The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) is located on St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, in the heart of the city centre. The main building dates back to 1810 and is steeped in history, charm and elegance.The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) is located on St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, in the heart of the city centre. The main building dates back to 1810 and is steeped in history, charm and elegance.

It is also a very busy place as the RCSI runs a heavy schedule of social and corporate events both for its members and for the general public, offering a combination of old world charm with modern day service.

Two years ago, the RCSI installed Rendezvous, the browser-based conference, meeting room and catering solution from NFS Hospitality, to automate its event planning. The system is used for bookings, billings and event planning.

Theresa Kane, Assistant Events Manager, says that Rendezvous has helped to cut the administrative workload dramatically. “We have so many facilities and events so when I joined I was delighted to see how well Rendezvous worked. Since then, NFS has helped us customise it to make it work even better to meet our needs. For example, we now have email functionality and we’re looking at online booking.”

EUI capability

Theresa especially appreciates the potential of the Enterprise User Interface (EUI) in Rendezvous. This is a tool for internal room bookers that allows her team to specify what level of information is provided to users. “For example, we want our potential guests to be able to view event or meeting room availability but we also want to retain our right to assign a suitable room. This is no problem with the EUI and it will save us a great deal of administrative time.”

Luis DeSouza, CEO of NFS, comments: “We have designed our EUI to be set up according to each client’s business rules. This assures that the client is completely in control. If they want Rendezvous merely to display to the user that a room is available, that’s fine. Or the client may want to show which rooms that meet the user’s criteria are available. We always seek to give our clients maximum flexibility.”

Wide range of events

The RCSI, which includes schools of medicine, nursing, pharmacy and physiotherapy, can cater for a wide range of events. For example, in the main building, the College Hall and Boardroom can accommodate up to 180 guests for a reception and dinner. These rooms, which feature open fires and high ornate ceilings, have an air of warmth and luxury. For larger numbers, the RCSI can host a reception and dinner for up to (400) people using the College Hall and the Boardroom for the reception with dinner in the modern Exam Hall.

The main building also contains the Albert Lecture Theatre, a venerable old auditorium with state-of-the-art facilities that can seat up to 100 guests. The theatre provides an ideal venue for meetings, presentations or product launches. In addition, the recently refurbished Colles Room can host small private meetings and dinners for up to 18 people.

Theresa sums it up: “We have a range of wonderful facilities and Rendezvous enables us to serve all our users efficiently and reliably. We look forward to online booking to give even better service.”