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The Stillorgan Park Hotel

The 4 Star Stillorgan Park Hotel is located on the periphery of can cater from 2- 500 delegates with 20..

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Silver Springs Moran Hotel combines contemporary design with traditional elegance. Each of our 109 deluxe bedrooms, including five luxurious suites..

Improve Your Next Conference – 5 Really Easy Tips

On 18 April, 2014 by Ciara Feely Comments (0), leave your own!
Categories: Book more conference business, Conference Hotels, Conference Planning, Conference Sales Toolkit, Conference Venue Tips, hotel sales professionals

Tips to make your delegates conference experience easier and dramatically improve networking.

Today’s blog post is written by Kevin Newman who organises BrightonSEO.com conferences as posted in Event Managers Blog. You will love these tips – they just make sense!!

Improve the Usability of Your Name Badges.

Why do you give people name badges at events? It’s probably to make sure you’ve got no freeloaders.
Why are they useful to attendees? To help them remember the name of someone they’ve forgotten or to spot people they’d like to speak to. Yet the badges at most events are tiny, with minuscule fonts that might be on brand but are a nightmare to read at distance.

We take a different approach, that seems to work well for us.
Our badges are huge. A double sided sheet of A6. We do get comments about how huge they are, but making them bigger makes it much easier for them to be useful.
We also use the font Blue Highway. This is not one of our brand fonts. It’s a free font based upon the fonts used on American road signs. That means it’s designed to be clearly read from a distance.
If you can’t read the name of the attendee from 20ft away, we have failed on our badge designs.
Also think about what extra information you could put on the badge with the extra space a bigger badge allows. In the past we’ve included Twitter handles. Sometimes people are more familiar with people’s names on Twitter than their ‘real name’.
Though don’t be afraid to exclude things, on badges whitespace is your friend!

Programme More breaks.

I’ve struggled with this one over the years. I’ve always wanted to cram as much content into a conference as I can, so I was always nibbling away at the breaks.
Then I had a proper read through our feedback. I got the message that the opportunity to network was one of the main reasons people attended our events. So we made more time for exactly that.
Having healthy breaks does mean when a speaker inevitably runs over time, there is still plenty of time for attendees to stock up on caffeine, fresh air and industry gossip.

Arrange More Power Sockets
You can spot who the conference veteran is. They are the first person in the auditorium scoping out the seat nearest a power socket. They will even get charging early in the day to ensure their fully juiced for the whole day.
The reality is at most events your audience will be spending time on their mobile, tablet and/or phone. They will want power to keep them charged.
You can never have enough power sockets at a conference.
Use this opportunity. There are some great off the shelf charging solutions and it’s a great thing to get sponsored or branded. Chargebar is a great service where charging stations can be rented. It becomes the centre for connecting and like the “watering hole” of the conference. Chargers are the most forgotten item at a conference, if you are providing a solution to someones panic of almost running out of juice on their phone or notebook, then you are a saviour.

Send out a ‘What to Expect’ Email

Early on in my conference organising days it amazed me the number of emails I used to get about dress codes. I was organising marketing conferences not gala dinners. It’s one of the things people legitimately get concerned about in the run up to events.
One way to fight this anxiety in your delegates is to send round a ‘What to expect email’ a few days before the event. Talk about dress codes, what types of food and drink are going to be available, whether there will be wi-fi etc.
Think about every small question your attendees have asked ahead of your events. Turn then into a helpful piece of communication. You’ll save your attendees a lot of mental energy fretting.

Schedule Tweets to Pre-empt Problems
There are certain problems we know we are going to have at our events. People arrive early, they can’t find the wifi password, their running out of battery and are looking for a charger.
We know to expect these things so ahead of an event we schedule tweets covering exactly these issues.
It leaves us the time to concentrate on other things on the day but allows people on the back-channel to answer their own questions. You’ll also find other attendees retweeting these ‘Public Service Announcements’. Spreading the message for you.

In Conclusion.
A successful event is all about the details.
These are just a few of the things that have helped make our events more successful. Useful badges, more networking time that you might expect, extensive power sockets, allaying people’s fears with a what to expect email and pre-scheduling tweets to pre-empt problems.

You probably do lots of your own, I hope these tweaks will help you run your event better.

If you like this blog post, you will love these related topics:
One Brilliant Question to Ask When Organising a Conference
How to Effectively Analyze Your Conference – Survey Questions

Feel free to Contact Ciara if you have any questions on how to get the biggest results from your Conference or Event.

Tagged: arranging conferences, charging stations at conference, conference experience, conference organisers, conference planning tips, conference technology. conference apps, networking tips, tips on planning an event

Price is NOT a factor in chosing a Conference Venue

On 20 November, 2013 by Ciara Feely Comments (0), leave your own!
Categories: Conference Hotels, Conference Planning, Conference Sales Toolkit, Conference Venue Tips, Conference Venues, how to negotiate

The Conference Organiser does not make a decision based on Price.

So Stop Pitching your Conference Hotel Based on Price!

I am regularly asked in my workshops how to deal with negotiating on price. I am told all decisions come down to price and competitors keep lowering their price so in order to get the business they have to lower their rates.
I completely disagree.

Over the last few years as a Venue Finder, no conference organiser has ever said to me Ciara the only thing that matters to me is price. There is always something more important behind it. That “something” is what must be discovered. This statement is not just made based on my experience of speaking to hundreds of Conference Organisers , it is based on biology. The part of the brain that makes decisions does not understand price or language. The part of the brain that makes decisions does not understand price or language! So why are the majority of hotels leading with price? 8 out of 10 hotel websites that I go to have an annoying pop up window with a “special offer”.

If everything else seems the same, then a decision will be made on price, so you must pitch your venue at another angle and stop the “Price Pitch”.

Qualifying the client at first contact is critical to successfully selling your property and getting the rates you need to sustain profitably. Focusing on the conference and meetings market is the key to getting higher rates and more profitable business.

For more insights into how to understand the decision making process of the Conference Organiser, come to one of my workshops.

Next one is this Monday, November 25th, Dublin, Clyde Court Hotel. 2-5PM. Email or call to sign up.

I also do private mentor sessions or bespoke in house trainings for the whole team, Chef and Housekeepers too! Showing them how they can help create an amazing conference experience.

Ciara (at) Finda ConferenceVenue.com
086-3611428

Conference Sales Toolkit – Perfect Floor Plans

On 11 July, 2013 by Ciara Feely Comments (0), leave your own!
Categories: Conference Planning, Conference Sales Toolkit, Smart organising tips

Floor plans
The floor plan is an essential piece of information to have in any Conference Sales Toolkit. It is a very valuable document that will communicate immediately to the organiser that we understand your needs. Floor plans should be as detailed as possible and from one glance immediately orientate the organiser and figure out exactly where the main meeting space is with reference to the rest of the hotel. Conference organisers want to know where each door out of the conference room leads so they can control where their delegates can go to and what each window looks out onto. The Floor plan is a very valuable document and can give you the edge over your competitor if it is done correctly.

I was working with a UK professional conference organising company, they were not able to come to Ireland for a site inspection and so relied on me to be their eyes and on the hotel to have detailed information for them to establish if their exhibition would comfortably fit. The floor plans the hotel had were not very detailed at all. They assumed the conference organiser would be able to come for a site inspection and did not have any detail in them. I had to take hotel floor plans and write in the details myself, I had to go back to the hotel 3 times asking for measurements of the networking area, the width of the doors, the size of the room when divided and then I had to write in where the lobby was, where the car park was, where each door lead to, where the stage would be set up, what the windows looked out onto, etc. The clients comment was “does this hotel do many exhibitions or conferences? I can’t believe they don’t have this detail on their floor plans!” It did not leave him confident that they could handle his event, I had to reassure him and trust he would take my word for it. He did, the hotel turned out to be perfect for his event, but the first impression was that it wouldn’t suit.

The must have “Check list” for brilliant Floor plans…
 A diagram orientating the organiser where the rooms are with reference to the rest of the hotel
 Detailed diagrams then on each room to include –
 Measurements of each wall, door, window, the bar area, the stage, cloak room and any other space that can’t be used for an exhibition stand.
 A plan of the area outside the conference room – the networking or exhibition area, the same details and measurements in this.
 Ceiling height, and any obstructions to this drawn in – such as chandeliers as these could affect exhibition set up or certain event production logistics.
 Type of lighting and where they are – are there spots, is it all ceiling or wall lighting etc.
 Electrical Sockets, broadband connections, data points
 Audio points
 Power point 13 Amp or other amps
 3 phase supply
 TV points
 Telephone points
 Where the projectors are and inbuilt screens – detail back projection if that is set up
 Size of the screens
 Technology in the room
 What doors are used for exhibition set up – where can a car or truck pull up to, measurements of those doors, measurements of the service lift.
 Loading doc measurements
 Where the kitchen is, where the service corridors are
 Make it very obvious where the lobby is and entrance to the conference centre if it has its own entrance.
 Make it obvious what walls are partition walls, if there are doors in the partition walls and the measurement of these doors
 Pillars! Don’t avoid them if you have them, they must be addressed
 Air condition ventilators
 Temperature control points
 Measurement of the chair width – yes, I have been asked for this before!

And then to make it really easy for them –
 Name of the room and hotel (remembering they could be looking at a lot of plans, you want to be always in their mind)
 Contact information
 A short testimonial
 A small photo to help the client picture the room

If you create floor plans as suggested above I guarantee they will help you to book more conference business as it immediately says to the Conference Organiser – they get me, they understand my needs and will help me to organise a great event.”

I have also developed a plan for the perfect proposal, sales brochure, what photography to use and how to create a corporate conference video that works. Feel free to contact me for more information on these.

Tagged: conference floor plans, conference sales tool kit
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    Ciara Feely

    Welcome to the blog of Ciara Feely, the founder of FindaConferenceVenue.com, Ireland's expert on Conference Venues in Ireland. Ciara offers a free service researching and giving advice on venues in Ireland for Conferences, Meetings and Events. Just call or email her. The website is a comprehensive listing of over 500 venues in Ireland – independently search for venues and send an enquiry directly through to the venue.
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