ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS

• The challenges of venue management
• How modern technology comes to your rescue
• Ten tips for planning a conference
• Historic Cardiff Castle meets modern technology
• Forecasting success for Maldron Hotels
• Catering for the needs of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors
• Competition: win a bottle of bubbly

Another day, another challenge

To run a successful venues business you need to be a jack of all trades – and a master of just about all of them as well! One day you can be hiring out a room for a large corporate conference involving more than 100 delegates needing broadband, wi-fi connection, audio visual equipment – not to mention catering and accommodation requirements for them too.

Next day, the same room is to be used to hold a wedding reception with all that that entails. The day after that there will be an important sporting awards ceremony taking place.

By the way, this is only one room in your conference venue. There may be others, large and small, offering facilities for every type and size of conference, celebration, meeting, symposium and seminar.

And think of this. This is just your business. Not far away, there’s another conference centre operating in a different way and with different needs.

Flexibility is the name of this particular game, together with strong organisation, a clear and well organised diary – and staff who know how to juggle all the aspects in a clear-headed way without taking their eyes off the many balls that need to be kept in the air at one time.

Technology to the rescue

Luckily, much of that work is handled today by technology, and the system that so many venue operators turn to is Rendezvous Events software from NFS.

Venues like the Kingsholm Stadium, home of Gloucester Rugby Club, where their Business Conference Centre and banqueting facilities have become one of the most important conference venues in the Cotswolds and the Southwest of England. With 38 meeting rooms to manage at the Stadium, Rendezvous handles a conference and events business worth in the region of £700,000 a year with only two members of administration staff.

Ask any venue operator and they’ll tell you the importance of delivering excellent service, top-notch facilities and outstanding catering. Rendezvous Events offers an effective event management solution which manages the smooth operation of this business and also automates the sales process necessary in a competitive and fast-paced world.

Take a look at what Rendezvous can offer your operation:-

• Calendar management
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Sales management
• Catering/food Service
• Guest room management
• Restaurant management
• Management reporting

By having up-to-date availability and client data, better revenue is generated with minimal lost opportunities through powerful activity and contact management. Rendezvous streamlines venue operation, offers outstanding service with 24/7 support and, with Software as a Service (SaaS), it’s available as an instant solution with zero IT cost. Pay a low monthly fee and you are up and running.

Ten tips for planning a conference

A good conference relies on good planning. Here are ten tips to pass on to your customers on how to plan the perfect event – and how Rendezvous will help you to help them.

1. A good conference does more than present facts. Think of a different way to present your points. Make the conference environment attractive and distinctive. Give your delegates something to think about, talk about and take away with them.

2. Plan ahead and plan well. Define your audience and design the programme to meet their needs. Canvas potential delegates in advance and ask for suggestions about conference content.

3. Choose a venue that’s convenient for the delegates. Consider travelling arrangements, the nearest station, motorway proximity, ease of parking.

4. Get the timing right. Start at a time that is convenient to those travelling long distances. Avoid school holidays.

5. Visit the venue well in advance. Check its size, the facilities it offers, if accommodation is available, the kind of catering that can be arranged on site.

6. Check your costs. Ensure the venue is cost-effective for your needs. Don’t forget to include speakers’ fees. Consider sponsorship to offset expenses.

7. Give your speakers as much notice as possible so that they have plenty of time to prepare an effective presentation. Check with each that their intended presentation does not deviate from the main theme of the conference.

8. Give your delegates plenty of notice in advance with a mailshot. Detail the conference content, how to get to the venue, time of registration, what the delegates need to bring. Ask about accommodation requirements and any dietary needs.

9. Arrive in good time, well before registration, to check details of the venue and that all requested facilities are in place. Before the start, ensure each speaker has what he or she needs – audio visual equipment, flip charts, etc.

10. At the end of the conference, don’t forget to personally thank the speakers, the chairperson separately and, of course, the delegates for attending. Later, write personal thank-you notes to the speakers and chairperson.

And putting all this into practice…

Let’s look at how three prestigious Rendezvous users benefit from its versatility and flexibility.

The modern technology behind historic Cardiff

Cardiff Castle and Cardiff City Hall are places steeped in history. The castle is one of Wales’ leading heritage attractions, dating back 2,000 years to Roman times. City Hall is a magnificent Edwardian building standing in one of the world’s finest civic centres. But behind the scenes ancient meets modern as NFS’ Rendezvous suite of software runs the venue needs for both sites.

Rendezvous went live in Cardiff in March and since then administration has been cut by two-thirds.

“With Rendezvous, there is less need for paperwork and no more duplication of information,” says Conference and Events Manager Alexandra McIlquham-Jones. “Once we take a booking, all the information we need from a client is stored for future use. Before Rendezvous we were constantly asking clients for more details throughout the booking process. Now there is less onus on customers to supply information. Everything we need is stored in the Rendezvous database.”

“This is a business in which it pays to be proactive, and with Rendezvous behind us, our staff are freed up to spend less time on paperwork and more time with customers.”

With so much going on across the two venues, what pleases Alexandra is the way Rendezvous’ activities aspect allows staff to keep their diary clean and clear. “We can take a booking and then forget about it. The software does all the thinking and remembering for us, prompting us into action at exactly the right time. It keeps us on top of the whole customer management scenario.

“Rendezvous enables us to convert enquires into business, prompting us when we need to move forward on any project. It prevents us from double-booking rooms, and keeps us on top of all booking and enquiries. Efficiency like this becomes a revenue generator in itself.”

“I can’t remember what it was like before we had Rendezvous. I don’t know how we ever managed without it.”

Forecasting success for Maldron Hotels

With 23 hotels in key locations throughout Ireland, Maldron Hotels have won a reputation for the perfect combination of facilities and services. In May, Maldron opened their first hotel in mainland UK and immediately installed the Rendezvous suite of software.

“Rendezvous has been very successful for us at our Irish sites, so it was the natural choice for Cardiff,” says the hotel’s General Manager Emma Dalton. “We use it to book conference rooms and restaurant reservations. For me, its strength is its flexibility.”

“It is user-friendly with a simple and intuitive interface. We have one dedicated conference person using it, but also a number of other agents who pick up enquiries as well, so it is important for us to have a system that is easy to learn and operate.”

“Visually, it’s one of the best systems I’ve seen. As soon as you log on, it shows you the whole room situation at a glance. Our business involves a lot of provisional bookings and Rendezvous tells us straight away what is confirmed and what is provisional.”

Emma is equally impressed by the system’s database, from which mail shots can be pulled with ease. But, for her, the major advantage lies in its forecasting abilities.

“With a new property like ours, it is very important to know the profile of our users – which guests are one time visitors, which ones are regulars,” she says. “We can track the volume coming from certain companies and then launch appropriate incentives direct to them.”

“With Rendezvous we can easily pull off data for the past week, the past month, or longer. It tells us what the strongest days of the week are for us. In time that will helps us to forecast our room hire revenue. This helps consolidate the business, to see in which areas we are doing best and which aspects to take forward. In this way, Rendezvous becomes a revenue generator for us.”

Rendezvous has already played a major role in the success of Maldron’s Irish business. Soon it will be at the heart of the company’s new line of UK hotels too.

Restaurant Associates: Catering for the needs of RICS

Restaurant Associates provides executive dining to a range of companies including leading law firms, investment banks and innovative marketing agencies, working with consultant chefs to deliver award-winning food in top London restaurants.

This list includes The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), the world’s leading professional body for qualifications and standards in land, property and construction. Restaurant Associates are the sole caterers for RICS, where Rendezvous has been playing a pivotal role since October.

“We’ve only just started using Rendezvous, but already we’re delighted about how straightforward and user-friendly it is,” says Marine André from Restaurant Associates’ venue office.

“As well as being the sole catering company for RICS, we also handle conference rooms for the Institution. Rendezvous gives us an easy way to book rooms, take in the catering details as required and organise fine points such as the need for conference calls, microphones, screens and anything else needed for each individual booking.”

RICS employees at two sites in London and Coventry have their own interfaces with the Rendezvous system. They make the bookings and Marine’s office handles the administration. In those circumstances it would be all too easy for double bookings to occur, but Rendezvous prevents this, as it records all bookings for rooms and catering details.

For Marine, the two biggest advantages of Rendezvous are its ease of use for RICS people and, in her office, its flexibility. She is also a great fan of the NFS support desk, whose dedicated staff gave her help as needed during the installation and early days of use.

“For us, Rendezvous ticks all the boxes,” says Marine.

Competition: Win a bottle of bubbly

Here’s your chance to win a bottle of champagne. To be in with a chance of winning, all you need do is answer the five questions below, all based on stories in this issue of NFS Today, then tell us something about your business. The prize will go to the sender of the first correct set of answers electronically drawn after the closing date.

• What is the name of the events management software suite from NFS?
• What does the acronym SaaS stand for?
• In what month did Rendezvous go live at Cardiff Castle and City Hall?
• How many hotels do Maldon operate in Ireland?
• How many sites does Rendezvous cover for RICS?

Now tell us something about yourself…

• Are you using an integrated venue system?
• Is billing in your account system?
• Do you run a conference business, a catering business, or a combination of both?
• How useful is a good database to your business?
• How important to you are good diary and sales management systems?

Closing date for entries is 31st December 2011. Email your answers to: peter@nfs-hospitality.com