they were viewing the site on a desktop computer?  We’ve always been confident that the site looks good and is easy to use but we noticed that if we navigated our way through the site on our mobile then the pictures weren’t so large and impressive and the links were harder to spot, and access.

At this point we knew we wanted to make something that would look better and be easier to use, so we set about working out what content should be on there and what it should look like.

You can access the site on any mobile device by visiting www.meetinleeds.co.uk (or if you're reading this on your desktop just scan the QR code on the right with your mobile) – it will automatically recognise your device and redirect you to our mobile website.  

We hope you like it and would love to hear your feedback!

What a difference a day makes - by Natasha Rahanu

The University of Leeds is a large and prestigious institution that attracts a variety of high profile visitors; quite recently we’ve hosted the Leader of the Labour Party, Ed Milliband and the High Sheriff of West Yorkshire, A E Grant Esq OBE.

Sometimes though, when your work and focus is on the operational side of events, the content can pass you by. 

You say Morris dancing, I say risk assessment?

You say swan ice sculpture, our survey says; will it fit in the lift?

That all changed when I met a man called Paul Garner.

Professor Garner holds the Cowdry Chair in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese and has recently written a book about his positions namesake, Lord Cowdry, who in the early 1900s became one of the wealthiest men in Britain, not least because the centre of his oil and engineering empire, was focused in Mexico.

Professor Garner celebrated his book launch with a week long exhibition of rare Mexican photographs in one of our venues, Parkinson Court, and a VIP reception which attracted the likes of the Vice-Chancellor of the University, the Lord Mayor and the Mexican Ambassador (on his first ever visit to Leeds).

The Court was transformed into a Mexican wonderland with palm trees, cacti, and tequila.  And the brightest star of the night: none other than our very own University catering.  In little more than 72 hours, we had created a Mexican oasis in the middle of Leeds and received high praise in two different languages!

On top of all this I have also managed to tick off three things I didn’t even know were on my ‘to do before I’m 30 list’:

• held a meeting about cacti with the British Cactus & Succulent Society (yes, they do exist – Google it!)
• ordered 70 shot glasses for non-personal use
• said ‘Hello;’ in Spanish to the Mexican Ambassador

So what did you do today?

Tweet what you eat! - by Matt Hamnett

Catering can make all the difference for a successful and memorable event.  We've known for some time that we have top class chefs who can create inspirational menus for the delegates that use our facilities for conferences.  Still... it’s always nice to get feedback.

Recently we've had some comments from a different source than our normal feedback forms though:  the National Union of Students (NUS) gave their feedback via the social networking site Twitter as they ate each course!

It started at lunch time: 

@CunninghamToby said: “lunch yum yum best uni food I ever ate!” and @ashleyrudge added: Loving lunch time in Leeds!

By the Awards Ceremony later that night the tweets were coming in thick and fast, and all of them positive!

@BenAMJackson: Beautiful Rhubarb crumble

@wheelybarrow: I think the food is the first winner of the evening

@jonathaneisaacs: There is something in the ice cream that is yummy but I just can't place it. Anyone any ideas?

@SamwiseHampson: The whole team here from @LoughboroughSU has been impressed by the food and everything about the night so far.

@DanielRidsdale: the lamb is awesome #fact

@nusuk: The food served at the #NUSAwards tonight is locally sourced

@MaddyRB: lovely starter!

Royal Wedding, Take Two!

Move over Wills & Kate, because this month our very own Natasha Lockwood, self titled ‘Royalty of Conferencing’ (see what we did there?) will be getting married to her fiancé Deepak Rahanu.

In a double ceremony, which involves two dresses and (more importantly) two cakes, Natasha will have a traditional English ‘White Wedding’ on 19^th May followed by an Indian ceremony on May 21^st.

So was it difficult to organise an event and keep true to both cultures involved? 

In a way it was, there are some elements which are so different between the two cultures, the dress is a perfect example.

As a little girl growing up I had dreamed of having the ‘Princess Diana’ big white dress and, though puffed shoulders are less fashionable and my train is not quite 25 feet, I was still adamant about holding onto that!

In Indian culture however, the traditional bridal colour is red, and the outfits (known as lenghas) are very heavy with intricate decoration. To add to this the jewellery is just as big and ornate.  Wearing everything together is not only a test of my strength but it seems very over the top for me, as it’s not like anything I have worn previously.

I do feel really lucky though to have the opportunity to spread my wedding over three days and have two different bridal outfits as well!

Other issues are more easily solved however:  you can’t go far wrong mixing Indian meals with English cake for afters, and no one is going to complain about Banghra & Bacardi! 

Are you nervous or excited?

Because I’m an Event Organiser myself I’ve felt for quite a while that I’ve been planning this for somebody else!  It’s often the case, as with a lot of the larger conferences we hold, that when you've been working on an event for so long, it feels strange when it actually happens. 

I have had many well wishes from all my colleagues though, so I’m very grateful for that – I’m sure I’ll be excited very soon!

I will return to work on 6^th June as Natasha Rahanu (n.rahanu@adm.leeds.ac.uk) with more ideas on how we can bring the best out of your event!

...................................................................................................

We’ll be posting pictures of Natasha’s dresses on this blog so check back soon and let us know which one you prefer in the comments!

No mystery to MEETinLEEDS’ latest triumph - by Matt Hamnett

Every now and then someone calls the conference sales office, asks a number of questions about our venues and, under a false name, makes an enquiry for a totally fictitious event that will never happen.  And we fall for it every time.

The conference sales team at MEETinLEEDS are constantly looking at ways in which we can improve how we work to help our customers create the event they’re looking for with as much ease as possible.

We've worked hard to put systems in place which allow our customers a seamless experience from making an enquiry to booking a venue and we pride ourselves on the level of knowledge our team has on all of our facilities.  Once the event is over then we ask the organisers, and the delegates too, if everything went as planned.  If for any reason something isn’t quite right then we make sure we know about it so that we can put it right next time.

Sometimes this isn’t quite enough though.  Whilst we’re quietly confident that we deliver a fantastic customer experience (and our feedback confirms this) it’s important that we look at our business through fresh eyes.  It’s for this reason that we allow a total stranger to conjure up these fabricated conferences as part of a mystery shopping program.  And we happen to do quite well in them!

Last year the team took part in several mystery shopping measures looking at their telephone and booking skills.  The mystery shopper assesses things such as: how quickly the call was answered; whether it was answered in a professional manner and whether the relevant person was able to take the call.  The sales team scored 91% and 100% on the last two occasions.

This year we wanted to look at how well we perform show-rounds at our venues, as well as the initial telephone enquiry, and we’re proud to say that we scored a fantastic 97.2%.

Of course all of these results don’t mean that we’ll be resting on our laurels.  We’ll continue to look for more ways that we can make ourselves even more helpful, and we’ll go on testing ourselves to make sure that we’re getting it right!

Read more about our Mystery Shopper by reading our news page.