Venues of Excellence, the UK’s leading collection of independent venues has announced a 15% growth to start of its new membership year, welcoming 5 new unique and innovative venues into the Venues of Excellence family and has also realised a 98% retention from its member venues as it commences its second business year under the new ownership.
Our new venues include a great selection of locations across the UK: Central Campus Venues – Warwick Conferences, Scarman – Warwick Conferences, Winter Gardens Blackpool Exhibition and Conference Centre, thestudio Manchester, and thestudio Glasgow.
During the pandemic Mandy Jennings purchased the consortium to cement its financial stability into the future. Jennings who held the position of Executive Director had previously headed up the operational team for the organisation and worked alongside the board of Directors, so had a great insight to the benefits and value to members of the consortium.
Jennings, reflecting on the past 12 months commented; “During the pandemic the Venues of Excellence team were dedicated to supporting members by moving forums online, creating bitesize training as sales teams returned and offered complimentary consultancy sessions to member venues to help position themselves back to business. Whilst some companies unfortunately did not see through the pandemic, VoE through its purchase created a firm steppingstone into the future and have over the past 12 months grown from strength to strength. I am very fortunate to have a passionate and highly motivated team, and with the support of our advisory group and inspirational members, VoE is in a very positive growth curve, and we are delighted the future is definitely looking bright”.
The new members into the portfolio, will see huge benefits to their venues through the sales, marketing, social media and PR activities of the consortium, alongside a bespoke hospitality Learning and Development Academy, innovative members forums, marketing workshops and a dynamic annual conference all offering great networking opportunities with peers. The consortium also has a Preferred Partner Programme for products and services suited to the hospitality industry who regularly network with members across all levels.
Our venue find service desk which acts as a central desk for our member venues and UK wide venue find for our clients has seen the highest growth year in 30 years of Venues of Excellence history, and a massive benefit to members is our “Keep it in the Family” referral scheme, which means when one of our venues cannot offer space we can help our clients and pass it to their partners in the consortium, ensuring they know the quality is first-class in every one of our venues.
Venues of Excellence represents over 40 unique, high-quality venues in the UK, from dedicated learning and development training centres to unique sporting venues to residential conference spaces and will be exhibiting at The Meetings Show at ExCeL London in June, meeting with clients and sharing all their exciting news about their member venues.