Beautiful Schools Advisory Board

We had the pleasure of hosting our Advisory Board members at our latest meeting which took place at Tonbridge School.

During this meeting we discussed aspects of the hiring market, how to address and deal with Government business, hosting charity events, preferred suppliers and agents.

The Beautiful School’s team had met with Calder Conferences, one of the leading agencies for accommodation, conference and event management and currently has the sole supplier contract for booking all meetings and events across central government.  This was in order to understand more about how the Government business was placed and venues found as well as how best to position yourself in order to attract more of this business. We presented our findings which opened up a fascinating discussion on what type of business schools would most value from Government bookings as well as the different experiences schools had when dealing with past bookings. This conversation also addressed how to deal with the inevitable commission that comes with receiving bookings from agents such as Calder and the issues that surround this.

Our guest speaker at the September Advisory Board was Jen Noon from Parkinson’s UK. Jen gave us a fantastic presentation on the charity sector and what makes a venue attractive to a charity for various events. Jen had run a successful Spooky Sprint at Tonbridge School for Parkinson’s UK and commented on how easy and practical the school was as a venue. “Proper toilets, lighting, power, café and a sports track. Tonbridge school were one of the best venues we’ve used!”

We look forward to hosting our next Advisory Board Meeting on the 14th of February 2018. To find out how you can be involved, get in touch here.