Hotels, Venues & Event news
Village Hotel Club Bristol officially opened its doors following a significant investment of £22.5 million.
The sleek black box situated in Filton, just North of Bristol’s city centre features 153 stylish rooms, a state-of-the-art gym, the Village Pub and Grill, a Starbucks coffee shop, and the Village Hotels Business Club VWorks – a versatile meeting and events space where guests can enjoy a relaxed co-working space, free super-fast Wi-Fi.
Home to multiple green oases, some of the cleanest water in the world and a unique bike culture, Copenhagen is well known for being one of the world’s most sustainable and liveable cities and is routinely place at or near the top of livability, sustainability and related global rankings.
Every morning the cycle paths fill up with commuters as an impressive 63% go by bike to work in Copenhagen. Sustainability and being green is part of the Danish DNA and just as sorting the rubbish is a natural part of the day, recycling and green energy is a key focus.
It therefore comes as no surprise that Copenhagen is also a front runner when it comes to hosting green meetings, conferences and events. The fact is that sustainability has been thought into most hotels, venues and the city itself, so you will get a green solution whether you want it or not.
In 2009, Copenhagen hosted the first-ever eco-certified political summit, the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference COP15, and in 2012, Denmark played host to the most sustainable Presidency of the European Union, certified to ISO-20121 sustainable event management standards.
The Copenhagen City Council is working targeted towards becoming the world’s first CO2-neutral capital by 2025, and Denmark has ranked number one on the Climate Change Performance Index for three consecutive years, a success based on positive development in recent emissions and good policy execution.
The sustainable focus has even spread to the city’s restaurant scene, presenting numerous restaurants serving locally sourced, organic and climate friendly dishes, ranging from high end options such as ***Michelin-starred restaurant, Geranium and *Michelin-starred restaurant, Relæ, to easy going and diverse Copenhagen Street Food and, Gro, situated in an urban rooftop farm, just to mention a few. But let’s start from the beginning:
Flying will never be the most environmentally-friendly way of transporting yourself but is nevertheless a convenient one. We recommend that you fly directly to leave the smallest possible carbon footprint. Even better, take the train directly from city centre to city centre and save time and expenses from going to and from airports.
Copenhagen offers highly advanced and developed public transport infrastructure. The Metro – presently under expansion – connects the city center to the airport in just 13 minutes, where the efficient airport train takes you to Copenhagen’s Central Train Station in only 12 minutes. Either solution costs less than €5.
Also, worth considering is that Copenhagen is one of the most walkable cities in the world, ranked World’s most walkable city by Walk 21 in 2013. Its compact city centre makes walking between meeting venues, hotels, sights, restaurants and shopping areas a matter of minutes. Or join the locals and travel by bike. There are public bikes available for hire all over the city.
More than 70% of the hotel rooms in Copenhagen are eco-certified, so sleeping with a green conscience is no challenge. The Nordic hotel chain Scandic is one of the suppliers that has taken social responsibility a step further. Scandic not only has effective energy usage and serves selections of organic foods. When sheets, towels and furniture are replaced, they are donated to local shelters for the homeless. Since 1996, the hotel chain has worked hard to make its resource usage more efficient.
Crowne Plaza Copenhagen Towers opened in 2009 with an ambition to be leading in eco-friendly hotel management and was named World’s Greenest Hotel in 2010 by SKÅL. In 2013, after 14 months of focused efforts, Crowne Plaza Copenhagen Towers became the first hotel in Denmark to be certified with the international environmental management standard ISO 14001.
The city’s largest hotel chain, Danish family owned Arp-Hansen Hotel Group, offers 12 hotels, all qualified for The Green Key in recognition of their effectiveness by reducing energy and water consumption, minimising waste, introducing organic produce and creating a healthy environment in which to work and stay.
International hotel chains such as Radisson have their own environmental programs. For instance, starting in 2012, Radisson Blu Hotels & Resorts chose an ambitious commitment with the Think Planet strategy and a plan to reduce energy consumption by 25% within five years.
The above-mentioned hotels all offer meeting facilities with a green profile. However, if you need more space, Scandinavia’s largest convention centre, the Bella Centre, also upholds a thorough environmental policy and its own windmill and holds a Green Key certification.
In recent years, the restaurants in Copenhagen have developed the New Nordic Cuisine, focusing on seasonal, local produce. It’s still possible to get a good steak in Copenhagen, but many restaurants have turned their focus to vegetarian and vegan dishes. This approach is also climate-friendly and adds to the fact that Denmark, and the Copenhageners in particular, are leading within organic food consumption.
Copenhagen’s ‘Michelin-starred restaurant, Geranium, mainly serves organic and biodynamic food, but you can find organic food in numerous restaurants around the city. BOB Biomio Organic Bistro, Denmark’s largest organic eatery in the trendy Vesterbro part of town is a good example. Restaurant Cap Horn, by the picturesque canal Nyhavn, was one of the first restaurants in the city to implement organic produce and, as a minimum requirement, all basic ingredients such as eggs, milk and butter are organic, as are the coffee and tea and the majority of the other beverages.
If you want to cater organic food for meetings or even mega-events, Danes know how to do that as well. During the UN Climate Change Conference COP15 held in Copenhagen in 2009, 75% of the food for the 30.000+ participants was organic and could be purchased at a reasonable price.
There are several ways to engage your participants in environmentally-friendly activities. Why not enjoy the sights of Copenhagen from the back of a bike or tie your shoelaces and run around the sights, maybe finish off with a refreshing and cooling swim in the clean harbour.
Another possibility is to visit some of the organic farms e.g. Krogerup Avlsgaard or Fuglebjerggard outside the city, offering teambuilding activities and culinary sessions with food and micro-brewed beer in organic settings.
Copenhagen works to continuously push for a more sustainable future and aim to inspire other destinations to embrace green solutions as a natural part of hospitality. And to do so the congress and meetings industry plays an instrumental role creating a sustainable city that works towards realising the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals.
The City of Copenhagen’s existing policies and strategies all contain ambitious goals in relation to the SDGs, addressing all three dimensions of sustainable development: social, economic and environmental including, as mentioned, becoming the world’s first carbon neutral capital by 2025, an ambitious goal, which is tracking on target.
Acknowledging the need for Destination Marketing Organisations (DMOs) to contribute to the realisation of the SDGs, Copenhagen’s official DMO, Wonderful Copenhagen is working closely together with a range of stakeholders to ensure a sustainable destination that is as much for locals as it is for tourists.
Wonderful Copenhagen has recently been certified as a Green Tourism Organisation and has vowed to make tourism a force for good. From hotels combatting food waste to venues running job school programmes for refugees, Copenhagen’s meetings industry is behind many different sustainable initiatives that all contribute to making Copenhagen a more sustainable destination. Wonderful Copenhagen is set to launch its new sustainability strategy for 2018-2021, which will outline the path going forward for both the destination and its many players as well as Wonderful Copenhagen itself.
Radisson Hotel Group has announced the signing of the Radisson Red Vienna in Austria.
The Imperial City will welcome the new property in 2021 which will located in the Leopoldstadt area of the city, the newly built hotel will allow guests to stay in one of Vienna’s most vibrant and trendy areas. The popular Danube Canal, with its numerous beach bars and restaurants, is nearby, while the hotel will also be within walking distance of the city centre.
The Radisson Red Vienna will have 179 guest rooms, a restaurant and bar, a gym, and a creative meetings space.
A 196-bedroom Courtyard by Marriott hotel is due to open close to London City Airport in 2020.
The hotel will be a seven-storey property and will feature a ground-floor restaurant and meeting facilities. Its opening will coincide with a £500m redevelopment of the south-east London airport, which is set to quadruple the size of its passenger terminal.
Rome now has a convention bureau of its own, formed in conjunction with the surrounding Lazio region, the Roma & Lazio Convention Bureau aims to attract more meeting, incentive, convention and event (MICE) groups to the capital of Italy, and to assist group planners in organizing events. Services range from connecting planners with local partners including venues, destination management companies, and incentive houses to running familiarization trips and connecting planners with agencies from the city government and Italian Ministry of Culture that can help personalize events, gain access, and get questions answered quickly. And, of course, helping manage requests for proposals. The Roma & Lazio Convention Bureau has 117 members, including six major convention centres and venues, and 13 professional conference organizers, destination management companies and incentive houses, as well as 43 hotels of three- to five-star quality and 42 service providers, among others. In total, Rome has 1,014 hotels with nearly 50,000 rooms, including 170 four- and five-star properties with conference facilities that have a total of 70,600 seats. Add in the broader Lazio region and that’s nearly 2,000 hotels and almost 80,000 rooms.
IBTM World published their Trends Watch Report 2018 last week. Its objective is to look at the state of the industry now and predict what it will look like in 12 months’ time. The report is compiled from various sources, and the part that we’ve summarised here is the section on trends for 2019:
Health and wellness was a growing area in 2018, with growing awareness around the issue of mental health and providing support for employees. This will continue to be of interest in 2019 and beyond.
The experiential sector of the meetings and events industry is moving to evaluating their events’ strategic and creative thinking, above their operational efficacy. It’s thought that industry growth will be driven by the creation of strategic experiences for brands, as much as efficient production.
The millennial meeting attendee has been found to be more demanding, with a shorter attention span and with increased needs around technology, sustainability and connectivity. MPI’s research shows that event organisers believe that sessions will becoming more specialist and individual session times will go down as the attendees’ attention span drops.
There will be increasing focus around ‘Duty of Care Initiatives for Delegates’. This is because of high profile incidents in 2017 and 2018, from terror attacks to ecological threats. Whilst other trends, from sustainability to wellness, are often perceived as ‘luxury’, according to MPI this trend will be a ‘necessity’ for at least the forthcoming year. Last year MPI reported that fewer than 50 per cent of meeting planners had security threats in their contingency planning, but they feel this number will rise.
Technology is changing the way we work, but this will also have an impact on the way business events are planned and the participants experience them. That starts from the moment attendees provide their details at registration. Their data, powered by artificial intelligence, can be used to decide which sessions to attend and which attendees they should connect with to get the best return on their investment.
According to World Finance, the five fastest-growing industries in the world are all technology related: renewable energy, cybersecurity, biotechnology, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. These industry sectors give us opportunity for growth as their exhibitions, meetings and conferences grow.
The theme seems to be ‘Growth out of Uncertainty’ as economists are concerned about the trade dispute between the U.S. and China, Canada, and the European Union. The economic and political situation is uncertain in all parts of the world. However, technology could create a more dynamic business world in the future. The global meetings and events industry, which relies heavily on industrial dynamism, could benefit from these conditions.
The conclusion of the report is that although everything changes, everything stays the same. Two photographs are often used in marketing presentations, one taken in the 1900s, the second one hundred years later. They both show queuing commuters, waiting on a platform. The first shows a predominantly male audience, waiting for a train, everyone looking down at a newspaper. The second shows a more diverse audience, in more contemporary dress, but still waiting for a tube, still with their heads down but in this case towards a phone or tablet. This picture describes the changes in our working environment.
Despite new technology, there is still high demand for live events and face-to-face meetings. Experiences add value to events and leave lasting impressions.
The meetings and events industry is driven by the success of other industries, investments from cities and regions, the growth of businesses, and also by the organisers’ belief in the investment quality of a meeting or event.
There is evidence of dynamism within business, which is good news for the meetings and events industry, as it drives communication, exchange of knowledge, education, networking, conferences, exhibitions and product launches.
The IBTM World Trends Report is available in full online.
Global DMC Partners, the largest global network of independent Destination Management Companies has released their 2018 Global Destination Index which presents the most popular meeting and incentive destinations around the world for 2018 and identifies up-and-coming markets that are already trending for 2019. The data was compiled based on analysing data from more than 6,000 meeting and incentive programmes across 2018 and 2019 in over 500 destinations that Global DMC Partners represents.
Additionally, the 2018 Global Destination Index highlights data about newer markets to watch in 2019. Destinations identified on this list are already seeing a boost in interest from meeting planners for programs operating in 2019 compared to the interest that was shown for the destination for meetings or incentives operating in 2018.
President of Global DMC Partners, Catherine Chaulet commented, “Part of our responsibility is to open up the world to our clients, so that they can encounter different cultures and experience something extraordinary. Identifying destinations for this list helps us present secondary markets and those intriguing destinations that our clients will soon discover are also perfect for meetings and incentives. Flight lift patterns, cost-effective local options, and a wide range of unique activities are just a few of the reasons why these destinations are already showing popularity for 2019.”
For more information about booking your conferences and meetings and for help finding a venue call 01780 484051 or email us now!
Warner Leisure Hotels has acquired the 300-bedroom Heythrop Park Resort as part of its planned expansion, this follows the group’s recent £50m transformation of Studley Castle in Warwickshire, which is set to open its doors in March 2019 taking its portfolio up to 15 hotels
Warner intends to commence the refurbishment of the hotel in 2019, opening its doors as a new Warner in 2020. Built in the 1700s by Charles Talbot, Heythrop Park is a Grade II-listed property that sits on 440 acres of parkland and an 18-hole championship golf course.
Vancouver recently came top of a survey of event organisers, who voted it the city where delegates feel safest. I recently visited Vancouver and Whistler on an educational trip with Accor Hotels to look at their Fairmont properties and the Convention Centre and see what it can offer for conferences, meetings and events.
After a 9-hour flight from London, the transfer from the airport to the city centre is around half an hour, so quick and easy. It’s a wonderful city with mountains, water and a great destination for both conferences and incentives. The waterfront hotels are just steps away from the Convention Centre, which has two sections, East and West.
There are plenty of activities for groups in and around Vancouver, it’s the only place where I know that you can travel on the top of a cable car or hire Grouse mountain for exclusive use. But for the less adventurous, there is a food tasting tour of Granville Market, float plane flight, e-bikes, harbour cruise or suspension bridge walk through the woods.
Whistler is less than two hours from Vancouver and a beautiful drive along the shore. The town was host to the winter Olympics in 2010. There’s a convention centre and variety of hotels with meeting facilities as well as unusual venues for dinners or team building. The skiing is extensive in the winter and summer activities include ziplining, walking, cycling, scavenger hunts and other outside activities.
All the hotels and venues that I visited had good meeting facilities and accommodation, here’s a few things that made them memorable:
If you’d like more information about holding a meeting, conference or event in Vancouver, please contact enquiries@edgevenues.com or call 01780 484051.