 This week’s Academic Venue Show was an upbeat and positive experience – and a perfect opportunity for conference buyers to meet representatives from more than 50 venues across the UK. We caught up with Terry Billingham, CEO of Venuemasters, who hosted the show, and asked for his feedback at the end of a lively and productive event.
Would you say this year’s show has been a success?
Absolutely – I think it’s gone down very well. We’ve just been around talking to a number of exhibitors, and they’ve given us some very good feedback. We’re always very keen to hear what the exhibitors feel about the show – because no matter how many buyers we get visiting, if the exhibitors aren’t happy then it’s failed. And the ones I’ve spoken to today are really very pleased with the event.
We’ve also conducted interviews with a number of buyers, two of whom were first-time visitors. All of them said how much they’ve enjoyed the show – and having gathered a lot of information they’ll be following up with the venues later on. Put simply, that’s what the show’s about. The exhibitors come here to talk to buyers, get their information across, set up the opportunity to talk to them again at a later stage. Then, hopefully, it’ll lead to some business for them.
This year the show featured three seminars for the first time. How do you think they went down?
We’re very pleased with the seminars, and I counted more than 80 people at each one. There were some very different topics covered, and the feedback we’ve had is very positive – that it’s been very worthwhile going, that they’ve learnt something, and that they’ve been entertained at the same time. The mixture of seminars, meeting the teams from the venues, and getting the information they want, it really has made it a productive day for buyers.
How many visitors do you think have come through the door?
 The number of registrations this year is the same as last year – about 1,100-1,200. But we always get more people coming along on the day as well. We’re expecting the total to be about 350-400 buyers walking through the door.
In terms of exhibitors, it’s the same as last year – there are 50 venues represented today. That’s a good size for us, and it fits nicely into the space here at the Business Design Centre, so we’re really pleased with that.
The show has expanded in terms of its offering, with more seminars and new initiatives like the advice centre and CV clinic. Is there room for further expansion in future years?
I think there is room for expansion, and we’re always looking at ways to develop the show. The extended seminar programme seems to have worked really well, and I’m looking forward to getting feedback from the advice bureau – that’ll be interesting.
But more importantly than anything else, we need to talk to the buyers and see what they want from the event. Sure, they want to come and speak to representatives from the venues – but we want to encourage them to stay for that bit longer. So in talking to the buyers we may find that the show needs something else. That’s why we’re very keen to get as much feedback as we can from the buyers via our questionnaire.
We always put a lot of effort into our survey. It’s not just asking how many stands people visited, it’s about how they found the exhibition hall, about the time of year, and whether the event is on a suitable day of the week. All that information will be studied very, very carefully when we start planning for next year.
And when does that planning process start?
More or less straight away. We’ll debrief immediately after the show, meet our board of directors and present all the information back to them, and the planning process kicks in straight away.
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