If you are looking for a meeting room to accommodate just short of 500 people with state-of-the-art equipment and superb acoustics with perhaps a small intimate room similarly equipped and with mood lighting – then take a look at the recently opened Royal Birmingham Conservatoire

Royal Birmingham Conservatoire has an excellent range of meeting and events rooms.

The main Concert Hall is simply ‘jaw- dropping’ from its light wood panelled walls, floor and ceiling to its raised platform stage and its raked seating. The Concert Hall also has a small balcony at the rear plus access to a green room and the main Conservatoire atrium. It is a hugely impressive space and will seat up to 493 people.  

The smaller room I mentioned above is the Eastside Jazz Club. It is Birmingham’s only dedicated jazz club. The room is cosy, intimate and a little louche. It will accommodate from 60 to 100 guests and I guess it would be ideal for a private drinks reception or party.

Royal Birmingham Conservatoire has eight performance studios, all spacious rooms with high ceilings and large windows each accommodating between 30 and 60 delegates depending on the layout required.

Delegates will be sharing the meeting spaces with a variety of musical instruments including grand pianos. You never lose sight of the fact that the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire is designed primarily as a centre of musical excellence.

In total the Royal Birmingham Conservatoirehas fourteen meeting, conference and events spaces. I have just highlighted the largest and the smallest.

Like most events venues the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire offers a full catering package as well as a ground floor café.

However, there are very few venues that we know of which can provide musicians and even opera singers for any function or dinner.

You can probably tell from the above that I was very impressed with the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Before I went I thought it would be difficult to locate the building - but no. It is a five-minute straight line walk from Birmingham Moor Street Station and ten minutes from New Street Station.

There is a multi-storey car park virtually alongside the Conservatoire (£6.00 for 24 hours) and it is an easy drive from Spaghetti Junction (M6J6) on to the Aston Expressway (A38M) and then the final couple of hundred yards around Birmingham’s inner ring road.

Details: http://www.bcu.ac.uk/conservatoire

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Published: 23 November 2017

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‘Events and business tourism in general continue to be central to the success of the Manchester economy’, said Marketing Manchester chief executive Sheona Southern addressing the recently held Greater Manchester Tourism Conference – reports Place North West magazine.

Sheona Southern said: “Business tourism, specifically the conference and events sub-sector, is now worth £810m and supports 21,900 jobs.

So far this year Marketing Manchester and its partners have won 20 conferences, which will bring 11,635 delegates and £21.7m to the region over the coming years.

At £7.9bn, Southern said that tourism is worth more to the city region than sectors such as financial and professional services, life sciences and creative, digital and tech.

Southern also announced that Marketing Manchester has been awarded £1million from the Discover England Fund, a fund which aims to improve England’s competitive tourism offer by building world-class, bookable tourism products and getting them to the right international customers at the right time, making it easier to explore the country.

See report: <https://www.placenorthwest.co.uk/news/conferences-key-to-tourism-growth-says-marketing-manchester-boss/

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Published: 24 October 2017

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Marriott Hotels has teamed up with Samsung and Legrand to design a hotel room of the future. 

The so-called ‘Internet of Things (IoT) Hotel Room’ will allow guests to personalise their room and their stay with innovations ranging from intuitive lighting to voice-activated room controls.

The technology inside the IoT Hotel Room allows, for instance, a user to ask a virtual assistant for a 6:30am wake-up alarm, to start a yoga routine on a full-length mirror, request additional housekeeping services and start the shower at the desired temperature - all stored in their customer profile and all activated by voice or app.

Marriott is looking to embrace a future where ‘hotel owners would have a seamless, transparent and flexible end-to-end solution that requires minimal equipment, while customers would enjoy an integrated experience with access to their own data and information, as well as accessible voice and mobile-optimized controls’.

The three partners will analyze feedback following a three-month-long IoT Hotel Room trial.

Guests can expect to see elements of this brave new world introduced in hotel rooms within the next five years.

Details: http://news.marriott.com/2017/11/marriott-international-teams-samsung-legrand-unveil-hospitality-industrys-iot-hotel-room-future-enabling-company-deepen-personalized-guest-experience/

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Published: 22 November 2017

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Apartment hotel operators are successfully targeting the ‘millennial market’ with brands that tout communal kitchens and shared workspaces - claims Hotels Mag.They are gaining new ground and proving to be less expensive than conventional business hotels.

The sheer number of new openings in the pipeline strengthens their argument.

‘Operators are making a push in Europe, with 10,000 units in the pipeline’, according to a July HVS report, ‘with new players emerging.’

The United Kingdom and Germany will see almost three-quarters of the new properties.

Leading the way are Residence Inn, with 1,232 units opening through 2019, and Ireland’s Staycity, with 1,166 units slated through 2020.

Staycity, which recently launched upscale Wilde Aparthotels, plan to more than triple their portfolio to 15,000 rooms by 2022 with a focus on Dublin, the U.K. and Germany. (picture: new Wilde Aparthotel by Staycity planned to open on the Strand in London autumn 2017).

Details: http://www.hotelsmag.com/Industry/News/Details/75544

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Published: 22 October 2017

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