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Reimagining Meetings Through Wellness · Event Industry News Podcast

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Hello everybody and welcome along to the Event Industry News Podcast with
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me, James Dixon, wishing all a very good morning, afternoon, or evening,
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whenever or wherever you tune in to today's podcast from.
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We are in the glorious surroundings of the ICC Wales,
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part of the Celtic Collection, who have very kindly hosted the Event Industry
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News Podcast here today. We've recorded— this is now going to be
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our 3rd episode that we've recorded in our day here so far, and we're very,
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very grateful to all of the team here at the ICC Wales and Celtic Collection
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for facilitating this, for looking after us. We came down yesterday,
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we had a great experience, we had a lovely dinner with the team on site
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at the Tea Newport.
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Well done, well done. Rachel and I have met already today, you see, and I
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got the name of the hotel wrong, but it's the Tea Newport, not the Thai
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Newport. Okay, you went for Thai. I went for Thai. I, I,
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I, I, I, I I put all my chips in on the table and lost.
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I lost. But yeah, we've had a great
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time so far, and this is going to be the 3rd episode of the day
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that we've recorded down here. And I'm delighted to welcome back to the podcast
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Rachel Phillips, Regional Sales Director for the Celtic Collection.
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Alongside me, track and field legend Christian
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Malcolm. Christian, welcome to the podcast, and thanks very much for joining us today.
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No problem, thank you. I've not given you a sort of a job title
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as such because you're up to a few things at the moment, so I'll let
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you expand a little bit on that. And tell us sort of what you're up
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to day to day now and your role with the Celtic Manor Resort and Celtic
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Collection. Yeah, so, um, I'm an ambassador for the Celtic Manor Collection.
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Um, I've been for numerous, uh, years now. So, um, being a
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local boy from Newport, actually went to school just, just across
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the way there. So I also remember being in school, a lot of sixth formers
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getting their Saturday jobs at the Celtic Manor as well. So to see it expand
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over the years and grow to what it has done and what it is now
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for us is fantastic in Newport. For me personally,
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I am head of sprints at Athletics Island, been there for
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3 years and it's been going really well. So each year our successes get
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better and better and better and growing. So yeah. And Rachel,
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you know, welcome back to the Event Industry News podcast, Regional Sales Director
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for the Celtic Collection, and I guess very much sort of the beating heart of
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the events industry in Wales, isn't it? Celtic Manor, synonymous with events.
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Very much so, and I think, as Christian said, the Celtic Manor Resort
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has been here for 26 years now, and the amount of events that
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we've had through the Celtic Manor, not just people that are coming for one event,
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they come back year on year, and we have a lot of clients that have
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been with us for more than 20 years now here at the Celtic Manor Resort.
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So it's great to see us expand across the South Wales coast and have event
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spaces at the Parkgate Hotel in Cardiff and also
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at St. Brides in West Wales as well. Pembroke, and really trying to expand
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the collection as far and wide as we can across the
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South Wales coast. And we're on the
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podcast today with the lineup of guests that we've got to talk about Celtic
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Manor Resort's Meetings Reimagined approach, and I
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guess sort of looking at ways to bring in wellness, to maybe
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break outside of the traditional mould of the kind of the business event,
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the business meeting, the sort of very formal approach to agenda structure,
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conference coffee. Boring, boring, boring. How can we,
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you know, break outside of that, maybe bring some, you know, level of activity,
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a wellness approach, I guess, food catering? There's all sorts of aspects
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that people can bring in. I mean, I think that's exactly right, is that,
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like I said, Celtic One has been going for 26 years, you know, we've got
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a fantastic range of meeting facilities, but we looked at over the past
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6 months, how can we look at meetings and bringing people together in a different
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way? Not everybody wants to sit around a boardroom table or sit in a chair
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and listen to PowerPoint, PowerPoint, PowerPoint, PowerPoint.
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How can you deliver messages in a different way? And I think when you have
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a venue such as Celtic Manor Resort with 2,000 acres, why don't
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we take the meeting out of the traditional square box, if you
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like, and use the facilities and the areas that we have? Because you can
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still have the same conversations, you can still deliver the same kind of messages.
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Yes, there's an element, I suppose, where you need to
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be able to deliver from a PowerPoint, but why don't you split the
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agenda up and perhaps do some in the morning in the meeting room and then
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perhaps add the element on of the afternoon outside?
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I think we're blessed here in Wales with so much countryside, and particularly
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here in the Celtic Manor, we're on the motorway, but then
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we also have our acreage of land as well. So we really do have the
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best of both worlds. And I think for us, when we were looking for that
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cut-through across a huge plethora of advertisements
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about bring your events here, what do we have that we can really
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really pull on to be able to bring delegates to Wales.
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And I've been fortunate enough, Kristian, to work on events where
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athletes, sports people have been invited to speak
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and deliver sessions at conferences. It's quite commonplace in the business sector because
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it is an inspirational and an aspirational thing to hear
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about the dedication, the hours, the long-term
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investment in time that it takes to be a top-level sports person or
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top-level athlete. And a lot of that does translate into the business world if
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you take probably a lot of the principles that you built your own track and
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field career on into business. Yeah, I think it does.
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And as an athlete, as a sports person, you don't realize it.
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Yeah, because you're doing what you— your hobby, what you enjoy
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doing for fun, you know. So putting the hard work and the hard yards in,
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you kind of take for granted and just think that is, that is what is
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normal. But, you know, I remember towards the end of my retirement,
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I remember a story. I was speaking to Sir Terry Matthews and he did
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a talk, um, in the University of South Wales.
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And basically he's getting his honorary fellow and he was just talking about business and
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how he got the Celtic Manor started and how he came here when it used
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to be the old, the old hospital. I don't know if you remember. Yeah,
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it used to be the old hospital and maternity hospital and he
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closed down, came up, he looked at it and he said, Do you know what
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I seen when I went up there? It was all boarded up from then.
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I said, no, what did you see? And he said, I just seen 22,000
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cars traveling back and forth on the motorway. Do you know what? This is an
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ideal spot to build a hotel, you know. And he had that vision
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of growing it and also the vision of wanting one day of hosting the
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Ryder Cup, which he, which he was successful in doing. Um, but I,
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when I spoke to him, I was coming towards the end of my retirement.
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I was saying to him know, I find this talk fascinating.
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Business is something I would love to get into and enjoy. But he got— I
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would— I said I'd find it hard gambling my real life money
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in the business. And he said to me, look, because you have something
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that 90% of the people out there want
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to set up a business don't. You have the discipline, the dedication, and that comes
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through your sport. You know, those skills you have are transferable
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in the business. You just gotta identify what it is you want to get into
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the business and have the right work ethic
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and the work dedication which you apply in your sport into your business and
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you'll be successful. And I learned quite a lot from Sir Terry and that's something
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I try to take on into post-career as well. Just keep working, keep that work
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ethic, keep the, I guess, attention to detail and, you know, you will be successful
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from it. Yeah, and I guess when we look at the opportunity that an event,
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a business event represents and the opportunity that gives both to the organizer but,
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you know, to them as a business, by bringing people together
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outside of their day-to-day work environment. You mentioned that, you know,
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you were fortunate enough to do something that you absolutely loved. Now, inevitably,
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it would be wrong to assume that everybody who goes to work every day absolutely
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loves what they do. And people who come to meetings, to conferences and
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things like that from a business perspective might not necessarily have that day-to-day love of
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it. And maybe just by changing the agenda,
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bringing maybe a level of fitness or wellness or just,
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you know, even nutrition, people underestimate just
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how important a part that can play in their day-to-day lives when it comes to
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just improving how they feel about going to work. Yeah, I think it's quite
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easy to get bogged down into the day-to-day things and not look after yourself,
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especially when you've got targets, time targets, agendas which you've gotta,
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you gotta meet. Um, and I think sometimes we have to be able to take
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a step back. I know in sport for us, we can train 6 days a
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week, we can train 5 hours a day, but the, the best part
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about training, or the way you get the adaptations, your recovery. And when you take
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your rest time and look after yourself and your nutrition. And I think that goes
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the same to day-to-day life in business. When you're working, you know, you have to
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have time for yourself. You have to re-energize. You have to look after yourself.
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Otherwise, you're not going to have that energy going forward or that mindset and creativity
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you need to, to keep the business going. And I think there's so much pressure
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on people in work at the moment. I think with technology,
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you could almost work 24/7 with emails and laptops and things
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like that, and you're always accessible. So I think we we
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as an industry and from a business events
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perspective need to look at, okay, how can I reevaluate
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what I'm doing outside of my 9-to-5 job and
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then take that time to be able to recover and relax and
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be stronger then when I come back for the next day. And I think sometimes
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when you look at some businesses, they've really taken that on board because
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they want to retain the team that they've got, because I think recruiting for new
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all the time is very hard. So if you can look after the team that
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you have got, And we've really seen some clients shifting their agendas a little
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bit to allow that time for wellness. But then wellness means something different
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to everybody. You know, we're not all going to be sprinters being able to run
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200 meters however fast anybody can be, but it might be that somebody wants
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to go and read a book or take a moment to be able to catch
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up on some life admin in a space that
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is quite calming, is quite relaxing. You know, we don't have to be sprinting
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or doing physical exercise. Mindfulness is different for everybody.
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So I was going to say, that's the great thing about being at the Celtic
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Manor. You have so many opportunities. Like you said, it's not about just going to
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the gym and getting exercise and being active. It's having that, that space to be
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able to have that quiet time yourself, that downtime, like you said, to be able
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to read a book, to be able to go in the spa, to be able
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just to have that moment to yourself. And also as well, going for walks.
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I think absolutely that's something we all learned from the pandemic, how useful,
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how nice it is to just be able to go out for a walk.
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And it's so beautiful around you. You have so many different routes, whether you want
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a hill climb or whether you want the flat or whether if you want to
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go down by the lakes, I think. And it costs nothing. Yeah. And,
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but the value that you would get back from that is, you know, it's immeasurable
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almost. And I think, you know, going for a walk is so easy,
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you know, just put a pair of trainers on or shoes that
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are quite comfortable and out you go, out the front of the door at the
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resort, and you can go for 5Ks if you needed to and really
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take that moment to have a think about what you're going to do.
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In the afternoon. Can I take a step back a little bit and ask why
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and what prompted Meetings Reimagined? You know, was there a sort of an
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epiphany moment? Did somebody in the office walk in one day and say, this is
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what we need to do? How did it get to the point where you had,
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you know, this drive to encourage this amongst your clients? I think for
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us at the Celtic Manor Resort, we are often a wildcard
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for business events inquiries,
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and the amount of clients that say, we've put you forward, but you're a wildcard,
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and we need to be able to have that cut-through to say, okay, you need
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to come to the Celtic Manor Resort because— but that because needs
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to be something different to what everybody else is doing. And like I said,
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we've got 2,000 acres here at the resort, and I think,
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um, what we offer is something very different to perhaps what those real
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city centre venues can. Um, you don't have to get in a bus and travel
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half an hour to be able to get to the, to the hills,
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or travel half an hour to be able to, um, you know,
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put your harness on and go and do some high ropes. It's all here.
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And so I think for us is Yes, there's a lot of venues
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that have activities, but do they then have the 2,000 acres where they can
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go for a run, a 5K run, which doesn't cost anything? Or what
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can we offer that somebody else doesn't? And I think that was really trying to
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spin on top of its head business events and really
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looking at meetings reimagined outside
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of the meeting room, because this is what Sir Terry used to say, a lot
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of the business is done on the golf course, not really in an office.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. What they used to say, you know, I remember when I first,
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you know, went to my first events, where are we now, probably 24,
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25 years ago now, as a young advertising salesperson. I went to anything and somebody
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says to me, all the business is done in the bar in the evening,
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don't worry about that. But, you know, we've evolved, you know, and we've spoken on
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the podcast before about younger generations coming into all sorts of business industries and
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how the younger generation now have such a different approach to lifestyle, whether that be
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deciding not to drink alcohol or consume it in far
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lower quantities than perhaps historically other generations have done, in terms of their attitude
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to wellness, in terms of their attitude towards their mental wellness as well,
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not just physical wellness. Wellness is not just about getting out there and
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doing the physical exercise, about giving your grey matter a chance to rest
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and recuperate as well. And I guess we have to be adopting as
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an events industry approaches like this now so
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that we're ready and geared up for the next generation of younger people coming in
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through any sort of business. Yeah, I think so as well. I think, you know,
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there's something about, you know, when you, you're looking out onto
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the hills and the mountains, whatever you're at. Yeah, you've been
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in a meeting, it's been a hard slog, you can turn around, look out at
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the countryside and just take a bit of a deep breath in and
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it lifts a bit of a weight for me anyway. I can say that,
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you know, if I'm in a meeting room, I'm stuck in there from 9 till
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6, you know, all I want to do is just get out. You know,
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and if you're in the city center, you get out, you're just in the hustle
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and bustle. But if you walk out here, you walk out and there's a calmness.
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It's a real nice calmness. And I think there's, there's a few like-minded people around
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that they brought their meetings. You can see the stress and you end up having
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conversations. And as you say, you know, things build from
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those conversations. Not so much what's happened in the meeting room, it's more what's happened
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afterwards. And I think it's not just about getting involved in the exercise or
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maybe even playing golf, but just being— just going to walk and being able to
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decompress with somebody and have a conversation, things can build from that.
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But it's also very good for the mindset as well. And I'm just looking over
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your shoulder now, you know, and it's not often that I get to not just
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host a podcast in an environment like this, but work day to day on events
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in an environment where I'm looking out on a huge window at trees,
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at greenery. You know, usually you look out of a window of your average convention
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center or hotel suite and you're looking at the loading bay at the back or
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a giant car park of tarmac and concrete. You know,
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there is something about just being able to sit in a quiet space and look
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at a view, isn't there, Rachel? And that, that's inevitably going to be part of
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the offering here. I mean, we are incredibly lucky, and I think that
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we, we know how lucky we are in terms of the land that we have
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here. And, um, I think for us it's about when we're
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talking to agencies or clients is come down and see,
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because I think sometimes people will look at the proposal perhaps that we've sent on
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a bit of paper. You don't really actually get the feeling and the experience,
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and you really need to come down and experience that And I think,
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I can, you know, we can talk about meetings, breakout rooms,
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this is where your lunch is going to be, this is where your dinner's going
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to be, but you don't really get that full experience, I think, unless you
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come down and visit. I was talking to one of your colleagues at dinner last
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night who said that you'll often get event organisers saying, look, we'd love to come
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down and do a venue visit, and they'll say, yeah, great, when can you do
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it, what time have you got available? Oh yeah, well, I've got half an hour
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available on this day. I'm like, hold on, we're not just you know, we can't
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just show you around, oh, there's the plug sockets, there's the screen and the projector,
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and that's where your coffee is. You have to,
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I guess, if you're wanting to promote this ethos to
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organizers, the organizers themselves have to maybe adopt a
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slightly different ethos and approach when they come to research something. They'll come
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say, okay, this is my event that I've done for the past 10 years,
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this is what we want to do, and they go away thinking,
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okay, I need to change it because we need to be able to give give
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the delegates the time to be able to go and do that. We need to
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be able to go and use that area because, you know,
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the agenda that they have, they've done for so many years,
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they need to keep the delegates engaged. How are we going to change it up?
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How are we going to make sure that they go away having those memorable experiences?
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And a lot of the time, Instagrammable moments happen outside
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of the conferences, you know, when we talk about the networking, those are the things
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that they're going to remember when they go back to the office, is things that
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happened outside of the meeting room to a certain extent. And I guess at top-level
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coaching, Kristian, you're combining a lot of
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what we've spoken about today in terms of meetings and events, incorporating a
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level of wellness into it and maybe changing how they structure them.
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At top-level coaching, you must have to sit in, as you've probably alluded to,
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meetings. You've probably got to sit in the office space as well as
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combining that with actually being out in the space with the athletes
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in terms of doing the actual physical coaching with them. So that must be
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a constant balance of deciding how much time you invest in and dedicate
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to each aspect of that. Yeah, it is. Um, this time of year is always
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the frustrating time of year for me because it's all reviews in front of the
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laptop. And but I, I always, for me personally, have to get out and about.
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Um, we've used this facility ourselves back when I was at British Athletics
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for, uh, team bonding for our British relay teams,
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which went down really well because we had the space, um, we had the
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meeting rooms, the areas so we could go through the data analysis, the planning for,
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for the year. But he's also able to break out and get outside. Now you
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can imagine athletes don't like to be cooped up in a room too much.
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So coiled springs. Yes, coiled springs. So, you know, it's being able
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to chop and change and, you know, to get their attention span. We might have
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45 minutes in one room, have a little breakout, then we might do 30 minutes
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somewhere else. Then we'll have an hour analysis where we've got to make it fun
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and make it interesting. But at the same time, we can't have it in 4
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walls because otherwise I'll lose the athlete's interest. So to be able
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to have, you know, a big space, um,
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opportunities— because we've got the female team, we've got the male team,
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and to be fair to them, they, they all like different interests.
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Oh, cool. Yeah, yeah. So the guys want to be able to, to go
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out, maybe play a little bit of golf or use up your— explore a little
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bit. The girls want to explore but also might want to do the spa.
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They might want to go for walks. And actually, some of them like that.
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I've got the high rocks. You know, and sometimes it's giving them those different challenges
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and being able to have that opportunity. So when we had our camp here for
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the weekend, for the 2 days, it went down really, really well. It seems from
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what you just said there, from an elite-level sports
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point of view, about that attention span, because that's not just true in top-level
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sports, that's true in day-to-day life now. It's well known that our attention spans are
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totally different. They've been reshaped and redefined because of
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how we consume media, because of these little devices that we carry
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around in our pocket. Everyone's attention spans have shifted. And so we
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can't possibly expect to continue delivering meetings in a traditional way with
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traditional agendas when we understand that people's
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attention spans have shifted. So there's a lot that business meetings can take from what
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Christian just said. Absolutely. And I think the younger generation,
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like you said earlier, is that they're shifting away from, you know,
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having to be on their phones all of the time.
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But we need to support them to be able to do that. And I think
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that social media break for them is
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one thing, but then having that social media break but then sitting in a meeting
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room in front of a screen again, we need to try to change that a
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little bit. And I think their attention spans
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is very, very short because they're very much, I want it now,
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I want to consume it now and then leave. So having that short
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attention span, the people that are the organizers really
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need to have a look at their agendas and listen to the feedback that the
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delegates are giving them. And it does— it's not just about
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what's in the meeting room as well. It's about the nutrition side of things.
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That's probably something that I wanted to talk about, is that your attention
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span, particularly post-lunch, might be a little
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bit shorter depending on what kind of food you've consumed at conferences.
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I think sometimes when people say, oh, I'm going to conference this year, I'm looking
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forward to lunch. And it's, you know, we've tried to look
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at how we can be a bit more I suppose,
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flexible in terms of what we offer. Yes, it's going to be the traditional buffet
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that you have, but also what is the healthy option that's going to help people
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concentrate? So nutrition, obviously clearly important to you guys, but how do
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you factor that into anything that you're trying to plan? Always.
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So as you know, athletes are always hungry.
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Yeah, always hungry. So that's one of the things when we are
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having meetings, we got to make sure we got the right chef and the right
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you know, dietary requirements really, which is on a day.
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And obviously I'm dealing with so many different athletes who have so
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many different dietary requirements. Yes, I would say 7% is the same,
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but is that 30% which needs to be catered and tailored for
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a particular athlete? You know, it gets in track and field, you know, your shot
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putter is going to have different nutritional requirements to a sprinter, or it
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is, and at different times of year as well, whether they're trying to gain,
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whether they're trying to reduce weight a little bit, lose a bit of muscle,
21:54
you know. So all those things we have to take into consideration as
21:58
well. So it's not just about the venue and where we're at, okay, you know,
22:03
what's on the menu as well, you know, what can you provide for
22:07
us? And that's a key part of it, because if you're not providing the right
22:10
nutrition for athletes, then no matter how good the venue is, you know,
22:14
we're not going to be able to come, unfortunately. Well, yeah, on the nutritional side,
22:17
as a venue, Rachel, you know, I think we've all had experiences at
22:22
business events where the lunch is spectacular, but then you sit in the next session
22:26
immediately after lunch and you see 400 people nodding off in the auditorium because they've
22:30
got a belly full of warm food. You know, just if people want more engagement
22:34
in their meetings as well, that very much ties into the wellness aspect of
22:38
it, is if you want to keep your audience engaged throughout the duration
22:42
of your event, you have to contemplate and consider things like that.
22:45
Absolutely. And I think it's also the location of your lunch is sometimes you'll
22:49
have conference in the meeting room and then the lunch is immediately
22:54
outside and then you're going back into the meeting room again. So I think it's
22:57
looking about the location of where you have lunch and obviously as I said earlier
23:00
we have, you know, great opportunity to get outside, have some fresh air
23:04
and eat your lunch outside and just by
23:07
doing that you might have the same menu but changing that location is going to
23:10
give people a bit more of a renewed impetus to be able to go back
23:14
in. Well, it's just struck me as well that you could surreptitiously engage your
23:18
attendees in some basic wellness just by getting their steps up.
23:22
If you rethink maybe where you're going to serve that lunch and say,
23:25
look, it's a short walk, it's just a 10-minute walk down there to the other
23:28
side of the venue, we're serving lunch there with the— but surreptitiously you're
23:32
making them walk 10 minutes, which when they've been sat down all morning in a
23:36
conference session is probably important for everybody. And there's
23:40
all sorts, I guess, of subtle things. How are you at the moment
23:45
shaping what Meetings Reimagined is?
23:48
And I guess any sort of guidance or advice that you're giving to clients,
23:51
you know, how are you researching that? So I think we looked at a few
23:55
different areas. We looked at the activity side of things,
23:58
so we looked at when we look at an agenda,
24:02
where could a client fit in a yoga session, for example?
24:06
And a yoga session doesn't need to be full hour you
24:11
know, it can be a 30-minute session and we've got the instructors here.
24:14
So we looked at that element of it. We also looked at those people that
24:18
perhaps don't want to be so physical. There are a lot of people that,
24:21
you know, if they saw that on an agenda, they might second-guess whether
24:26
they're going to attend or not, and we don't want to do that. So we
24:29
looked at some areas across the resort where we'd be able to put some quiet
24:33
spaces in, right, and just where people can go and,
24:36
you know, take a moment to reflect, take a moment to recompose
24:41
themselves before going back in. And then from a culinary perspective, then we've
24:44
also looked at Feast Under the Stars, that kind of thing.
24:48
So where again, you're not going from a meeting room during the day,
24:52
seeing it turned around, and then going into the evening,
24:56
we're actually using some of the spaces across the resort where you can be outside
24:59
and have your, for example, you know,
25:02
a rooftop, on our rooftop terrace, you could have a Feast Under the Stars there.
25:05
So again, being outside And then the other thing then is
25:09
things that don't cost anything, you know, is just by using the maps that we've
25:13
got at the resort to go for a walk or a run, either first
25:16
thing in the morning, which tends to be, you know, part of the agenda on
25:19
a lot of conferences, but then also seeing perhaps
25:24
why don't you finish at 4 o'clock and allow people that hour to be able
25:27
to do that before they then go to their bedroom to get changed for the
25:30
evening. So I think there's a few things that we're trying to look
25:33
at because not one size fits all. Sure.
25:37
Yeah. Something that I was considering in terms of international
25:41
perception is that we're at the time of year where,
25:44
you know, we're in September, we're knocking on the door of October,
25:47
we're heading into the autumn, the clocks will change soon. And as a nation,
25:51
we kind of regress back inside, don't we, as a nation? But compared
25:55
to other places, you know, you go to the continent, even in the wintertime,
25:58
they still have the outdoor, the cafe culture. There's still a lot of outdoor living
26:01
that goes on when you go over to continental Europe. And I think as a
26:05
nation, we're probably very guilty of closing
26:09
the back door and the front door as soon as the clock's changed and saying,
26:12
right, we're inside now for the next 6 months. That's, that's a cycle that maybe
26:16
we need to break, and we can address that when we have meetings and events,
26:18
when we're gathering people in, in large quantities, in, you know, and large numbers in
26:22
a particular space. We can address that and encourage them. Yeah, no, I, I think
26:26
so. It's, it's a good point. Um, I, I even know, you know, it's funny
26:30
you should say that because even last night my, my youngest, who like to go
26:33
out on a bike. As soon as she gets in, she's out and about.
26:36
Um, she realized last night it's getting dark a little bit earlier and she's coming
26:39
home a little bit earlier, which means she's got a little bit more time in
26:42
the house. Yeah. Um, and you're right, we, we do— as soon as it gets
26:45
dark, we like to come in. But you know, when you're away on a meeting
26:48
and you're stuck to a particular agenda, you can't really then go, okay,
26:52
it's getting dark now, we can't do these kind of things. But I think that,
26:56
you know, being up here at the Celtic Manor, you've still got the lighting around
26:59
if you do want to go out for walks. Yeah, there are spaces indoors,
27:02
you know, we talk about yoga but also Pilates classes and things like that.
27:06
And I do think it is about looking at, you know, what your clients'
27:10
needs are and what they enjoy doing and then being able
27:14
to be able to cater for that. Yeah, and I think that's important in any
27:17
pre-event communication that you might send out is where event
27:21
organizer asking what their delegates would like to do because
27:26
I think sometimes they can say, okay, we're gonna do this, this, and this,
27:28
but actually none of them hit the mark. So it's really getting that feedback
27:33
from the delegates ahead of any agendas that might be sent out
27:37
to say, okay, these are, you know, these are options that we've considered. Is this
27:41
something that you would like to add? Would it be something that you put on
27:43
in the morning? Would it be something in the evening? And just really getting that
27:47
feedback so then when they get here and say, yes, that's something that I asked
27:51
for and they've listened, and, you know, and they're more likely to sign up
27:55
then to say, yes, I'll give it a go. Absolutely. We've been talking on the
27:58
podcast today about the Celtic Manor Resort's Meetings Reimagined approach,
28:02
providing a start point for looking at how wellness can be built into meetings
28:06
without taking away from the business purpose of those events. Rachel,
28:09
before we wrap up today, if people listening or watching the podcast today
28:13
who work in events want to find out more about ICC Wales,
28:16
about Celtic Manor Resort, about the Celtic Collection, point them in the right direction if
28:20
you would. So they can head to our website,
28:22
celtic-collection.com. All of our Meetings Reimagined
28:26
information is there. I'm also on LinkedIn as well. If anybody wanted to
28:30
reach out to me on LinkedIn, Rachel Phillips, and they can just drop me a
28:34
message. And just come down and say hi, and come and— you don't have to
28:37
come with an event or a meeting or an inquiry, just come and have a
28:41
look around and see what the opportunities are. We're very welcoming here in
28:44
Wales and at the Celtic Manor Resort. We're happy to look after anybody that wants
28:48
to have a chat. And I said, I'm not just blowing smoke, but our welcome
28:52
has been fabulous when we arrived there yesterday. It's been very generous,
28:55
very warm, everything that we would hope to expect when we walked into the venue
28:59
yesterday. Christian, before we wrap up,
29:02
how do people find out what you're up to day to day? Again,
29:06
I'd say LinkedIn would be a good place, or Instagram. I've also got my academy,
29:11
which is Christian Malcolm Sports Academy, which I run here in South Wales,
29:15
which has been going very well. It's been going for 8 years now. And if
29:19
you want to get a hold of me, you go through the socials, Facebook,
29:22
Instagram, or LinkedIn. Fabulous. Really appreciate you taking the time out to join us today
29:26
and have a chat on the podcast. Thanks to both my guests, and thanks again
29:30
to the ICC Wales and the Celtic Collection for facilitating
29:33
Event Industry News at the venue today to record some episodes of our podcast.
29:37
We've had a fabulous experience. Thank you very much to the entire team behind the
29:40
scenes for making this happen today. And before we wrap up, just a couple of
29:43
mentions for stuff that's happening over at Event Industry News. If you are listening to
29:47
today's podcast on your podcast platform, thanks very much for doing so, but please do
29:51
head over to eventindustrynews.com where you can watch video versions of
29:55
all of the podcasts, as well as checking out the latest news features, special supplements,
29:58
everything that's available on the website alongside the supplier directory. If you
30:02
work in the events industry and you are looking for a product, service, or a
30:06
supplier, the chances are you will find it within that supplier directory on eventindustrynews.com.
30:11
Thanks again to both my guests, thanks again to the ICC Wales and the Celtic
30:15
Collection for hosting us and we'll see you on the next edition of the Event
30:17
Industry News Podcast. Thanks,