Latest / Event Industry News Podcast / Experience the Destination Venue Effect – Allianz Stadium, Twickenham

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Experience the Destination Venue Effect – Allianz Stadium, Twickenham · Event Industry News Podcast

• 0:06
  Hello everybody and welcome to the Event Industry News
• 0:10
  Podcast with me, James Dixon, wishing you all a very good morning,
• 0:13
  afternoon, or evening, whenever or wherever you tune into our podcast from
• 0:17
  today. And we are on site again.
• 0:22
  It doesn't feel like it, but a year ago we
• 0:26
  were sat in the very room that we're in today at the Allianz Stadium at
• 0:29
  Twickenham, finding out about all sorts of fantastic developments
• 0:33
  that the venue had undergone in recent years. There'd been the launch of a
• 0:37
  new hotel, there'd been all sorts of stuff that happened, and I can't
• 0:41
  believe it's a year on that we're back here facilitating a
• 0:46
  bit of a roundtable discussion here today at the stadium. We've got people
• 0:49
  who work across the events industry who've come and joined us today. We're sat around
• 0:53
  here and I kind of likened it kind of like the Overlap podcast
• 0:57
  today, if anybody's familiar with it. You know, you are all Gary Neville and Jamie
• 1:00
  Carragher today of the events industry, sat around a table
• 1:04
  and just having a chat for the next hour or so. So we're going to
• 1:08
  kick the conversation off by introducing and saying thank
• 1:12
  you, as we did a year ago, to Johanna Byrane, the Head of Business Development
• 1:16
  at the Allianz Stadium. Johanna, thanks for having us back here. You're welcome.
• 1:20
  And Yeah, I can't believe it's been a year. And presumably once
• 1:24
  we left last year, everything just stayed still and nothing's happened. Yep,
• 1:27
  nothing happened. Closed the doors for a year and welcomed you back yesterday. So well
• 1:31
  done. Thank you everyone for coming as well today to Allianz Stadium, uh,
• 1:34
  Twickenham. I know many of you have traveled for quite a distance, some of you
• 1:37
  have walked down the road as well. So, uh, no, but it's really lovely to
• 1:41
  have you all here and welcome and hope you enjoy the day here. And yeah,
• 1:45
  we were here last year, the— I think the hotel had recently
• 1:48
  opened. Um, you could still smell the paint when we stayed there last year.
• 1:52
  Um, it's great. Um, tell us about some of the other developments
• 1:56
  because people can reference back what we did this last year on eventindustrynews.com.
• 2:01
  They can look at the videos and the content from last year if they want
• 2:03
  to refresh themselves. So tell us what's been happening in the 12 months since we
• 2:06
  were last here. Yeah, we never sit still. Uh, the stadium— well, the patch of
• 2:10
  grass that we'll see, um, the area was bought back in 1907 if
• 2:14
  you don't know your history of the stadium, and we've obviously evolved the stadium into
• 2:17
  a destination over the years, and we never sit still.
• 2:21
  Events change, clients' requirements— like, the world is ever-changing, I think we all
• 2:25
  know that at the moment— and demands. Really what we've done, apart from a
• 2:28
  huge pitch project in the summer— so the pitch you'll see shortly,
• 2:32
  that was completely transformed over the year, so that
• 2:36
  happened this summer— we've integrated a lot more technology into
• 2:39
  all our suites, especially our Level 2 suites. A lot more turnkey solutions
• 2:43
  for clients. Budgets are tight for a lot of clients. So we've said, actually,
• 2:46
  let's just get the technology in there. Let's get the lighting, let's get the Teams
• 2:50
  units. So we've really invested quite a lot in our conference spaces as well.
• 2:54
  And always evolving the stadium. When we walk around, we have got building
• 2:59
  works going on as well. It hasn't affected you, the clients don't see that,
• 3:02
  but just behind the scenes, getting ready for a busy autumn series of
• 3:05
  matches. So it's constant, we're a working stadium. We're working
• 3:09
  stadium, and one part of that is obviously putting a zip wire across the roof
• 3:12
  as well. Well, we'll come to that in a bit. I'm curious, let's just touch
• 3:15
  on something you just said there about the tech, um, investment. Just expand on that
• 3:18
  a little bit and tell us exactly. Well, no, but in the broadest
• 3:23
  sense, when we say tech, what do we mean? I think it was just we
• 3:26
  have, um, we have some boardrooms downstairs, we have some conference suites downstairs,
• 3:31
  and people say, so where would we put a stage? Where would we put screens?
• 3:33
  Oh, we now need repeaters screens, and we just kept getting asked
• 3:37
  those questions. Our Rose Room on the ground floor, which has a large event in
• 3:40
  today, uh, it does have pillars. They keep us safe, they keep us in the
• 3:44
  stadium, but again, people having then to cost in, oh,
• 3:47
  we need some additional repeater— we just put repeaters everywhere all summer.
• 3:51
  You know, people can now go in and go, actually, we don't need to spend
• 3:54
  money on that, we can spend it on other things, or do a share saving.
• 3:57
  All the Level 2, we enhanced all our repeater screens that are on brackets.
• 4:00
  They can move, so again, people can change the format. And the lighting, which is
• 4:04
  obviously sustainable LED lighting, we've changed that as
• 4:07
  well, so we can now change it to colours of people's brands as well.
• 4:10
  So actually, if people just need a quick go-to conference, they can go,
• 4:14
  great, that room will work for us. We've put Teams units, we've got one here
• 4:17
  in the Allianz Suite as well, we've put Teams units in a lot of our
• 4:20
  smaller rooms as well. So just offer, you know, just offering
• 4:24
  what people now expect when they walk into a conference room. It's interesting when you
• 4:28
  say what people expect, because you know, all of this stuff that you just mentioned
• 4:32
  there is, you know, it will be on a spreadsheet or it will be on
• 4:35
  a list and everyone sat around the table today are involved in running events,
• 4:38
  so I think everybody sat around the table can attest to sort
• 4:42
  of going through, oh Christ, we need more repeater screens, we need something so that,
• 4:45
  oh now so-and-so can't join that panel and they want to dial in on
• 4:49
  video link, how do we do that? Just having simple stuff like that in a
• 4:53
  venue, I don't think it could be overstated how much of
• 4:56
  a difference that does make to all the— And we were being asked for it
• 4:59
  a lot as well and we do have a full team here of Eclipse Global
• 5:02
  onsite all week. So as well, they're really supportive of clients.
• 5:05
  Obviously, they can bring in the additional, but just having that, it just takes,
• 5:08
  especially for breakout rooms, you've got your big plenary where people probably spend a
• 5:12
  lot of money on sets and production. But those smaller tracks
• 5:16
  or breakout rooms, we just really kept getting asked, and we thought, actually, let's just
• 5:20
  get it done. And then clients, hopefully, it's a nice surprise and delight for people
• 5:23
  who return. But people who go, what is that inclusive? And actually, it is an
• 5:27
  inclusive rate, they go, Absolutely. Have a big budget effect as
• 5:30
  well, won't it, on people? You know, when they don't have to factor those additional
• 5:33
  things in, it either reduces budget or gives them scope to put other things into
• 5:37
  their production. You mentioned that—
• 5:41
  again, I'm going to sort of push the zipline over there a little bit because
• 5:44
  that's something that we're going to talk about. We're all going to, or some of
• 5:47
  us will experience today. There may or may not be footage of me
• 5:51
  going across a zipline from the roof of the Allianz Stadium
• 5:55
  at some point on Event Industry News. Going forward
• 6:00
  and back like a TikTok, like you said. Yeah, we will come to that in
• 6:03
  a bit. No, talking about organisers' kind
• 6:08
  of expectations, all of those changes that you've made,
• 6:12
  have they been because there have been internal meetings where you've said, we're hearing
• 6:15
  this a lot, or are clients that come here quite vocal in saying,
• 6:20
  we really like you to have this in? What kind of prompted and drove that?
• 6:23
  It was really being asked. The event managers, you know, as the planning progressed,
• 6:29
  There was a bit of both really. As a team, we kind of listen to
• 6:32
  what clients want. We say another client would have said, oh, we'd come back,
• 6:35
  but you know, we're having to now budget in X, Y, and Z and things
• 6:37
  like that. We just want to provide clients with a really easy option. You know,
• 6:41
  budgets are tight, people are looking at their spend, people want a really good experience
• 6:45
  when they come and they choose a venue. And we're saying actually the feedback we're
• 6:49
  getting is that was so easy, everything was there for us, it worked really well,
• 6:53
  the tech worked well. We could just turn up and leave, and that was great.
• 6:56
  So a bit of both really, you know, and then as a team, obviously,
• 6:59
  you just say, can we budget to do this? But yeah, it also has to
• 7:03
  work on a match day as well. So a lot of our suites, they weren't
• 7:06
  built like our South Stand is very much a conference center, but suites like this
• 7:10
  today has to work on a match day. So we have to make sure that
• 7:14
  tech and stadiums, I am a stadium queen, I would
• 7:18
  say, I love a stadium, whatever it is, but They have lots of screens everywhere,
• 7:22
  bars, and lots of toilets as well. So, you know, they are fit for purpose
• 7:27
  for those. So yeah, these, this is a normal screen, and in many conference rooms
• 7:30
  you wouldn't have this many screens, but these are here all the time so you
• 7:33
  can use them, and they can show different content on all of them as well.
• 7:35
  No, absolutely. And we're here today because, as you'll see
• 7:39
  on the screens, you know, we're experiencing the destination venue effect. And,
• 7:43
  you know, one of the major selling points of the Allianz Stadium as a,
• 7:46
  as an event space as well on non-match days is the fact
• 7:50
  that there are these experiences built into it. And, you know, we'll take
• 7:54
  some footage of sort of the, the room that we're in at the moment,
• 7:58
  um, that we'll cut into the podcast today so people can kind of
• 8:01
  see what it is. And I said this last year, it's not a normal kind
• 8:05
  of conference room that you get in certain sort of convention
• 8:09
  centers and things like that. You know, I've been we've all been in them,
• 8:12
  and you kind of have to sometimes bring furniture and other bits and pieces in
• 8:15
  to dress it. The good thing about this particular room, and I'm
• 8:19
  sure it's true of other spaces in here, is because it's catering for that matchday
• 8:22
  experience as well, it's kind of all geared up so that people feel like they're
• 8:25
  walking into a restaurant or into a bar rather than just
• 8:29
  a blank space. Absolutely, like we've 34 event spaces.
• 8:32
  I know some of you have used them, so thank you very much. We have
• 8:35
  34 event spaces in the stadium, and all 4 you'll have a look
• 8:39
  around. Like, we are super busy today, so we're only going to show you a
• 8:41
  couple. So don't worry, we're not going to walk around 34. But every stand is
• 8:45
  different in personality and design. So you can go— the idea of a destination,
• 8:49
  and people are asking this more, is they want to get their business done
• 8:53
  in a conference-led auditorium or high-tech.
• 8:56
  But they don't want to then have to take 200 people off to find a
• 8:59
  bar or restaurant somewhere. We're moving them around the stadium, walk around
• 9:03
  the pitch, sip on a pitch, whatever you want to do, and then go to
• 9:05
  a lounge or a bar restaurant without actually leaving. And with the hotel on site
• 9:08
  as well, and the gym and the pools, it does offer that one-stop
• 9:12
  shop, all within one stadium. At this point,
• 9:16
  let's pass— can we pass that microphone there, number 3? Can we pass
• 9:20
  it down to Danica here? Because I think rather than just— we'll sort of start
• 9:24
  opening up the conversation around the table. Danica Bacon,
• 9:28
  Head of Operations, is that right? Packaging and International at Easyfairs.
• 9:31
  And we've got a team from Easyfairs here today because their office is just a
• 9:35
  stone's throw away from the stadium, so thanks for coming along.
• 9:38
  But some of the stuff that Johanna's just been talking
• 9:42
  about, and we're talking about a destination effect and being able to offer other
• 9:46
  things within an events package to clients,
• 9:50
  are you experiencing at EasyFest like a change of,
• 9:54
  I suppose, demand? Have you noticed that clients' sort of requirements
• 9:58
  and how you're shaping certain events has changed in the last few years?
• 10:02
  I would say they, they've seen that they stayed the same, but there is different
• 10:05
  requirements of people wanting to do these spin-off workshops and,
• 10:09
  you know, at multiple venues. Yes, they have offices, but it's not built
• 10:12
  with the tech in. You have to order the AV additionally, catering additionally. I mean,
• 10:16
  we've obviously done events here at the stadium, um, where we've
• 10:20
  used quite a few of the suites, um, and you saying that obviously now you've
• 10:24
  got more stages built in, it just makes it easier because rather than going,
• 10:27
  which way is it going to work now it's already in there. On the subject
• 10:30
  of AV, I'm going to check that's on. Oh, we've got a green— hey,
• 10:33
  hey, hey, yes, it is on. Sorry, sorry, you got your head— you're very
• 10:37
  gentle. Sorry I interrupted you there, but I wanted to make sure that we were
• 10:40
  capturing this. Yes, absolutely. So I think the fact that venues
• 10:44
  are making the changes, I think it makes it easier as an organizer to
• 10:48
  then be able to facilitate, you know, the needs of our customers,
• 10:52
  as well as for us, because obviously, you know, Um, when we're in halls
• 10:56
  for a week on site, we're in a little office. Normally it's— there's nothing
• 10:59
  in it, just some furniture. So it would be nice when, you know, people start
• 11:03
  to improve that with screens or something like that. Is it a consideration? I've just
• 11:06
  sort of, you know, look around the table, you know, a very sort of subtle
• 11:09
  show of hands. If, if any of the people around the table today, if you're
• 11:12
  looking at a venue, if you— if a venue is obvious that
• 11:16
  it's investing and it's pushing and upgrading and putting
• 11:20
  its own kit in. Is that a consideration when you're looking at it?
• 11:24
  Right, I'm seeing nods of heads. You like to say— because that's gonna—
• 11:27
  obviously that's going to help out with budgets, with all that sort of stuff.
• 11:30
  Great. Uh, and getting into— sorry, no, I mean, it does help with budgets,
• 11:34
  but it also helps with the planning. There's less people that you need to talk
• 11:37
  to. Sure. Um, it's keeping that one point of contact so that your venue or
• 11:41
  account manager or whatever venue it is can answer all your questions, rather than,
• 11:44
  oh, you'll need to speak to that person and that person. It just streamlines it
• 11:48
  as well. So I think it's everyone knows where they stand, so it makes it
• 11:51
  a lot easier for us. Well, for context, just, you know, and for the people
• 11:53
  sat around the table today, what type of events are you particularly involved in
• 11:57
  organizing? Yeah, so we are like, we predominantly do B2B trade exhibition
• 12:02
  shows, conferences, and awards. We've just come off a long run of
• 12:06
  3 events at Excel. I've got a gala dinner for 460
• 12:10
  people tomorrow at Magazine London, and in 2 weeks we've got 3 shows co-located
• 12:14
  in Birmingham. So we're very much exhibition-led,
• 12:17
  uh, with the additions of, uh, the awards, which are nice. So it's a
• 12:21
  very busy season for everyone, I think, uh, around the table. It's just
• 12:25
  leading up to Christmas, it's the, uh, the end goal for everyone, uh, before it
• 12:28
  starts being crazy again in January. Yeah, I'm always— when
• 12:32
  it comes to trade shows, I've worked in, you know, for and
• 12:36
  around, and I've attended as exhibitors actually with other clients, where I've,
• 12:39
  um, a lot of trade shows. And I'm curious to see sort of how they
• 12:43
  have shifted in the last few years because I
• 12:47
  remember going to my first one in 2005 and it was very,
• 12:50
  very kind of formal. Everybody was in suits and ties
• 12:54
  and, you know, you were expected to sort of be there in your best,
• 12:57
  you know, in your best Burton suit, the one for
• 13:00
  the teenagers, yeah, um, in your best Burton suit, you know, shiny shoes
• 13:04
  and everything. You stand there absolutely sweating for 3 days stood
• 13:08
  in the NEC and just something as simple as that has
• 13:12
  changed, I think, in, in the trade show world as well. Yeah,
• 13:15
  absolutely. I do think especially like post-COVID, um,
• 13:19
  it's more acceptable to wear trainers, um, and that's great for us who
• 13:22
  obviously run around all the time, but it's also better for, you know, your exhibitors,
• 13:26
  visitors, your sales teams, that they're not getting, you know, blisters and stuff on site
• 13:30
  because they're wearing the brand new shoes that they haven't worn before. Um, but I
• 13:33
  think as well it's for when you walk around a show now, it's more relaxed.
• 13:38
  I think if you have all of your exhibitors there in a suit, 3-piece suit
• 13:41
  or tie, it's just uncomfortable. They're in an exhibition hall for 2 days,
• 13:45
  like wearing a shirt and trousers is more than acceptable. And I think it's quite
• 13:49
  nice now to see that relaxed atmosphere. I think from an exhibitor and also
• 13:53
  an attendee to trade shows, you can also curate your own day, which is
• 13:57
  so important. And we see that on events as well. So you can choose which
• 14:00
  sessions, you've got it all there ahead, whereas before you would just wander
• 14:04
  around, really. There's a lot more content. You can choose when you go.
• 14:07
  You can choose when you leave. You can choose what sessions, what exhibitors,
• 14:10
  pre-organize your appointments, you know, really make— because I think when people are
• 14:14
  leaving, whether you work from home or where you're traveling to treasure, curate your
• 14:18
  own day. If it doesn't work for you to get there at 9, you get
• 14:20
  there at 11. You know, it's all these little touchpoints that I think are really
• 14:23
  important on events. We see here as well, people offering people a choice of which
• 14:27
  breakouts they attend or which track. How they get here, what format of
• 14:31
  the room, or if they want a hybrid, something more relaxed or something more formal.
• 14:34
  And I think trade shows have really changed that way as well as being able
• 14:38
  to wear flat shoes. And I think as well with the event tech as well,
• 14:40
  like we record a lot of our content now. So if people miss
• 14:44
  a session or they can't do sessions, they can obviously
• 14:48
  depending on, you know, what options that we have available post-show,
• 14:51
  but then they can get that content. And I do think that makes it easier
• 14:55
  for people to actually have conversations throughout the day rather than jumping from one stage
• 14:59
  to another because there's certain sessions that they want to see, but then they also
• 15:02
  want to speak to people, because that's the whole point of trade shows, it's that
• 15:06
  face-to-face, that human contact. So I think it is nice to see that they are
• 15:10
  still thriving. Sorry, James, I'm going to do your job now.
• 15:13
  I've thought of a question, but I'd love to ask it to everyone around the
• 15:16
  table. When it comes to looking, because you mentioned Birmingham, which I know is really
• 15:20
  popular, certainly location-wise, I don't know if anyone else is willing
• 15:24
  to chat about how much a location is important to somebody's
• 15:28
  event, if they're kind of flexible, because we hear it all the time. Sometimes people
• 15:32
  consider us all Central London,
• 15:35
  or they'll— we compete against Birmingham or a stadium in Manchester.
• 15:39
  So we'd love to hear more about a destination actually being chosen, the locations,
• 15:43
  you know, what's important to customers now. So if anyone's willing to speak up freely.
• 15:46
  And as I said, anybody who wants to grab a microphone and jump into the
• 15:50
  conversation at any point, just grab
• 15:54
  that, pass that down. There we go. Yeah, I think
• 15:59
  like, sorry, I'm Hannah from Bearded Kitten, senior producer
• 16:03
  at Bearded Kitten. Hannah from Bearded Kitten. Yeah. Welcome to the conversation. Thank you.
• 16:07
  I would say location is a huge thing. We often have clients
• 16:11
  now, it's not just UK-based clients, we get a lot of clients from around
• 16:16
  the world now who want to activate within the UK because we're such
• 16:19
  a global hub. And it's about educating
• 16:22
  them quite a lot of the time that they think in their mind they
• 16:26
  want a location that's directly within central London, and you're like,
• 16:30
  actually, for the amount of people that you want there, there's minimal, or minimal
• 16:34
  with the technology side or the
• 16:38
  facilities that you need, and etc. So, um, I think what
• 16:42
  we're finding a lot of the time is educating them, like, actually how easy it
• 16:46
  is to get to somewhere like here, like Twickenham, which is really good transport
• 16:50
  links into central London, or also educating
• 16:54
  them about, yeah, other cities within the UK that you could activate that's going
• 16:58
  to reach another global audience, for example.
• 17:02
  Did you find— I'm originally from West London,
• 17:05
  I moved to Yorkshire 28 years ago, and I'm still amazed
• 17:09
  by how many people outside of London don't realize how
• 17:14
  big it is and how many different sort of pockets and urbanizations
• 17:18
  you've got within that Greater London area that you can utilize. Like you said,
• 17:21
  a lot of people when they come in with international events will go,
• 17:25
  well, we need to be there, we need to be able to see the House
• 17:27
  of Parliament and St. Paul's Cathedral, and if we can't see those things, we're not
• 17:30
  in London, you know. And I'm just, you know, we're here now and I'm wondering,
• 17:34
  maybe one, has the Ted Lasso effect hit yet around here? So yeah,
• 17:38
  I'm just curious what you think about that. Yeah, and I think also,
• 17:41
  again, um, we do get a lot of clients who
• 17:45
  forget that people will travel Like, it's very common to
• 17:49
  travel 2 hours to go to something in the UK, but then
• 17:52
  obviously in places, for example, just to use America as
• 17:57
  an example, it's not as easy that they would travel from place to
• 18:01
  place. So yeah, I guess it's just a bit more education, and what we tend
• 18:05
  to do quite a lot of the time is like a map that basically just
• 18:08
  shows like how easy it is to get here, and then obviously when they come
• 18:11
  over, we'll be like, come on a site visit and we can take you
• 18:15
  on the route so they can understand it a bit more. Mentioning that we had
• 18:19
  an esports event here last year and the organizing team came
• 18:23
  over from Florida and they said, so, okay, so if people can't,
• 18:27
  how are they going to get here? And I was like, well, there's 24-hour bus
• 18:30
  outside, we're on the tubes, we're on trains. They were like, public transport?
• 18:35
  And I was like, yes, yes, everyone will come by public transport. These people coming
• 18:39
  are 18 to 25 years old. Most of them will come by public transport.
• 18:42
  They went, and leave at night and get your public transport home? I was like,
• 18:45
  yes. It was like at night was 7 o'clock, by the way, you know,
• 18:48
  it wasn't like 1 o'clock in the morning. And but as you said, there's that
• 18:51
  infrastructure isn't there in some parts of the States. And they were amazed that people
• 18:55
  will come into Heathrow and go 4 stops on the tube to us.
• 18:59
  Yeah. And they're like, so they don't need to get a taxi? No, they can
• 19:02
  if they want, but you know, just hop on a tube, you know. Our car
• 19:04
  park was— and our car parks are empty for that event because everyone came on
• 19:07
  public transport, including the producers and the organizers who all lived in Richmond
• 19:11
  and Kew. And they were like, Yeah, we just hopped on the tube this morning,
• 19:13
  you know, so, or the train. So, uh, yeah, it is important to say that.
• 19:16
  And we have the speeded up walking routes from the station and things like that
• 19:20
  just to show people as well. But yeah, Ted Lasso, yeah, that has purely
• 19:24
  for research purposes last night, knowing that we
• 19:27
  were going to do this today, I did research the public transport routes by heading
• 19:30
  up to West London from here, and it was remarkably
• 19:34
  easy. I'd never done the journey on public transport. You did give Kirsty the wrong
• 19:36
  information though. Yeah, I did. Yes, sorry,
• 19:40
  come to me, Kitty. Sorry, but yeah, I did. I, I walked
• 19:44
  from here, Twickenham Station, one stop to Richmond Tube,
• 19:48
  and there you go. And it is, yeah, a lot of the time that,
• 19:50
  that, that transport thing, I guess. Does everybody around the table
• 19:54
  deal with international clients as well as domestic? Right, okay, so you'll
• 19:58
  have all had companies and clients from elsewhere go, oh,
• 20:02
  you can just do that, it's quite easy. And they'll look— I
• 20:05
  wonder whether or not have you had people look at the stadium on a map
• 20:09
  and go, oh, that's a bit far out. Has it ever been a conversation sort
• 20:13
  of non-starter as such? Absolutely. And people, like, people want to come
• 20:16
  here, then this, and we say, well, it's less than 20 minutes into Waterloo,
• 20:20
  or what we just say, who's your audience really? And it is amazing, as much
• 20:24
  as we will encourage people to always use public transport, for some people it's quite
• 20:28
  a treat to drive as well. And we'll say, if people are driving or you're
• 20:31
  bringing people in on coaches, Why don't you start at like 10
• 20:35
  or 10:30 and start with brunch and finish later? You know,
• 20:38
  avoid that rush hour. Avoid peak travel fares as well,
• 20:42
  which is really important. Trains are very expensive.
• 20:46
  And just like saying, you don't have to— who says your conference has to start
• 20:49
  at 9? It doesn't have to. Why don't you start half 10? Start with brunch,
• 20:53
  work all the way through, and then actually stay for dinner or have a drink
• 20:57
  at whatever you want. You know, your days doesn't have to be 9 to 5.
• 20:59
  And I think having people thought that actually we you know, your peak travel fares
• 21:03
  or train fares go down hugely when you just avoid that rush hour.
• 21:07
  Um, but yeah, absolutely, people kind of don't get where we are at first.
• 21:11
  Um, but most people have been here for a rugby match, but again, that's a
• 21:15
  different ball game altogether. Um, literally, literally.
• 21:18
  Uh, but yeah, once they come here, they usually go, oh, that was quite easy,
• 21:21
  and they felt like they've come to greenery and, you know, it's nice and green
• 21:24
  and fresh air and a day off-site and things like that. Yeah, just out of
• 21:28
  curiosity, anybody shifted traditional scheduling
• 21:32
  of an event because they've thought, hold on, why do we need to start?
• 21:36
  Has anybody around the table got an experience of saying, actually, let's move it
• 21:39
  back? Hmm, no one's done it. It's an interesting
• 21:44
  one, is it? Because— have you?
• 21:48
  Yeah, I think it just depends on the portfolio.
• 21:52
  Okay. And the show type. Um, I mean, obviously a majority of
• 21:55
  our events would start, um, between 9 and 10.
• 21:59
  See, we prefer a 10 start because we just have a little bit more flexibility
• 22:03
  in the morning. And whereas we do shows in America where the show opens at
• 22:07
  7 AM because they are— they get up, they drive, they all drive
• 22:10
  to the, the event, and they like that early start. So that was one thing
• 22:14
  that I was like, oh wow, okay, 7 o'clock start, gotta get up at 5,
• 22:17
  great. But you know, that's just— that's the difference we've, we've seen.
• 22:21
  Um, and I suppose with award ceremonies that, that we have,
• 22:25
  that we do, they do have different start times depending on how
• 22:29
  long or how many awards there are. So like, we don't fit
• 22:32
  the— we need to start at like 6. No, sometimes we have to start at
• 22:36
  5 because we've got so much to get through. So I think it does depend
• 22:39
  as well, especially where people are coming from as well. So if it's a really
• 22:42
  high international, people are traveling from all over, you can't have the conference
• 22:46
  start really early because you're like, okay, they need to
• 22:50
  get there. So I think it's just knowing your audience as well before you make
• 22:53
  that decision. Absolutely. And it is about the, the American— we did have a US
• 22:56
  inbound event, and they start at 7 AM. 7 AM start.
• 23:00
  That was like straight through, you know. And we were like,
• 23:04
  7? Wow. You know, here we're going, we'll start with brunch about 10:30.
• 23:07
  And they go, no, we'll start with breakfast at 7 AM. We're like, OK,
• 23:11
  you carry on. But yeah, they do just work earlier and work later as
• 23:15
  well, actually. Yeah. The sort of the question about the timings and
• 23:18
  changing stuff, you know, we've all had conversations and seen the shifts in working patterns,
• 23:22
  particularly since pandemic, where people work from home now. One of the biggest sort of,
• 23:27
  I suppose, plus points that people extolled about people
• 23:31
  working from home is that they had that flexibility. If they needed to maybe take
• 23:34
  an hour off in the afternoon to pick kids up from school, they could then
• 23:37
  hop back on their laptops, work into the evening. They could find, kind of shift
• 23:41
  their day into a pattern that suited them, provided all the work was done.
• 23:45
  So it's a weird one that a lot of people's working patterns day
• 23:49
  to day have shifted, but for a lot of certainly B2B events,
• 23:53
  you know, traditional trade shows, conferences, conventions, things like that, we still
• 23:57
  kind of fundamentally work in an office sort of
• 24:01
  hour pattern, don't we? Which is a— I don't know if it's strange, if it's
• 24:05
  right or it's wrong, and I wonder when and if that shift will happen.
• 24:09
  I've not seen a trade show shift. You've had
• 24:12
  7 AM starts here. Have you had any later starts, really late starts?
• 24:17
  Yeah, we actually did a package last year, didn't we, the half-day one, where we
• 24:20
  had a lot of companies will now get here at 12, lunch,
• 24:24
  afternoon session, finish with like a quick catch-up and go. So the half-day
• 24:28
  condensed days are really popular. So it means people can,
• 24:32
  if they're traveling or if they've got commitments in the morning,
• 24:35
  Um, they'll get here from like midday, starting with lunch, go through
• 24:39
  like a 4 or 5 hour session, finish, and then leave later when the traffic's
• 24:43
  gone or the rush hour is gone. So yeah, so we've had— we, we actually
• 24:46
  created, didn't we? What was it called, Vinnie, last year? Was it the overtime
• 24:50
  package? That is— I thought overtime to me meant you get paid
• 24:53
  overtime, but overtime in rugby is when it goes past the 80 minutes.
• 24:57
  So it's almost like 5 o'clock has gone and passed, so you're
• 25:01
  adding on, but people started later and it went down really well, you know,
• 25:03
  people We just, and again, that's just based on a couple of customers, a couple
• 25:07
  of clients saying, listen, we've always done a 9 to 5, we just need to
• 25:09
  start a lot later because of other stuff going on. Get it all done in
• 25:12
  the afternoon, we'll finish with a quick drink or coffee, and people can make their
• 25:15
  way home at their leisure. So that's what we've seen, a change, not for everyone,
• 25:18
  but yes, more than anything, people start a bit later. They'll start
• 25:23
  at 10. I'm going to move on now to talk a little bit about,
• 25:27
  again, tying into why we're here, the destination effect, and why and
• 25:32
  what you've got on offer here outside of your event spaces,
• 25:36
  and why people can then maybe reshape their program a little bit and integrate some
• 25:39
  of these other opportunities that are available on site. And then curious
• 25:43
  to know if anybody's done stuff in their own events, you know, that— because
• 25:47
  again, we've historically brought people in,
• 25:50
  developed our schedules for our conferences, right? We're gonna have a keynote, and then
• 25:53
  we're gonna have a panel discussion, then we're gonna have a mid-morning break, blah blah
• 25:56
  blah blah blah blah blah. Finish at 5.
• 25:59
  Tell us about some of the stuff that's now available on site that's not what
• 26:02
  we would call a traditional event offering that people can utilize. Yeah, and again,
• 26:06
  like, we can tell you what we do here, but I'd love to hear what
• 26:08
  you guys have experienced at your venues and your events that has been different or
• 26:12
  unusual or worked really well. So I guess it's just
• 26:16
  bringing to life the stadium. That's what our, you know, our job is, bringing the
• 26:19
  stadium alive. The RFU profits of all the events that people book here go back
• 26:23
  into funding the grassroots game. So it's funny, I walked through Kissimmee, the office earlier,
• 26:27
  and I said, we're very much part of a much bigger picture here. We are
• 26:30
  the home of a governing body. Um, so that's a really nice kind of circular
• 26:33
  motion as to where our RFU profits go, and that's why we can create
• 26:37
  experiences here. But it is everything from— no, don't get wrong, there's companies here who
• 26:41
  just want a conference for 40 people and go home, and that's absolutely fine.
• 26:45
  They come here, they like the food, the location, the parking. But the majority,
• 26:48
  and we're in a particularly busy week this week, are those trade shows where there's
• 26:53
  splinter dinners going off, dinner for 10 here. They use— we've got 150 boxes
• 26:57
  overlooking the pitch, they'll use them. We actually have exhibitions who will take 40 boxes
• 27:02
  and there's an exhibition stand in each box, so actually you're walking between them all,
• 27:06
  which is quite nice. And they, they did that in COVID and they've never gone
• 27:09
  back to a normal format. It's a good idea, so there was separation between
• 27:13
  these. Yeah, so actually, and it's just like this, people could meet you in there,
• 27:15
  so that was quite fun, uh, and they still do that now. Um, but I,
• 27:19
  I guess it's things like pitchside barbecues we can add on. We also have our—
• 27:22
  I should have put a picture up. We also can do, like, to me,
• 27:25
  I look at the stadium, I think I've been in the events industry too long,
• 27:28
  and I see that as an auditorium. And for me, we bring
• 27:32
  in a stage, we have a couple of clients who will do the alfresco auditorium.
• 27:35
  We wouldn't want people to sit in the stadium seats all day, because obviously they're
• 27:39
  not economic. But for a welcome or a CEO welcome, we had a few clients
• 27:42
  this year do it, up to 2,000 people, or we can go bigger
• 27:46
  if you want. But a welcome, Very simple, using all the
• 27:50
  branding and then going off into all the different, again, curating their own day,
• 27:54
  going off into all their different routes. So I guess there is the pitchside experiences,
• 28:00
  there are lots of different restaurants, bars, to the lounges, but also this summer
• 28:04
  as well, our West car park, which just looks like a car park, was transformed
• 28:08
  into a fan village on a match day. We've started really seeing those
• 28:11
  experiences outside. We hosted 2 of the largest food festivals
• 28:15
  in the UK. We had 20,000 people over 3 days,
• 28:18
  and then that was in June and August. And then we just
• 28:22
  recently had, and you probably might know this, the client
• 28:25
  who just recently had their electrical vehicle and they wanted a festival feel.
• 28:28
  And they were here Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and they moved their expo from a traditional
• 28:33
  exhibition hall outside. Because actually they had all
• 28:36
  their activations, they got way more sponsors because they could have a bigger activation with
• 28:40
  a great backdrop. And they, on this, to attract families
• 28:43
  as well, they added on tours, they added on experiences, you could go and have
• 28:47
  a photo with trophies while, you know, the parents would consume looking
• 28:50
  at what to buy. So yeah, that really wonderful client
• 28:54
  who again just chat, they still have that exhibition offering
• 28:58
  and they built an auditorium as well and had plenaries out in
• 29:02
  the West Fan Village. I'm loving the idea of the
• 29:06
  exhibition stands in the corporate boxes. I think that's a
• 29:10
  great idea, you know, because, well, no shell scheme for a start, no messing
• 29:15
  about with that, but each person gets kind of a really sort of bespoke space.
• 29:19
  What a different way to kind of frame an exhibition. And the boxes, we don't
• 29:23
  move the furnitures out of them, so they're all different. So actually some are informal,
• 29:27
  some are more formal, but they all worked really well. It was almost they could
• 29:30
  put their branding, they all get their screens, they can share their content, but actually
• 29:33
  the customers, it was B2B, they could just move in and out and outside each
• 29:37
  one it had the name of the exhibitors, you could just move in and out,
• 29:39
  And yeah, they've never gone back after COVID. They did it for social distancing
• 29:43
  reasons and they just said it's worked. Yeah, again,
• 29:46
  sometimes when— I do think that we needed something to kind of
• 29:50
  prod us. It wasn't ideal, but I've said this many times before on the podcast
• 29:54
  that COVID pushed people down certain routes that
• 29:57
  they maybe had dipped their toe into or maybe thought, I don't really want
• 30:01
  to do that, but it forced people down certain routes that actually opened up a
• 30:04
  lot more ideas. And we've had exhibition stands around the pitch perimeter.
• 30:08
  Now you've got to be brave because obviously weather, and the only time,
• 30:11
  the only time we under the South Concourse, which is like a
• 30:15
  tunnel, a working tunnel, and we do take pedestrians
• 30:18
  through there, we have, which many of you will see, we had
• 30:23
  a, well, a family show all weekend and they did exhibitions
• 30:26
  all under there with uplighters. We've got screens up there and
• 30:29
  we just had a food expo under there as well. So people are really still
• 30:33
  thinking differently because they want to track footfall. We know that from
• 30:36
  our trade shows, they want a FAQ football, they want great content from it.
• 30:39
  And for us, we see that as a service tunnel, and for them, they saw
• 30:42
  their uplighters content, music blaring, all the exhibition
• 30:47
  stands there, and they loved it. And then they use the conference rooms for the
• 30:49
  sessions. So again, people are really thinking differently. Yeah, but breaking
• 30:53
  out traditional ways of thinking, which I guess we're
• 30:57
  all, you know, a lot of people have been guilty of for many years.
• 31:00
  This is how it works, this is how we've always done it, so this is
• 31:03
  how we will always do it. And you know, one of the reasons we're here,
• 31:06
  and one of the, you know, if you look on Event Industry News, we've been
• 31:09
  some other places as well recently, and the same sort of conversations
• 31:13
  are cropping up across the industry. And it's good to see that venues particularly are
• 31:19
  really kind of taking a more proactive approach to doing
• 31:22
  what they need to do internally. I think again,
• 31:25
  pre-COVID, there was kind of like just this, well, here's our venue, take it or
• 31:28
  leave it. I don't know if people are getting a feeling that not
• 31:32
  just in— yeah, I'd love to hear stories so you're not listening to me all
• 31:35
  the time. I'd love to see some stories. On the whole, are you seeing,
• 31:39
  you know, venues across the board pushing themselves a little bit
• 31:43
  harder and trying to say what and let you know as organizers what they are
• 31:48
  doing? I'm curious to know if anybody's got any thoughts on that. Grab a microphone,
• 31:51
  grab a microphone. Yeah,
• 31:54
  I think some of the events that we're doing now, it's a lot more activity-driven.
• 31:59
  So we have like a 3-day in a venue, and you have
• 32:03
  maybe a plenary session or your breakout session, but the afternoon
• 32:07
  is just all activities. And people can sign up to, I don't know,
• 32:10
  a cooking class, a cocktail-making class, go golf, go fishing.
• 32:15
  And it's just about that relationship building and that networking.
• 32:19
  So people are not in a boardroom, they're not in that plenary
• 32:22
  session all day. And then the next day, we do the same. But we start
• 32:25
  with an activity in the morning. And then the afternoon, it could be,
• 32:29
  let's go to the session and listen to the keynote. Who has driven that?
• 32:33
  Is it you? It's my team. To the client, your team, or has the client
• 32:37
  said to you, we want something different? No, it's all of our own, kind of,
• 32:40
  we organize the corporate events. But it's all our clients.
• 32:44
  So it's our own events that we do. And we kind of build that program.
• 32:49
  And it's worked so well. For a particular industry,
• 32:52
  well, one of our divisions that we use. And now we're seeing that other
• 32:56
  divisions in the company are like, oh, how did,
• 33:00
  how did you do that? Why are you not in the ballroom all day?
• 33:03
  And we need roundtables, and we need breakout sessions, and we need this. And we're
• 33:06
  like, actually, let's do a longer lunch. Let's do some food stations.
• 33:10
  Or let's do a welcome reception where everyone's outside on
• 33:14
  the lawn. And let's just do something different to get people talking.
• 33:18
  And have that networking time, rather than, like you were saying about the timings,
• 33:21
  the 9 to 5 in a ballroom. Sure. It doesn't work anymore. We do have
• 33:25
  to do it for some of our events, and that's absolutely fine.
• 33:28
  But even then, we're looking at, let's do a dinner over here.
• 33:32
  And let's do, you know, a sponsor wants to do drinks over here.
• 33:36
  So that networking and the drinks are still quite key.
• 33:40
  I think the networking is what can't take place over Teams. And this is
• 33:43
  exactly it. If you're, if you're getting people there, for 3 days, you need
• 33:48
  to show them a good time as well. They need to experience it, um,
• 33:51
  rather than just sitting, because everyone's sitting there on their phones.
• 33:55
  They're not listening to 8 hours of content the whole time.
• 33:59
  Yeah. So it just builds that relationship. So we're seeing a lot,
• 34:03
  and this is what we look at for a venue. Delegate feedback must then improve
• 34:07
  significantly because they're having a better experience. Yeah. And they all want to come the
• 34:11
  next year. Yeah. So you've got the relationship, you've got the salespeople there.
• 34:15
  They know that they are going to see their clients. They're taking them fishing for
• 34:19
  an hour and a half. They are on that boat with them. They know that
• 34:22
  they've got a small group of 6 people, and that's their, that's their
• 34:26
  networking time, because you're not going to do that at any other point. And people
• 34:30
  are traveling in to do that. They're coming to see us.
• 34:33
  What you may have already identified, but I know from speaking to
• 34:37
  people in the last few years about the word sustainable and sustainability and
• 34:41
  that whole conversation there, that there was this idea that,
• 34:45
  oh, to be a sustainable event or sustainable event organizer, we've got
• 34:49
  to— I've said this before— have bamboo plates and recyclable coffee
• 34:53
  cups, right? And people are missing the point that sustainability
• 34:56
  as a business is about having a business where people want to continue working for
• 35:00
  it, where your staff turnover decreases because you've got happier staff who are more
• 35:05
  enthused about working there, who are more committed. There's a loyalty that builds,
• 35:08
  and by reshaping internal events or corporate
• 35:12
  events of any nature, it has a massive impact on sustainability
• 35:16
  of businesses, because people are having better experiences, and they'll
• 35:20
  want to stay there longer. It does. And it's word of mouth then as well,
• 35:22
  isn't it? Yes. Whoever they're telling, or they're going back to their company and saying,
• 35:26
  I spent 2 days with this group, and it was great. And I spoke to
• 35:29
  the CEO directly, or I spoke to this manager directly,
• 35:33
  something that you can't do when you're in the office. You can't get hold of
• 35:35
  people. So it does, yeah, it has shifted a lot.
• 35:39
  Just on that, like, we obviously have a legacy because our, our profits
• 35:43
  go back into the game. I'd love to know, does anyone ever choose a venue
• 35:46
  based on their values or messaging?
• 35:51
  Have you chosen a particular venue because you've gone, oh, I love what they're doing,
• 35:54
  or I know that they support a charity,
• 35:57
  or they— I don't know, I'm just thinking of if that happens,
• 36:01
  because a lot of the unique venues— no, right, yeah, no, there's not at all.
• 36:05
  Unique venues in particular are, you know, upgraded,
• 36:08
  beautiful buildings, a lot of them. Certainly if you support the arts, if you know
• 36:12
  that you'll have an event in a gallery, that means that money's gone back into
• 36:14
  the arts or into music. It's just really curious because again, people really
• 36:18
  like our good for rugby messaging, um, and you
• 36:23
  know, again, they just kind of go, actually, there is a reason, you know,
• 36:25
  that was quite nice to know that, you know, the little boardroom we had there,
• 36:28
  the event, actually some of that money's gone back into funding more girls' toilets
• 36:32
  in rugby clubs or kits or educating people in inner-city schools
• 36:36
  and things like that. So it's quite a nice storytelling, you know, it's there if
• 36:39
  people want to draw on it or not, but people do really like our values
• 36:43
  of the, of the game. They do draw them into their businesses, even if they
• 36:46
  think they want a light touch of rugby. They do tend to— yeah, sport's great,
• 36:50
  right? Teamwork, performing well, competing, it usually resonates with some. But I was
• 36:54
  just wondering, for those of you who look for venues, if— have you chosen any
• 36:58
  of those unique venues? Because I know you've worked with a lot of the unique
• 37:01
  venues as well, and they've got some great storytelling, haven't they? And they really play
• 37:04
  on that as well. I don't know whether Kizzy wants to speak. Do you want
• 37:07
  to speak down there? I'll put you on the spot now. The first time,
• 37:11
  Kizzy Allott, Event Industry News. No, it's not the first time.
• 37:14
  Last week we did a showcase with Unique Venues of London and their ethos and
• 37:18
  that collective is it's actually owned by the
• 37:21
  venues, over 90 venues in the capital. Those venues
• 37:25
  can only be included in the collective if events aren't their only revenue
• 37:30
  source. So they have to be open to the public, they have to have another
• 37:33
  purpose, but all their events and their profits go back
• 37:38
  into the venue. So that kind of thing, yeah, the ethos and what they stand
• 37:41
  for. And same as you guys here, how the money goes back into
• 37:45
  rugby itself, and especially the girls. I like that side
• 37:49
  of it, yeah. Who would see the kind of what
• 37:53
  we've just spoken about as a secondary benefit to booking a venue?
• 37:56
  As you know, I understand it might have been the
• 38:01
  primary, but Has anybody booked a venue where it's been a secondary thing where you
• 38:04
  booked it for these reasons— budget,
• 38:07
  accessibility, logistics, all that normal, all the stuff that we would look
• 38:11
  for in a venue— and then as a secondary it's been, oh, and actually they
• 38:18
  Let's pass these down, pass the baton.
• 38:23
  I think it's good to know, and if it's like a B Corp venue and
• 38:27
  it's it's like, okay, great, but honestly,
• 38:31
  it's not like the top. I wish it was,
• 38:34
  but it's also budget. And does the program actually fit?
• 38:39
  No, that, that's fine. That's what we think it is. We have it listed
• 38:42
  there. We say if you want to know anything more about it, that's fine.
• 38:44
  And actually, it's good to know, isn't it? It's like the arts venues. It's nice
• 38:47
  to know that you support something else, but it's not a priority. But we do
• 38:51
  have like a foundation as part of the company, and they do a lot of
• 38:54
  charity work, and that's great. And if that's something that we can actually like
• 38:58
  tell them that this venue can do it, then great, we will. Yeah, but it
• 39:03
  does come down to— yeah, budget. It's budget number one for everyone
• 39:07
  at the moment. Yeah, it is social, isn't it?
• 39:10
  Can we circle back to what you were saying about, you know, the reshaping
• 39:14
  of the agenda and some of those sort of activities? People out fishing,
• 39:17
  people out doing cooking classes— that adds an awful lot
• 39:21
  more to your planning And you've got an awful—
• 39:25
  you've got a lot of other columns there in your spreadsheet that are
• 39:29
  being filled out. Was that— was there
• 39:33
  a ground zero where you went, right, we're committing to doing all of this this
• 39:36
  year, or was that like a phased approach with a particular event over a period
• 39:40
  of time? So there's one event that takes place in the US,
• 39:45
  and our colleagues have been running that for about 15 years, and that
• 39:49
  has always been their program. And that's always been their
• 39:52
  idea. But it's worked so well. And that's the one that everyone wants
• 39:56
  to go back. And it's very niche clients that go, but it's up to about
• 40:00
  150 people. They get their partners there, and it's worked so well every year.
• 40:06
  We are trying to do that for a few of the other events that we're
• 40:11
  doing right now, whether it's an incentive trip, or whether it's a corporate
• 40:14
  thing, but some, activities is something that's
• 40:18
  quite key, and not everyone's going to go fishing, but something like the zip wire
• 40:22
  that you've got here that you can say, actually, it's 4 o'clock,
• 40:26
  we're having a coffee break, if anyone wants to go, then go and do that
• 40:30
  and sign up here. It's just something different.
• 40:33
  Um, but yeah, we're just always looking at activities,
• 40:38
  and I think even those behind-the-scenes tours of
• 40:41
  venues as well. Most people are Definitely stadium, we hear, even the
• 40:46
  smaller events. What's really popular, people adding on tours. So people say, we just
• 40:49
  need a meeting. Well, use the normal conference room, 9 to 5. And then once
• 40:54
  you go, after your lunch, do you want to break it up with a guide
• 40:56
  who can come and collect you and do a half-hour tour? They'll go, no one
• 40:59
  ever says no. That'd be great, you know, and it's, it's not a huge amount
• 41:02
  at all. And actually, we can say it can be half an hour, it can
• 41:05
  be an hour, whatever works for your diary, or they can do it at 5
• 41:07
  o'clock at the end of the day. A lot of people do it as an
• 41:10
  optional, a little bit like the Zipwire was. Optional, um, was,
• 41:14
  uh, if you want a tour of the stadium, arrive 9 till 10. So again,
• 41:17
  you're curating. If you want, if you don't, arrive at 10, you know. So people
• 41:20
  come at 9, they'll sign up and they'll add on a tour first, and they
• 41:24
  get to see the changing room and the players' tunnel, the museum, which we'll go
• 41:27
  into as well. So again, just adding those little ones that actually people
• 41:31
  used to— the word team build used to put dread in some people, especially here,
• 41:34
  because they think they're going to be, you know, tossed around the rugby pitch.
• 41:37
  But, um, building rafts out of old
• 41:41
  oil drums on the River Thames. I know. So again, just something like we,
• 41:46
  we've had companies say, actually, option 1 is you can go on a tour.
• 41:48
  Option 2, you can do a zip wire, you know. And again, people go,
• 41:52
  OK, I don't want to throw. And they can sit in the stands and watch
• 41:54
  their colleagues go over if they don't fancy it themselves. So it's making sure people—
• 41:57
  so again, just coming back to offering a bit of a destination without having to
• 42:00
  pack everything up, go down the road to another venue to do a tour or
• 42:04
  something, come back. So it's just trying to bring that alive. And I'm sure lots
• 42:07
  of, as you say, lots of venues— I'm flying the flag for lots of venues
• 42:09
  here, but You know, it's just they offer those behind-the-scenes tours which are really great.
• 42:12
  I hope you don't mind, I was going to ask you, Danica, if you mentioned
• 42:15
  that you spend a lot of time at Excel, and when that first opened,
• 42:19
  anybody who sort of knows the area knows that there wasn't an awful lot around
• 42:23
  it when it first opened. It was kind of over there and you kind of
• 42:27
  went to it and said it's really developed as an, as an area now.
• 42:31
  Have you utilized any of the other stuff in and around it that's now available
• 42:35
  with any of your events? Events? I would say that a lot of our exhibitors
• 42:38
  do, right? Um, they would utilize some of like, you know, like the waterfront.
• 42:42
  Yeah, sure. Yeah, they can then host their own dinners and drinks and stuff,
• 42:46
  which I think is nice. Um, but like you say, it was in the middle
• 42:49
  of nowhere, and obviously the Lizzie Line has really connected it. Um, I had one
• 42:53
  of my American contractors come over last week to visit the show I was doing,
• 42:56
  and he emailed me and he was like, how do I get there from Heathrow?
• 42:59
  And I was like, you just get on the Lizzie Line straight to Custom House.
• 43:02
  And he was Oh my God, that's so straightforward. So like, even like, he was
• 43:05
  like, he couldn't believe it because obviously in the US everyone drives
• 43:09
  and like they don't really have the infrastructure that we have for transport to get
• 43:13
  around as quickly as— so even as little as that was a
• 43:17
  big difference for him. I love you. Grab the mic. It's because we were at
• 43:20
  Excel the other day and I said, um, me and my partner had recently gone
• 43:24
  on the cable cars outside the front and I said, seeing as
• 43:28
  you're there so long you should take the cable cars. It's really cheap,
• 43:32
  it takes you straight over to, um, the O2. And then she informed
• 43:36
  me that the O2 have outlet shopping, and there's so many things you can do
• 43:39
  there as well, whether it be go for dinner, whether it goes shopping, go see,
• 43:43
  see someone perform, or just an experience. Um,
• 43:46
  it's— it takes you away even though it's across the river.
• 43:50
  It's— it literally takes 5 to 10 minutes, and then you're
• 43:53
  in another part of London, and you can get straight back across the river,
• 43:57
  which kind of opens the, the conversation or brings
• 44:01
  it back to what we've got to attract international visitors
• 44:04
  particularly, um, to London, to venues like the Allianz Stadium,
• 44:08
  to venues, you know, like Excel, other venues in the center of London.
• 44:11
  It is something that, you know, hands up who's run an event
• 44:15
  in Vegas in one of the convention centers there? Anybody done something there?
• 44:18
  You've worked in the States, a lot of it's hotel-based. So you'll
• 44:23
  go to a big resort hotel, every, you know, 3,000 people stay in
• 44:27
  there, they walk downstairs in the morning, have their breakfast, go into the room,
• 44:29
  and a lot of people never leave the hotel. Yeah, it is great
• 44:33
  in one respect, but we've got so— I just think that when we're attracting clients
• 44:38
  in, to be able to offer all of those other elements. We work really closely
• 44:42
  with the other venues in Visit Richmond as well. You know, we're in a lovely
• 44:46
  borough, and we had a medical conference last year, they were here for 3 days,
• 44:49
  and again, as much as they had a barbecue one night and they needed ideas,
• 44:53
  and they hopped on a coach and went to Hampton Court for dinner.
• 44:57
  And it was really nice. They gave people a choice. So 50 of them went
• 45:00
  to Hampton Court for a nighttime tour and dinner. 50 of them went to Kew
• 45:03
  Gardens for a botany, you know, lesson. And I think that
• 45:07
  was so lovely. They just stayed within the borough one night, but they just had
• 45:10
  another choice what to do. Um, and that was really easy, you know. They finished
• 45:14
  their conference, they went off, some, and then the, the coaches They went back to
• 45:18
  various hotels, but just really celebrating what's in the area that
• 45:22
  you're choosing as well and making the most of it. I don't know whether anyone's
• 45:24
  got examples if they have booked another, even another part of the country where they've
• 45:27
  made use of the area they're in, or is that just too much to think
• 45:31
  about as well when you've got everything else going on?
• 45:36
  The one that I was the most— Harrogate's a really good one because they've
• 45:40
  got the Harrogate, the convention centre there, which a lot of people
• 45:43
  sort of forget that there's a big convention centre in Harrogate. And it's literally
• 45:47
  right in the center. It's beautiful sort of spa town in Yorkshire, you know.
• 45:51
  You've got the North Yorkshire Moors on the doorstep and stuff like that. And Betty's
• 45:54
  Tea Room, thank you very much. Yeah, better get chatting. It was an example last
• 45:58
  night when James arrived yesterday afternoon. We came to meet you to bring in your,
• 46:01
  your equipment. I said, are you okay for this? Are you staying in the hotel?
• 46:05
  And he was like, yeah. I said, have you got something to do tonight?
• 46:07
  Because I was there going to wheel off loads of things. And he was like,
• 46:10
  will I tell him where you went? Yes. He went, he went, no, no,
• 46:12
  I'm going to the QPR match. I hadn't quite thought that.
• 46:16
  I was sending him off to Richmond Hill. That was, that was my experimentation
• 46:21
  of the public transport links. That was my testing of it. How quickly could I
• 46:24
  get to Kew Palace? And again, you know, when people come for site visits or
• 46:27
  they'll stay in the hotel overnight, we always say, are you okay for tonight?
• 46:30
  We can recommend a few. Like, most, a lot of us live local, and we
• 46:33
  send them down to Church Street in Twickenham. We say, well, you know, the river
• 46:36
  goes through Twickenham town centre, there's lots of nice bars and restaurants down there,
• 46:39
  or there's an art fair going on. And they do, they really enjoy that,
• 46:42
  the borough. It's important as well inviting delegates, especially international, that they enjoy being
• 46:46
  in a nice safe area and people can go mooching in the evening if they
• 46:49
  need some time out. Um, so yes, obviously I'm, I'm a resident anyway
• 46:53
  of the area, so I'm a big fan of promoting what we have here.
• 46:55
  Um, and, uh, yeah, the delegates really enjoy it, especially if they're here for 2
• 46:59
  or 3 days and they want to get off-site. There's always plenty. And we work
• 47:02
  with Visit Richmond, we work with the other venues, and we find out what's going
• 47:05
  on, if there's any sort of galleries or ice rinks in the area and things
• 47:07
  like that, and we'll let people know. So again, we love them having it here,
• 47:10
  but that's back to the destination. They've chosen the borough So we just want to
• 47:13
  make sure that they enjoy the borough as well. Yeah, and I, I joked
• 47:17
  about it very, very briefly when I mentioned the word Ted. Oh yeah, Ted Lasso.
• 47:20
  But I'd be very surprised if you tell me that
• 47:24
  there hasn't been any sort of impact. Most people have seen Ted Lasso.
• 47:27
  Most people have. If you haven't— and they'll know that he lives above
• 47:30
  the pub on Richmond Green, and the pub in Richmond
• 47:34
  is kind of one of the key, yeah, parts of the show, isn't it?
• 47:38
  Go on, go. Yeah, no, I was was there the other week because I go
• 47:41
  there quite a lot with my friends. It's local for me. And I was in
• 47:44
  the pub just having— and people were generally coming in and asking
• 47:48
  the bar staff, did you meet him? Has he been here? And like,
• 47:51
  they just were asking so many questions. He was like, I just work here.
• 47:55
  Like, he was like, you know, the shop's down the road. But there is so
• 47:58
  many people that flock to that area, so they do know how to get there
• 48:02
  because it's the District Line, you know. And they're there and they've all got their
• 48:05
  Ted Lasso gift shop bags.
• 48:08
  It's a really good flagship for the area because they film a lot of it
• 48:11
  on Church Street in Twickenham as well when they go walking, and Richmond Riverside.
• 48:14
  So yeah, absolutely, people tend to know, um,
• 48:18
  the area. And even the guys doing the zip wire, when they came down before
• 48:22
  to do it, uh, they've all come from Yorkshire. And I said, what are you
• 48:26
  doing tonight? They said, well, we were going to get a taxi— you can take
• 48:29
  the mickey out of them— take a taxi to go and see the Ted Lasso
• 48:31
  pub. I was like, okay, fine. But QPR, you can't compete
• 48:36
  with QPR. You can't, sadly. Um, most of the time we can't compete.
• 48:40
  Um, but, but that's, that's, that's, that's a whole other, whole other discussion.
• 48:44
  Um, yeah, I, I said at the start of this that we would
• 48:48
  kind of, um, open it up, and, you know,
• 48:51
  there's no, there's no forced entry here on this, um, to shout
• 48:55
  what, uh, what you might want to shout about. Um, but has anybody
• 48:59
  around the table actually use this facility?
• 49:03
  This suite? No? Okay, because I, I, I, I've— when
• 49:07
  we did the event in here last year, the first thing I commented on was,
• 49:10
  oh God, this is much better than you— I was
• 49:14
  expecting to come into kind of just a conference suite.
• 49:17
  That's what I had in my head. I wasn't expecting restaurant decor,
• 49:20
  fully kitted out, and all the rest of it. How long is this? I don't
• 49:24
  know if I asked this last year. How long has this space been open?
• 49:25
  Yeah, this used to be called the Grand Slam Suite. Is that right, Vinnie?
• 49:28
  The Grand Slam, it was plain white with nothing. There's no fixtures in
• 49:31
  here, it was just plain white. And on a match day, partners or sponsors would
• 49:35
  sometimes come in and absolutely deck it out top to bottom. But, you know,
• 49:39
  for 300-odd days a year, it was just really used as an internal
• 49:42
  meeting area, really. And a lot of physics would come in, all the medics
• 49:46
  use it, but it was just a plain white room. And for match day,
• 49:49
  and again, even if you go to a concert or a sporting,
• 49:52
  hospitality has changed. So again, people wanted that more casual offering.
• 49:56
  And this was really an empty space, so again, like we all sit around and
• 50:00
  come up with these ideas, we thought we would just give it a soft-touch lounge
• 50:04
  style feel, and it's proved really popular.
• 50:07
  So yeah, so it's just a really nice lounge space, and then the seats,
• 50:10
  you just walk along the corridor into your seats outside as well. So yeah,
• 50:13
  all ensuite. Yeah, and we are just below the
• 50:17
  hotel. I think, yeah, hotel rooms are above us here. And again, I don't know
• 50:20
  if I asked this last year or not, but the non—
• 50:24
  how many match days are there actually in the stadium a year on average?
• 50:29
  I think about 30. Would we say about 30 matches?
• 50:32
  25 to 30 matches. So, which surprises people.
• 50:36
  Uh, so we tend— we're just going to go, if you don't know your rugby,
• 50:39
  uh, our match is always on a weekend. So again, for those core booking
• 50:42
  midweek events, we never have midweek matches, uh, partly because
• 50:46
  we are in the middle of a very condensed residential area.
• 50:50
  Um, so our matches on a weekend, and they're busy.
• 50:54
  The season starts, uh, for us here in November usually,
• 50:57
  so we've got matches every weekend in November, one in December. They go all the
• 51:01
  way through, and then the last one is the end of June. Uh, but they—
• 51:04
  there's a bit of a gap here and there as well. So that is the
• 51:07
  men's, the women's, and then we have some cup, community, Prem Final,
• 51:10
  Army-Navy. There's quite a selection. So then we don't have
• 51:14
  matches here. Now next year is different because it's World Cup, but generally we don't
• 51:18
  have matches July, August, September, October, and next year we will. The reason
• 51:22
  I asked that is, is, and it's the same of, of, you know, all sporting
• 51:25
  venues that are looking to attract event business in, is that,
• 51:29
  you know, 30 fixtures a year on average, that's one month.
• 51:33
  So for 11 months of the year, there aren't 80,000 people
• 51:37
  here watching rugby. You know, could, could, can it, can a venue
• 51:40
  like this survive if there wasn't non-matchday revenue?
• 51:43
  Um, yeah, oh yeah, they can survive, absolutely. We're very
• 51:47
  lucky that we own this stadium, you know, a lot of
• 51:51
  stadiums aren't owned by the governing body or the clubs,
• 51:54
  so we are lucky, but we very much see this as an asset
• 51:58
  to promote and ultimately, um,
• 52:02
  people use it, we're recognized as a venue, as a destination,
• 52:05
  it's wonderful, clients coming back again and again and again, it's really Really lovely
• 52:09
  to see, and new people coming in the doors then saying, actually, we need to
• 52:12
  get that booked, and we can mix up the events every year. So even if
• 52:16
  people say this year we had this room, we can use another room next year,
• 52:18
  and they feel like they've come to a different space as well. But yeah,
• 52:21
  absolutely, you know, it keeps everyone, it keeps the stadium alive all year round,
• 52:25
  and then ultimately when people take in tours or go to a
• 52:29
  museum or experience it or kind of leave here, actually, they'll never forget they came
• 52:33
  to like many stadiums or special venues. If they do go online,
• 52:36
  then look up their local rugby club or see how they can sign up to
• 52:39
  volunteer or sign up their children. Someone's always got a story about being here
• 52:43
  or a rugby day. So, um, ultimately that's a really nice
• 52:47
  story for us to say, that people say, actually, we came, we really liked what
• 52:50
  we saw, we started looking up our local rugby club, um, because we actually really
• 52:53
  liked what it stood for. And it's a great atmosphere here as well on a
• 52:57
  match day. I'm gonna now put a marker down and point up here.
• 53:01
  Zipline.
• 53:05
  Right, why? I know, I know, right? Why not? Why not?
• 53:09
  Whose idea? How long? Red tape?
• 53:13
  Oh, okay. Why? Who and why?
• 53:17
  So why? So I do kind of, um, been here— do I
• 53:20
  come up with a few random ideas? I've been here long enough that they know
• 53:24
  I'm not going to damage the stadium too badly. We had a lovely— we
• 53:27
  had a charitable We had a charitable, uh, abseil off
• 53:31
  the west, which you can also do here, an abseil off the west.
• 53:34
  And the brilliant team from Big Bang who are here today,
• 53:38
  uh, they started talking to people about putting the abseil up more regularly.
• 53:41
  So we started doing the abseil, and then I was
• 53:44
  like, I'm sure we could do a zipline across the stadium. It's just
• 53:48
  screaming out for a zip wire. And we were like—
• 53:53
  and then so there's nothing says corporate event like zip wire. And for me,
• 53:56
  it was just like— and again, it's, it's, it's just offering another experience,
• 54:00
  isn't it? And Um, so there was lots of
• 54:03
  structural engineers screaming in a room somewhere, I'm sure,
• 54:07
  but very clever people looked at it, saw where it could go from and
• 54:11
  to. We really have huge faith in the guys and in the team because they
• 54:15
  know what they're doing and they're like, we can do it. So yeah, so we
• 54:18
  put it up last year for a charity event, I think. Oh no,
• 54:21
  it was a 3-day weekend B2C exhibition. They really wanted it once
• 54:25
  they realized this could be a thing, so we put it up there. And it
• 54:28
  worked really, really well. And we thought, well, actually, a couple of times a year,
• 54:30
  let's see, can we get it back? Um, they don't go on the pitch at
• 54:33
  all, so they walk around with their wire and attach it. And, um, yeah,
• 54:37
  people have really enjoyed it. So they tend to put that up for charities,
• 54:40
  and then I should say they can add it on to corporate events. So this
• 54:43
  timing was perfect. I thought if we could get the date when it's there,
• 54:47
  something you'll never forget, even if you're not going to do it in your watch,
• 54:49
  you'll go home and tell people. So it's not up permanently? No. Okay.
• 54:53
  And when the sun's out. Oh, you can go through driving rain.
• 54:57
  I'd have loved to have been in the meeting with the groundsman.
• 55:00
  Yeah. Oh, I've had worse meetings with them. Oh, all right.
• 55:04
  But when you said we're gonna put a zip line across the pitch— well,
• 55:07
  the thing is, I checked the diary and I put it in, and they were
• 55:09
  like, you need to check that we're not under it. But they love it because
• 55:12
  they're mowing the grass out there all the time, watching people going past screaming.
• 55:15
  They really like it. And people in meetings as well. So you're in a— you
• 55:18
  don't all have to scream, by the way, but People are like in meetings going,
• 55:22
  oh, did we just see someone walk past? But yeah, but I actually thought when
• 55:26
  they first put it up they needed to check it. It was a Thursday afternoon
• 55:29
  and, and I just— we were like, we can find the head of events.
• 55:32
  Luciano was going to go down there. They're like, no, we do actually put like,
• 55:36
  you know, 150-kilo sack down it first just
• 55:40
  to make sure. I was like, oh, because we thought a human would have to
• 55:42
  like— oh, okay, right. Yeah, we had him lined up. He was
• 55:46
  more than happy to be the first. I, I'd love— I love the idea that
• 55:49
  there could have been like a meeting in one of the— yeah, the hospitality boxes,
• 55:52
  like a, you know, a, a board meeting that somebody's put the space out
• 55:56
  and they're all there with their spreadsheet and they're— but then what we get,
• 55:59
  we get people in that meeting ringing the duty manager going, can we do it?
• 56:02
  You know, so it's quite nice, but you know, but yeah, it doesn't affect— people
• 56:06
  see people flying past. But yeah, why not? You know, we'll always look at,
• 56:09
  uh, what else we can do to bring the stadium to life and
• 56:13
  offer new, just fun things. Sometimes. Have you had a lot of people decide,
• 56:16
  oh, can we incorporate that into our event? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it works really well.
• 56:21
  So, so smaller meetings works really well. After lunch, they'll slot it in,
• 56:25
  or on a weekend. As I say, there's a lot of corporates want to do
• 56:27
  an offsite, bit of a team build, and they'll either say, OK, you can zip
• 56:31
  wire, or you can do a tour, or you can do some, you know,
• 56:34
  something roundtable. So just so it's inclusive for everyone. So if not everyone wants to—
• 56:37
  Anybody else done a zip wire for their client? Not here, but anywhere. Has anybody
• 56:41
  had a request? Can we do a zipline as part of our event?
• 56:45
  No? It's quite, it's quite good, even just for content. So again,
• 56:49
  even if you didn't have an event, say here or wherever you're going to,
• 56:52
  just get some content for the exec team to do or some senior leadership.
• 56:55
  That's quite fun as well. They could just come and film for a day.
• 56:58
  Yeah, I mean, we've never had it from a client, but I've had it from
• 57:00
  an internal employee who was like, could I zipline onto the stage? I'm like,
• 57:04
  no! Oh, wacky ideas! Yeah, because he was like, but there's a mezzanine
• 57:08
  level! Oh, I was like, no, it's, uh,
• 57:12
  that's a whole other conversation. Wacky ideas from keynote speakers.
• 57:16
  Well, we were trying to get the zip wire to go into, you know,
• 57:19
  the doorways in a stadium are called vomitries. I know it's a weird
• 57:22
  word, but we wanted it to go into one of those doors so that people
• 57:25
  could go into their room afterwards. But yeah, we couldn't quite make it happen.
• 57:29
  I know. Yeah, I've just got— if anybody's seen the full registration,
• 57:34
  yeah, I can just see, you know, like The guy that goes
• 57:37
  over and ends up crashing would take on a total different— wouldn't it? Grab your
• 57:41
  pass and then scan it as you go through.
• 57:44
  Ziplining into the convention, what a way,
• 57:48
  what a way to make your entrance. I mean, you'd have to speak
• 57:52
  to Excel Rigging obviously to, to, to get something on the ceiling
• 57:55
  there, which would be another, another can of worms. Um, no zip lines then.
• 57:59
  Any other weird and wonderful requests from clients that
• 58:03
  anybody wishes to share while we're here.
• 58:06
  I joked there about the wacky keynote speaker, but I've
• 58:10
  been there quite a few times where they've suddenly sort of dropped it on you
• 58:13
  last minute, you know, can you play this video and can you give me some
• 58:16
  walk-on music? I had it last week actually planning a conference agenda. Somebody wanted
• 58:20
  some walk-on music to get the crowd pumping,
• 58:25
  and I'm like, there's a time and a place
• 58:28
  for that, you know. The mid-afternoon slot on day 2 is probably
• 58:31
  not when we want to play the Rocky theme tune for you to come along
• 58:34
  and present your economic findings. The one thing what I hear a
• 58:38
  lot about destinations, and I get whatever people are willing to chat about, is has
• 58:41
  anyone worked at a destination— it could be another city around the UK or someone
• 58:45
  like that— where the destination has really got on board with the event?
• 58:49
  Um, um, I'll give a perfect example of that, and it's not in the UK,
• 58:52
  but, um, we, uh, I've done quite a few gaming
• 58:56
  events here in esports over many, many years And Paris
• 58:59
  really get on board with this, so much so that anyone who
• 59:04
  arrives at this event shows their pass and they get free travel on the metro
• 59:07
  for the duration. Like, we'd never get that with TfL, but, you know, and then
• 59:11
  you get discounted. And even we went off to Manchester
• 59:15
  a couple of weeks ago. What I was really impressed about was just seeing on
• 59:17
  the app all the local restaurants to that expo, and if you showed
• 59:21
  your pass, you got 15% off your bill. So,
• 59:25
  so again, that was in Manchester. I thought that was really good actually. And we
• 59:28
  were just looking, it was just saying suggested bars and restaurants and it just gave
• 59:30
  like 5 or 6 of each. And that was really good. I don't know if
• 59:33
  anyone's found that other cities or other places do that or not,
• 59:37
  because I do think it's something that London really don't do a lot.
• 59:41
  I've been to Manchester a couple of times for that type of thing. I don't
• 59:43
  know if it's Manchester Central that— I've
• 59:49
  worked at Manchester Central and I know that they have They now have,
• 59:53
  uh, a team that oversight the whole of Manchester
• 59:58
  that kind of manage events going on, and they work with big venues within
• 1:00:01
  Manchester. Um, but I'd never had
• 1:00:05
  those experiences. I guess it depends on the size of the, the city or
• 1:00:09
  the town as well, because in London, with, you know, with the best
• 1:00:13
  will in the world, it would be difficult to kind of get that collaborative approach
• 1:00:16
  going with a, a kind of a convention venue or a particular events
• 1:00:19
  venue and then the local rest, whereas somewhere like Manchester it's a big city,
• 1:00:23
  but it's still small enough to sort of— for somewhere like Manchester
• 1:00:27
  Central, I guess. And maybe Manchester Central will get in touch and say,
• 1:00:30
  no, you're getting it all wrong. Well, they, they did incorporate, uh, before they didn't
• 1:00:35
  have any catering on site, so now they've built like a junction and it's kind
• 1:00:39
  of a bar that they work with and they do, you know, fun nights
• 1:00:42
  there. We can do karaoke or things like that. I think you can hire them
• 1:00:45
  out for various things, but before it was just a venue
• 1:00:49
  alone, there was no catering. So now they can keep things
• 1:00:52
  on site, I guess. Yeah, and I guess, you know, again, to bring
• 1:00:56
  the conversation around to destinations, it's not just about what a
• 1:01:00
  venue has got inside it, you know, that those peripherals and stuff that is around,
• 1:01:03
  which we've spoken about transport links, but, you know, it could be anything. It could
• 1:01:07
  be shopping, it could be other experiences, it could be just bars and
• 1:01:11
  restaurants, like we said, where customers or clients or exhibitors want to be
• 1:01:15
  able to do their own thing outside it. All of this comes into to
• 1:01:18
  consideration. But I know you said that— I'm
• 1:01:22
  gonna challenge you here— I know you said London, hard to get that collaborative approach,
• 1:01:26
  but if Paris can do it, why can't London? And you've
• 1:01:30
  got to want to do it. I know, I know. And don't get me wrong,
• 1:01:32
  you know, and they do. You go Barcelona as well. Barcelona, often,
• 1:01:36
  you know, you land at a large expo in Barcelona and you will be
• 1:01:40
  given, you know, as part of your delegate is like discounted travel around the city.
• 1:01:44
  Discount in local bars. And when we went out to the last expo, just where
• 1:01:48
  you stayed, like there's 8 hotels you could stay at and there was just 2
• 1:01:50
  or 3 bars or restaurants around. You showed your passes and you've got your discount
• 1:01:54
  or you got a free welcome drink for you. And it's just all those nice
• 1:01:56
  touch points. You're really enjoying the destination and you're really,
• 1:01:59
  and you know, it's not going to a big chain. It's going to,
• 1:02:03
  it's not going to a big chain. It's, it's going to like more independent.
• 1:02:11
  Something I noticed, again, I'm just, I'm going to share something here. I got to
• 1:02:15
  work in the Middle East for the first time earlier this year. I went to
• 1:02:18
  Doha to do an event in February,
• 1:02:21
  and I noticed that when I landed at the airport, some of
• 1:02:24
  the digital signage in the airport referenced the event that
• 1:02:28
  we were going to. There was a welcome, and I don't think that's it.
• 1:02:31
  I've not seen that either on public transport, in the airport. Can you get that
• 1:02:35
  done for some of the large expos and events you do, like Do you get
• 1:02:38
  branding at the arrival or anything like that? We don't, uh, we don't really do
• 1:02:42
  it. But I think there was an event we had where our main— one of
• 1:02:46
  our headline sponsors actually, um, got all the posters,
• 1:02:50
  um, you know, up the escalator at Angel. And I don't know if you've been
• 1:02:53
  to Angel Station, but it's the longest escalator, it's the deepest
• 1:02:58
  tube station, so it has the most posters. And they had paid and organized themselves
• 1:03:02
  and branded every single poster was their company going up and down them.
• 1:03:06
  Yeah, massively. But yeah, yeah, I mean,
• 1:03:09
  yeah, inevitably there's a cost involved in it, but you know, it's something
• 1:03:14
  that I noticed when I arrived. And I don't know, have the event paid
• 1:03:17
  for that at the airport? I guess there's got to be some sort of commercial
• 1:03:20
  tie-in there, but I just thought it was a nice touch that when you
• 1:03:25
  got off the plane, you kind of felt like, oh, I've traveled a long way,
• 1:03:28
  but oh the whole area kind of knows what's going on.
• 1:03:31
  But I suppose for there, it's probably like they're promoting that
• 1:03:36
  these people are the tourism's coming in for this event.
• 1:03:39
  Let's make it super clear for them where they need to go. I think whether
• 1:03:44
  slightly different, I think when we're like based in the UK, I think people can
• 1:03:47
  sort of find their way a bit more. Yeah, absolutely. Um, again, I don't want
• 1:03:51
  to do all the talking, sorry, but, um, again, just looking at destinations
• 1:03:55
  and locations you're choosing for your events Would people look at
• 1:03:59
  maybe the Midlands or the Northeast or the Northwest because of budget? Will they
• 1:04:03
  actually say we won't go to London or the Southeast because
• 1:04:07
  of budget, or is it more for transport or accessibility?
• 1:04:10
  Any, any feedback from clients? Will they say actually we can go to
• 1:04:14
  Milton Keynes for half the price of London, or we can go— I can see
• 1:04:17
  raised eyebrows— or we can go to Harrogate? How good— it's probably quite
• 1:04:21
  pricey, isn't it? It's quite a desired area, isn't We have,
• 1:04:24
  uh, a show that's based in the South and it's, uh, all manufacturing.
• 1:04:29
  And I— it, it was launched, funny enough, in the
• 1:04:33
  car park of Thorpe Park. Um, and now it's a,
• 1:04:37
  it's a, um, Farnborough International and it is quite a large
• 1:04:41
  event. It brings in a lot of people and I believe they,
• 1:04:45
  they discussed about potentially moving it, but it actually brings
• 1:04:49
  so many people to the South and people are willing to travel to
• 1:04:53
  Farnborough outside of London to visit it because of its kind
• 1:04:56
  of history. That's where the clients are. People were always willing to travel.
• 1:05:00
  So I think depending on the event and,
• 1:05:03
  you know, how much it means to you, people will travel for it.
• 1:05:08
  Not all events. Yeah, I was just going to say some events kind
• 1:05:12
  of find a home, don't they? And you have to kind of be respectful of
• 1:05:15
  that sometimes, that certain events that have started in quite an organic manner
• 1:05:19
  the client might not want to look at other venues because they've got this
• 1:05:23
  kind of loyalty tie, or they feel that it's part of the vibe of their
• 1:05:26
  event. Yeah, and I do think sometimes it is on destination,
• 1:05:29
  um, versus obviously the topic of your event. You're not going
• 1:05:33
  to put an event about, I don't know, tech in
• 1:05:38
  a place where it's not a hub for it. You're going to put it in
• 1:05:41
  where there's a hub for tech, and because you've got them big companies and big
• 1:05:45
  names, they're all based there. It's going kind of where they've organically grown.
• 1:05:49
  Yeah. So sometimes the destination is based on the topic of your event, I think,
• 1:05:53
  and kind of what territories it covers. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:05:56
  yeah. You wouldn't put a tech event on an agricultural showground, but for
• 1:06:00
  something like— and I'll give them a shout out— the Showman Show, you know,
• 1:06:03
  it's an— it's that they host it at a showground because everybody wants
• 1:06:07
  to build a stage or bring a TV truck in can do so because they've
• 1:06:10
  got the facility to do that on site there. So again, it's finding the right,
• 1:06:14
  the right space for the right event, isn't it? Um, as much as we want
• 1:06:17
  to you know, look at everything we've spoken about today,
• 1:06:20
  you know, not all events are created equally in the same way that not all
• 1:06:23
  venues are created equally, so it's finding the matchups between both
• 1:06:28
  of those things. I'm looking at time, lunch is on the way.
• 1:06:32
  Yep, about 15 minutes. About 15 minutes and we're gonna have lunch
• 1:06:35
  and then we're gonna go whipping around the zip wire.
• 1:06:39
  Yeah, well what we do, we've got a nice light lunch for you all at
• 1:06:43
  midday, Um, and then, uh, we're just going to show you a couple of spaces,
• 1:06:47
  first of all, available, just kind of for those— if any of you want to
• 1:06:50
  see more, we can always pick that up separately with you all again. Um,
• 1:06:53
  but we've got lots of events in today, which isn't a bad thing. So we're
• 1:06:56
  going to walk over to our east and see a couple of spaces, and then
• 1:07:00
  you can leave everything here. You know, no one will be in here, only yourselves,
• 1:07:02
  or closed doors, and then the museum. And I should,
• 1:07:05
  should ask this question for anybody watching or listening to this
• 1:07:09
  today, uh, who think, oh, I'd have really liked to have come to
• 1:07:13
  that. If there's anybody tuning in who's an organizer, an agency,
• 1:07:16
  who thinks they've spoken about a load of stuff that I'm interested in, can they,
• 1:07:20
  can they get in touch? Can they arrange to come and see this outside of
• 1:07:22
  this particular event? I totally forgot there's a camera here since I've been talking.
• 1:07:26
  Um, yeah, absolutely, you can contact me. Kirsty, you have all our details. Everyone's— we
• 1:07:30
  love showing people around, uh, giving them a flavor. We can offer people a place
• 1:07:34
  to work, and then we can work a site visit either for you or your
• 1:07:36
  clients around that day as well. So again, come here, work for the day in
• 1:07:40
  one of our boxes, and then we'll just pop in the site visit. Many people
• 1:07:44
  are local, which is great, but if you're not, you need to make good use
• 1:07:46
  of your day and catch up on emails, we can work around that as well.
• 1:07:48
  But yeah, we're going to have a— we're going to just take in a couple
• 1:07:50
  of spaces that you might not have expected to see here, and then we're going
• 1:07:53
  to go into the World Rugby Museum, um, let your lunch go down, and then
• 1:07:57
  if everybody— but talk to us individually if you're not comfortable with the zipline,
• 1:08:00
  you can sit and watch, it's not a problem at all, and take that in.
• 1:08:03
  Um, and then yeah, we'll do the zipline, we'll come back here and we'll walk
• 1:08:06
  you just in next door to the hotel. But you can leave bags and everything
• 1:08:10
  here. Um, I think you can take your phones if you want to video each
• 1:08:13
  other, but obviously they'll take them off you for doing the zip wire. Fabulous.
• 1:08:16
  Well, thanks again for hosting us today. That's okay, you're welcome. Great to be back
• 1:08:19
  here. Um, Allianz Stadium. Um, Johanna by Rain,
• 1:08:23
  thank you very much for looking after us. Vince as well, shout out, thank you
• 1:08:26
  very much. And also to team Eclipse here on site who've once again facilitated
• 1:08:30
  our microphones and our AV and bits and pieces. Really easy. They remembered the setup
• 1:08:34
  that we had last year and said, yeah, we can set it up all the
• 1:08:36
  same. So it's been— I can, you know, attest to it being a very smooth
• 1:08:40
  experience, you know, to come in and do, do our little event here today,
• 1:08:43
  which is, which is fantastic. So thanks very much for your, uh, contributions around the
• 1:08:47
  table today. Thanks very much, uh, to anybody who has, uh,
• 1:08:50
  watched and tuned in and listened to this today. It will be on the podcast
• 1:08:53
  platform, so people might be listening to this in their AirPods as they're wandering
• 1:08:57
  around Richmond Green looking for the Ted Lasso pub. Um, if you
• 1:09:01
  have done, thanks very much. We'll see you all soon.