HIC Talk

HIC welcome today’s announcement from East Coast that they will operate a new evening direct service between London Kings Cross and Harrogate daily. The service comes following a long campaign from Harrogate’s business community, including Harrogate International Centre. This new service will complement the current train schedule in place which has in excess of 100 trains to and from Kings Cross each day via Leeds or York. Alison Griffin of HIC comments: ‘We already have great transport links with the A1M on our doorstep and an International airport only 12 miles away. This addition will further bolster our train connectivity too, which is always good news for our visitors. Conferences & exhibitions at HIC attract in excess of 200,000 business visitors per annum and 78% of these visitors come from outside of the region.”

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Exciting developments at HIC as organisations book into the next decade…

Despite the current economic situation, many companies are forward planning years and sometimes decades ahead. With Harrogate International Centre (HIC) due to open new exhibition halls in 2011, it’s been a busy time for Sales Account Executive Nadene Lennon, who deals with Future Years bookings as well as the Associations sector. HIC and Harrogate have a very special relationship, with each feeding business to the other, and Nadine knows that without HIC, Harrogate would be a very different place – and without Harrogate, HIC wouldn’t be able to provide such an unique location for exhibitions and events.

Recently, Nadene has been very busy organising familiarisation visits – known as “fam visits”. Tailored to meet each client’s requirements, familiarisation visits give exhibition and event organisers the chance to experience HIC and Harrogate for themselves. Prospective clients are collected from nearby York, Leeds or Harrogate railway stations and given a tour around HIC. They also visit Harrogate and are shown around some of the hotels that will provide accommodation to delegates. The visit normally takes in lunch and sometimes dinner at one or more of the hotels, so that prospective clients can sample the food and view the rooms that delegates will stay in. It’s a fantastic opportunity for event organisers to find out exactly what Harrogate and HIC has to offer, and it is proving really helpful in securing new clients for HIC.

The familiarisation visits have led to some exciting bookings for Nadene, with one organisation booking HIC as one of three venues they will be using on a rotating basis in a ten year plan, with the third event booked for 2022! Another big booking is a series of three annual medical sector exhibitions between 2012 and 2014.

However, perhaps the most exciting booking Nadene has secured recently is one that will use the entire venue, including the new halls opening in 2011. Expected to attract over 3,000 delegates, the event should fill all the hotels in Harrogate and beyond, and it will deliver a huge boost to the local economy.  It will also add weight to Harrogate’s position at the heart of our knowledge economy as participants develop plans that will change the face of the medical industry for years to come.  In fact, this event will once again demonstrate the power of meetings and face to face experience – not just as a local economic stimulus and revenue line in  a venue and several hotel’s accounts – but as an influencer on global policy and the lives of real people.

With an additional 3,300 sq m of floor space, improved access to the conference centre and better green credentials, Nadene hopes that the new halls will encourage even more organisations to consider HIC in the years to come.

Alison Griffin, Head of Sales and Marketing at Harrogate International Centre recently wrote an article for Stand Out Magazine – extracts from which are detailed below…

Events move and there really is not much we can do about it… or can we?  Destinations and venues frequently face both the fear and excitement of an event move.  The fear comes from the fact that a “regular” is considering somewhere else, whilst the excitement revolves around the possibility of a new event.  The big questions of course are why the event is moving in the first place and what can be done to secure the business.

It is important to recognise the fact that different events move for different reasons. Regular (annual / biennial etc) conferences tend to be more flexible and often work on a rotational system, revisiting the same venue for several years or in a fixed pattern – sometimes because “it is the way they have always done it”, other times because of delegate locations or particular messages to be delivered at particular times.  Exhibitions on the other hand tend to stick to one location for longer periods of time and move for “a change” or because the organisers believe a different location will drive up visitor numbers.

However, don’t be fooled into believing that it is the organiser’s decision.  More often than not the need for a move comes from a far less controllable and harder to influence group – the audience and delegates.  If they are unhappy, they will make their problems known to the organisers and change starts to take place.  With this in mind, destinations and venues need to focus on several key areas to excite and engage the audience… More to follow!