Summer Show-Rounds (& show offs!) - by Lisa Wood

This week I have a large corporate dinner booked into our fabulous Refectory for a grand night!  These are the type of events I know our award-winning catering team are eager to get hold of so that they can really show off their fine dining and service skills.

Following a very helpful tasting event (always a pleasure!), the event organisers were really pleased with the options the Refectory covers and agreed that it’s the perfect venue for these types of large events.

After all, since the late 1960s the Refectory has hosted some of the most important acts around, including the Rolling Stones, Elton John and more recently Muse (recorded live for MTV). Perhaps one of the most famous live recordings ever made, The Who Live at Leeds, was recorded in this very room!

Thankfully, as we’ve been setting up for the dinner this week, we were able to take some other clients on a show-round who were looking to host a very similar event.  So hopefully we’ll be doing it all again soon!

Here’s hoping for an enjoyable evening for all: especially as we have this incredible weather to boost the Pimms reception and fine wines that will be flowing in copious amounts!

Find out more about the Refectory, and our other facilities, at http://www.meetinleeds.co.uk/

Top Sales Team!

I can't say that Mystery Buyer calls are "eagerly awaited" by our sales team - they are anticipated more with trepidation than eagerness.  But I've always said that confidence often carries complancy with it, and whether it's a driving test, an exam, or the dreaded mystery buyer, it's a sign of conscienciousness to care about your performance so much that you get a wee bit nervous.

Each year, we are mystery-shopped by Venuemasters, to test our sales systems.  The aim is to ensure that the standard of response at academic conference venues is up there with the corporate sector.  I've just had the result today, of this year's mystery shop, and we achieved 2nd place out of 78 academic venues -  our previous highest being 4th!  Of course, it's a joint effort ultimately, with everyone on the team being involved in refining our enquiry response system, but I have to mention the newest member of our team, Natalie, who dealt with the lion's share of this enquiry.  Well done Nat!

We must be doing something right, because each quarter, we're also independantly tested by a mystery shopper, and the last quarter's result was a 100% pass - something the agency involved had not previously experienced.

It's great to know that everyone enquiring at MEETINLEEDS is getting top quality service from a top team! As for mystery buyers - bring 'em on!

Here He Comes Again by Richard Handscombe

This piece is an observation, and absolutely nothing to do with conferences, but I thought it might make light relief.

I’m not usually one to give any credence at all to conspiracy theories, but I definitely think that there’s no such thing as an impulse purchase. I think that products somehow conspire to be bought by certain people, through a mechanism as yet unknown to mankind.

Occasionally I nip to the supermarket to get one or two unforeseen essentials, like barbeque coals when the rain stops on a Sunday. As I have a reputation for coming home with other weird stuff, I find my wife eagerly waiting to criticise what I bring home.

A couple of weekends ago, my errand was for some baking foil, and razorblades. I came back with both (score a perfect 10!) - plus two duck breasts, a particularly elegantly shaped bottle of olive oil, three Mars bars (3?) and a jar of olives stuffed with garlic. All of the additional items were received with the usual derision by Mrs H, and when asked to explain why I had bought them, I once again explained my theory as she stored them away with all my other strange purchases.

As I said above, I think that somehow, these products conspire to be bought. By me. They sit there waiting for me to walk down the aisle. They usually look pretty good, with nice labels and special packaging, or else they are placed by the till covered in chocolate and just begging to be bought (Mars Bars). They watch for me coming, and somehow shine and shimmer, or maybe even twitch a bit or make a noise to attract attention (I know this is a long shot). They insist on being picked up and popped into the trolley. I know what you’re thinking – I’ve gone off my own trolley, and that's the usual reply I get at home.

I’m really trying to curb my impulsive buying tendencies. One of my strategies is to stay out of supermarkets altogether. It seems to be working. Mind you, this week I went to an antiques fair to buy a bookcase and came back with a clock, so it could be a long haul.

Explosive Exhibitions - by Richard Handscombe

Who would have guessed a few months ago, that a volcano, unknown to most of us and unpronounceable anyway, would be affecting businesses in the UK and Europe?

Volcanoes aside, reading through the pages of industry journals, you could be excused for feeling a little down-hearted by some of the headlines giving news of exhibitions being 'cancelled', 'closed', 'in liquidation', and even, in the case of a fetishist exhibition 'zipped up'!
But my own view is that black clouds, whether formed by ash or bad news, should be put in perspective. The airline industry is steadily figuring out ways of living with the ash cloud, thank goodness, as the exhibition industry must surely do when facing the dynamically changing habits of the so-called Google generation.

Exhibitions have been described by an industry guru recently as “the only place where people can touch, the product, sniff it, and give it a kick”. Well, maybe not quite in my own case, marketing the conference facilities at the University of Leeds; I worry about the sniffing and kicking bit, but I know what he means!    

It’s a great face-to-face opportunity and as such is invaluable. But we do have to be more choosy than ever about where we exhibit, due to costs and the current economic climate, exhibition space charges are, in my view too high, and too inflexible, and regardless of sales folk reeling off visitor registrations, some venue exhibitions are very much quieter than they used to be. 

I’d also like to see venue exhibition organisers embracing new technology such as RFID technology, creating visually stimulating exhibitions, and fully utilising social networking techniques. 

Bring about a revolution in the way the stands look, the journey through the hall, the methods of networking and information-swapping, and exhibiting will truly compete with the many other methods of marketing and information-gathering available today.

It’s all about impact, as Eyjafjallajokull would say, if it could talk.