31st March 22, UK: Make Venues is set to celebrate one of its best months of trading, as the business welcomes increasing numbers of delegates back through its doors.
The three UK venues have witnessed an exponential return of their meetings and conference bookings after - what has been - a remarkable and challenging two years. The team attribute the bounce back to their steadfast business strategy, which saw them focus on relationship building during the pandemic and continued investment in both product and people.
“Throughout the pandemic we kept our sales force working in order to maintain that vital dialogue with our customers, that way we’d hit the ground running as soon as we were able to,” commented David Vaughton, Managing Director, Make Venues. ”This approach has really worked, its meant we’ve supported our customers even if they have not been running programmes, and maintained really close relationships, ready for when they were able to again.”
Within Make Venues, it’s not just the delegate numbers that are expanding, the business continues to invest in staff acquisition and retention, supporting the award-winning service levels that customers continue to expect. Since September, six new members of staff have joined the team, and the group recently announced wellbeing champions across its venues to support healthy working environments.
“It is great to be investing so consistently in our incredible team. We have learnt so much since March 2020, we’ve flattened the structure, bought levels closer together to make all of our staff visible in front of our visitors and working collaboratively with our customers. It’s made us a more resilient and focussed business that is more able to adapt to the challenges it faces,” added Vaughton.
Across the three venues, which are located in London, Bristol and Leamington Spa, there has been a continued growth in the use of hybrid events on the calendar now, as more and more customers embrace the benefits of including virtual attendees.