CONFERENCES
No room at the inns
Stephen Findlay-Scullion
Conference business is big, diverse, profit- able. Worldwide it is worth around £6,000 million per annum. How well are u hotels coping both materially and in their market attitudes towards the conference? Is enough being done to' market the United Kingdom as the international conference centre? Of all the invincible earnings open to Britain, tourism offers the best scope for growth. In particular, the executive presented with a choice of having his company conference in. Kansas or in the swingingest city on earth (which of course, means London) can be persuaded to settle for the latter. Providing adequate or even small localised business conferences is beyond the capacity of some hotels. As for the ripe apples that hang on the international confer ence tree, London needs a custom-built con+ ference hall in Victoria, or somewhere equally central. The most natural con- ference centre in the world, and the city with the mostest, will have to sit back and watch other cities and other countries reap the conference harvest. The conference faci- lity scene in London do not even sell them- selves efficiently. Others confuse selling with marketing. The majority appreciate the value and growth potential of the conference mar- ket, but relatively few are prepared to carry out the kind of research and development that is needed in order to maximise the mar- ket. What is needed is a total commitment to marketing by top management throughout the hotel industry. Lack of it, accounts per- haps for some of the shortcomings of hotel conference accommodation. In particular when hotels are planned and constructed in this day and age without research of some kind into the real needs of the conference organiser, then no matter how intensive the sell may be, the hotel (and this goes for any other business in a similar situation) has not been well marketed. When one thinks of the conference centres in swinging London, the mind runs along a well-walked carpet. The Festival Hall, God bless it, the Albert Hall, Royal Garden Hotel and the Royal Lan- caster (this is not intended as a comprehen- sive list of the best conference centres in London), but these_ at the top of the range in effect leave no choice at all to accom- modate the ever-increasing universal confer- ence facilities.
In order to accommodate the Sixth World Congress of Cardiology last September, Fay Pannell, of Conference Services Ltd, had to ask organisers to limit attendance to 4,000. because, she says, 'We shall have to use the entire South Bank complex, consisting of the Festival Hall (capacity 3,000), the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the National Film Theatre. and the Shell Theatre'. Hardly the scene one would think sufficiently cohesive to offer the major world conference.
Nevertheless, the major London confer- ence centres are still at a loss for anything over 1,000 people. Oddenino's Royal Gar- den, the first British-owned hotel to follow the Hilton's example, was designed as an international hotel and conference venue to seat 900, theatre style, in its main confer- ence suite, and was equipped with 500 bed- rooms.
While the average international confer- ence in Britain is around the 300 to 450 mark, which the Royal Garden is happy to accommodate, it cannot accommodate the 500-1,000 conference (of which there are about 2,000 a year, worldwide) -without farming out the delegates to other hotels for rooms, and it cannot consider the hundreds of conferences over the 1,000 mark, let alone the twelve or so that boast 8,000 dele- gates. £8 per square foot or not, the Royal Garden can only go after a limited part of the international market.
The company's financial director, Mr Arnold Miller, has said, 'We are not greedy; we do not mind our conference visitors, going to other Kensington hotels to sleep —meaning hotels such as Kensington Close and Kensington Palace, which, however, have their own large conference business. He observes: 'Before we built our hotel. everyone was missing out on 500-strong con- ference accommodation. Where does one draw the line?' True, but why should every major hotel built in London miss out on the 1,000-and' over business? It will be interesting to se how the conference facility centres progress in the 'seventies.
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