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.

The Best Restaurant in the World - by Richard Handscombe

I’ve just been to the best restaurant in the world, and I don’t mean my favourite Bradford curry house, or the original Harry Ramsden’s chippy.  True, they have their place, but good though they are, they are not the Best Restaurant in the World; this accolade, awarded by Restaurant magazine, belongs to a restaurant called NOMA, in Copenhagen harbour.   My daughter Sally is a “foodie”, so to celebrate her milestone birthday we decided to take her to the best there is.  This sounds simple, but getting a table there isn’t that easy; when they were awarded the title in 2010, I’m told they had more than 100,000 bookings within 24 hours!  They opened the reservation book for March 2011 on 1^st December 2010, and were fully booked within hours, including I’m glad to say, a table for the four of us.  So we headed off for Denmark in some excitement.  

Copenhagen is a beautiful city full of the nicest folk you could meet; we loved it, but can’t wait to return at some time when the sea isn't frozen.  “Cold” doesn't begin to describe it. But anyway, we saw the sights, found some nice bars, and practised paying a lot in a number of restaurants, getting ready for the NOMA experience.

To me, service is the key element in the success of any operation.  In the UK’s hospitality industry, everyone pays lip-service to service, and some even walk the talk, but often the customer is left with a feeling that something is missing.     

Noma

The NOMA customer journey really started as we stepped from the taxi.  Two of the waiting staff opened the taxi door with warm greetings, and it was obvious they had been briefed that we had travelled from the UK.  As soon as we had touched down at the table, we began to experience the kind of service you can only dream about.  NOMA has an army of chefs – I was told 14 were on contract and a further 20 are “stagieurs” – young chefs who work for nothing for three months just to get NOMA on their CV. 

It looked to me as if there were about 10 waiters too – and all this in a restaurant with just 34 diners!  Apart from naturally being experts in their various fields, they had obviously been very highly trained on how to deal with people, how to put them at their ease, and how to up-sell.  This last skill was fine to observe for professional reasons, but fell on fairly stony ground because I had checked my bank account before leaving home! 

They proceeded to serve us with eight snacks and twelve courses over four hours, each one a delight on the eye and a surprise to the palate.  The dishes were rarely what they first appear to be, and the amount of preparation and science involved in each dish is awesome.  There was just one tense moment, when we realised that what we had just eaten was – wait for it – reindeer’s tongue, a dish which probably elicits a different reaction from Danes than from squeamish Yorkshire people.  Our trauma obviously registered with the waiter, for within seconds, the head chef was at our table.  He didn’t even mention the reindeers tongue, but sat and chatted to us then offered to let us tour the kitchens and meet the chefs after service had finished – in the Best Restaurant in the World!  We gasped, grinned, and grasped the opportunity, which was one of the highlights of the experience and definitely made us forget about Rudolph (at least it wasn’t his nose)!  They had skilfully turned a negative into a positive.  We were treated like long-lost buddies in the kitchens and were even introduced to Ali the pot-washer.  Then of course, came the pain of the bill.  I did some quick calculations afterwards and worked out that four of the cars I’d owned were cheaper than that bill – all added together. 

So I’ll take away the memory of that customer journey, and a restaurant experience that was like going to the opera and the theatre as well as having dinner, and which underlined my belief in the value of service excellence.  The thing is, it doesn’t take all those people and a massive bill to produce good service.   Good service comes from having the right people, and the right culture in your organisation, and a determination to be the best.  If we have all that, we could serve up Bambi on a plate and no-one would bat an eyelid!   

Socially Adept - by Matt Hamnett

For a conference sales office at a major UK university we like to think of ourselves as a sociable, friendly and interesting group of people who will go out of our way to help our customers. For those of you who have been keeping up with this blog I hope that this has come across well: perhaps we’ve helped you manage your event, understand your competition or even cater for your in-laws?!

In order to show everybody just how sociable and helpful we are we use a number of very different online tools; we have a YouTube channel, a news page, a Flickr account, a regular email newsletter and of course this blog. 

All of these have been fantastic ways to keep in contact with our growing number of customers but it is our twitter account that has seen the most online progress.

Just recently we’ve moved past the 500 followers mark. Ok, we’ll never be a Stephen Fry or Justin Bieber, but seeing as we rarely promote ourselves on twitter we’re very pleased to have made an impression on so many people.

To satisfy this demand for more information on our venues and services, and in order to reach out to a different audience, we’ve developed a Facebook page.

We’re interested to see where this latest social space will take us and we hope you will join us by liking our Facebook page.

Would you invite a Chef to a dinner party? - by Natasha Lockwood

No, of course you wouldn’t. Why? Because it’s not healthy for anyone concerned.

It’s not healthy for you because before you have even said "entrees" they’ll have produced a whisk and whipped up a delicious Fresh Fruit Pavlova (where did they get the eggs from!?) that puts your ‘Angel Delight served in Martini Glasses’ to shame.

It’s not healthy for them either: the minute they spy you emerging from the kitchen with your ‘Pate on Toast’ starter the evening is a write-off and the only logical course of action is for them to protect their taste buds by getting in the kitchen and doing the job themselves.

Which leaves me to wonder... as an event planner in training (a bit like a Jedi, but without the light sabre), is it really healthy for me to be organising my own wedding?

If I were to place an advert in the local newspaper for an Event Manager tomorrow, it would look something like this:
The candidate must be
• Organised
• Mildly telapathic
• Very, very paranoid. All the time. About everything.

One phrase you will never hear an Event Manager say is “I assume”, because we don’t. Ever.

Everyone in my office possesses the qualities required to be an Event Manager; they are experienced fountains of knowledge and wisdom, kind of like Yoda.

On the one hand it makes me proud to be part of this team, and to know we do a fantastic job.  On the other hand it makes me feel very sick; because if we are the 'Yoda' of event management, then the Event Manager of my wedding is definitely the opposite of this, or ‘Oppoyoda’, if you will.

From the very first email, on which I was instructed to go on to ‘Google Maps’ to find their venue, I knew that this was not going to be easy.  Bad quickly went to worse when, on the food tasting, I mentioned that in a room full of 350 people there was bound to be at least one vegetarian/dairy free/low fat/Atkins diet/don’t like tomato/chocoholic – who would probably only make their preferences known on the day. I received a blank, open mouthed, gaze in return.

I had also naively thought that we would receive a show round of the venue on our first meeting, as is common practise here. Wrong again. Not only did Oppoyoda neither offer or arrange a show round, they actually suggested that I do it myself, direct with the venue, as it wasn't their department.

Sometimes I forget how very lucky we are here to have a fantastic marketing, conference and catering department, all under one roof.  Who, funnily enough, we communicate with daily.

Several weeks later, tired of waiting around for Oppoyoda to reply to my messages regarding the venue contact, I took matters into my own hands and found the right person myself. Having arranged my own show round I re-contacted Oppoyoda to request his presence, to which he had the audacity to accuse me of going behind his back on the matter, further adding that he would have to check his diary for availability.

Is it any wonder I need something stronger than Angel Delight - where did I put those Martini Glasses?

Know Your Competition - by Richard Handscombe

There are many facets that are key to running a business – great products, good service, effective marketing, defined goals and so on, but one very important piece of knowledge is to be aware of what our competitors are doing.  We can find out what our competitors say about themselves by searching the web, going to exhibitions, and reading the trade press and the same means can tell us what others say about them.  But one of the best ways to learn about the competition is to get out there and visit them.

I used to be a wine importer and seller.  I found that in order to do my job better, I had to drag myself through vineyards and wineries in Italy, France, Germany, Yugoslavia (yes it was a while ago) and California;  I didn’t want to do it of course, but you just have to knuckle down and put up with the drudgery.  Although one vineyard is actually quite similar to the next, the knowledge of the region, the company and its people, picked up during these visits, gave us the competitive edge when we sat in front of buyers trying to sell the wines;  our stories could be told with passion, and were always better than a competitor who had never been to the region.

OK, perhaps visiting venues in Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham and here in Leeds is just a smidgeon less glamorous than Verona and Epernay, but the learning experience is actually similar, and as a bonus, you don’t need any sun-cream.

When the conference sales team visit competitor venues, they gain an understanding of the strengths and limitations of our competition;  they also, incidentally pick up some good ideas that we can pinch!  These visits are done quite openly - none of this Mary Portas stuff, with hidden cameras and the like (although wouldn’t that be fun?) – as by and large our business sector is very hospitable and anxious to show off.  We simply make an appointment, walk through their venue, ask a million questions and Bob, as they say, is your mother’s brother!

Naturally, the quid pro quo means that we have to be open to visits from our competitors too.  We’ve had just a handful, which gives me a warm glow of satisfaction – we know what they do, but they haven’t got much of a clue about what we do, other than what we write in press releases and on the web.

And we write that.


Find out what we write at www.meetinleeds.co.uk/news