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Cavendish Venues wishes a very Happy New Year 2017 to all #EventProfs!

As we look ahead, Director of Sales Paul Martins reviews the proactive activity made in 2016 to assess the many happy returns on investment achieved:

“We at Cavendish Venues are proud to be a member of the mia. Membership offers a great deal of value in a vast number of ways. AIM accreditation is recognised throughout the industry and when clients are reassured that standards are going to be of a high quality, they can sooner commit their trust to venues. It’s difficult to put a value on reputation. AIM accreditation is also criteria required to be a London City Selection venue member from which we have seen a return of circa £35,000 through confirmed business via the LCS website.

Events throughout the year allow excellent networking opportunities with peers to discuss trends, challenges, advice and successes which is invaluable for ways to improve practices. Also for referrals – a recent example being from the Agents Dinner at Liverpool FC where I sat next to Masha Boh at One Wimpole Street – she kindly sent me a referral enquiry just the following week for a 2-day event and Harvard Medical School are now confirmed at circa £12,000 revenue.

These events include the Agents Days and Dinners which are the perfect formats for those who prefer to build rapport in either an interactive way or even more formal setting.

For instance, we have engaged with agents such as Arrange My Group, Banks Sadler, Calders, Ellis Salsby, HRG, Inntel and Pineapple Events amongst others across 11 MIA-organised events in just the last 12 months. From these 7 agents alone, we have seen confirmed revenue of £251,331.54 in this calendar year (2016) which proves the quality of buyers that attend MIA events.

This all represents tangible value from the amount of savings made as much as from the business return that can be generated from these avenues.

The same applies to the expert training courses on a range of topics offered at especially low preferential rates. This has allowed us to train and develop staff to maintain and encourage the continuation of high standards as well as learning new ideas and skills.

Staff morale is also key for success and this can be celebrated in free nominations of employees for the annual MIA List Awards as Cavendish Venues have done for the past 2 years.

We at Cavendish Venues are proud to be a member of the London City Selection through our America Square venue.

The London City Selection is a growing group of 27 hand-picked and amazing venues located in and around the City of London.

To be part of this collective, there is a minimal annual membership fee which is tiered to be fair and relative to a venue’s size and revenue.

Needless to say, you only get what you give. Having seen the collective progress as a Board Member, the platforms offered not only from a marketing perspective for brand venue awareness but in terms of tangible return of investment have been very pleasing.

As Events Chair, the annual Agents Familiarisation Trip 2016 #CuriousLCS in March brought together over 30 booking agents, resulting in £12,141.78 confirmed business for Cavendish Venues alone in relation to the Fam Trip (figure based on bookings secured since the Fam trip yet before June 2016). Just 2 months after the Fam weekend, 89 enquiries were recorded, 11 events were confirmed and confirmed revenue of £63,815.38 was tracked across all member venues.

As Website Chair since August, there have been further developments to encourage and allow more direct input from Board and venue members into content. The website functions smoothly as a one-stop-shop for event bookers to save time by filtering their requirements to receive prompt responses from only venues specific to that enquiry. This in turn saves time for the venues, only proposing for relevant enquiries. These appear on their own venue portal which allows tracking of the number of relevant enquiries received, tracking of each individual booking status as well as number of confirmed bookings and ultimately the revenue return on investment.

At Cavendish Venues, we can track via our member venue portal 134 relevant enquiries received in 2016, of which we beat competition to 5 bookings to bring confirmed revenue of £32,937.00 from London City Selection website enquiries. Naturally, factors like availability may not have allowed for more and we’ll have competed with our fellow venue members for these bookings but this alone is a healthy return.

The London City Selection membership also allows us the opportunity to have shared representation on the LCS stand at the Buyers Networking Club or BNC Showcase at no extra charge. The saving of a cost of stand that this provides alone make the membership fee excellent value. With the quality of bookers at the show, our follow up on the scanned leads from the BNC Showcase 2016 brought confirmed revenue of £47,533.04 across 7 bookings.

Aside from all the venue member referrals, the aligned MIA accreditation, open days, the knowledge sessions, social media coverage and PR partner marketing support from Mexia Communications and Davies Tanner, from the 3 main revenue sources above, the London City Selection in 2016 gave a total of £92,631.82 confirmed return on investment to Cavendish Venues from a minimal membership fee of circa just £990.

We at Cavendish Venues are proud to be a member of the Westminster Venue Collection with the Cavendish Conference Centre located in the Borough of Westminster.

As a Board Director of the WVC, it has been exciting to be Website Chair in 2016 to oversee not only the long-awaited rebranding of the collective’s name but the birth of the new website.

With a strong heritage formed of currently 35 prestigious, unique and unusual venues in the London Borough of Westminster, the rebrand was necessary to enforce the nature of the group being about venues. With this, appropriate investment was made on a new website to complement contemporary new colours in line with a new vision for the WVC’s development.

This vision took venue members’ feedback on board to construct a functionality allowing for only specific enquiries to be received per venue, as to save venue members’ and event bookers’ time with relevant and timely proposals accordingly.

The new website, launched at the #WVC2016Launch Showcase, also gives autonomy for member venues to promote themselves with a portal where they can edit imagery, criteria and special offers. Significantly, the portal will also allow to track the number of specific enquiries received via the WVC website, their booking status, the number for confirmations and ultimately confirmed revenue for return on investment. This is a membership fee of just £1,750+vat and includes venue member referrals, bi-annual Showcase events, social media coverage and PR partner support courtesy of Custard Communications. Not only this but also shared representation at The Meetings Show and for this coming year also at the BNC Showcase.

The saving on the cost of stands at both of these shows that this provides alone make the membership fee excellent value. With the quality of bookers at the show, our follow up on the scanned leads from The Meetings Show brought confirmed revenue of £52,195.50 across 10 bookings secured in 2016, (£4,341.60 from 1 event via a venue member referral, £25,461.90 confirmed business from 6 events from The Meeting Show 2016 and a further £22,392.00 from 3 events repeated as sourced from The Meeting Show 2015).

We at Cavendish Venues are proud to keep thinking out-of-the-box and being shrewd with investment to maximise profit returns is something to pride ourselves on.

Return on investment is always king and brand awareness also plays a strong part in representation at shows such as Square Meal and also further afield at IBTM Exhibition in Barcelona.

From attending at IBTM last year alone for the first time, Cavendish Venues picked up an enquiry that secured a booking for £10,704.00 from circa £200 expenditure.

From attending this year’s show and associated networking events (with travel costs expenditure of just £521.38), we have already brought a return of £19,440.00 with an agent’s first confirmation with us for a new client since meeting with them at

We at Cavendish Venues are proud to be members of the HBAA.

The HBAA is the events and hospitality association that drives, promotes and models good business between its members with a Code of Practice. It champions best practice, ethical working and sound commercial judgement, making HBAA membership the mark of quality assurance for the sector. Being a member allows us to attend regular events and networking opportunities, as well as post special offers and compare notes with our peers as well as for referrals.

We look forward to representing at this month’s annual HBAA AGM, Kick Off Meeting and Dinner 2017 in which the same event last year was particularly profitable.

At the HBAA AGM, Kick Off Meeting 2016 we made a networking introduction that progressed a relationship with an agency. This was followed up with a presentation at their offices and familiarisation trip. This in-turn generated enquiries that confirmed in this particular instance a return of £9,216.00, specifically traced back to that networking moment at start of the process from the HBAA.

May 2017 inspire the same prosperity and more – on behalf of all of us here, Happy New Year #EventProfs and we’ll be proud to welcome you @CavendishUK Venues!