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Historic Westminster Conference Center Selects Rendezvous to help with
Bookings and Capture More Business
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Church House is a
magnificent historic
building in Dean's Yard,
next door to Westminster
Abbey and across the street
from the Houses of
Parliament.
A modern conference center occupies the three floors of the building,
but work on the original
Church House began in 1902,
a year after the death of
Queen Victoria, to
commemorate her Golden
Jubilee year in 1887. |
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Almost three decades later, in
1931, a decision was taken to demolish the existing
building and erect a new one more in keeping with the
needs of the Church at that time. The current building
was designed by Sir Herbert Baker, a renowned architect,
and work began in 1937.
The present Conference Center opened officially on 19
November 1990, and enjoyed immediate success, winning
numerous industry awards from the first. The center,
which was refurbished with new kitchens in 2000,
currently hosts 3,000 meetings a year and its 17 rooms
range from the Assembly Hall, which seats 670, to the
Bishop Partridge Hall, seating 180.
All meeting rooms are equipped with the latest
technology including ISDN, CAT 5 cabling, video
conferencing and infra-red translation services. Earlier
this year, the center decided that its in-house legacy
system could no longer cope with bookings, and a panel
including Operations Manager Kate Hunter opted for
Rendezvous, the browser-based system from NFS.
Rendezvous was installed in March and Kate is very
pleased with the speed and information capture aspects
of the system. "We are capturing more information on
every client," Kate says, "and that puts us in a
stronger marketing position. We can determine what
proportion of our business comes from government,
charities, agencies, or whatever."
Several government departments, such as the Home Office
and Education & Skills, regularly use Church House
meeting rooms. Kate also uses Rendezvous for contracts,
function sheets, billing and a daily summary. Many
reports are generated, including financial data,
inquiries per week, and essential planning details such
as flowers and security for the meeting rooms. A total
of eight people have full access to the system but
dozens, including the caterers, use it on a read-only
basis, so function sheets must be very clear.
"We get much better layout and formatting than
before, and billing is a lot easier," Kate notes.
"It's particularly helpful that the billing system
handles add-ons, so it's easy to make any changes."
The General Manager of Church House, Lacy Curtis-Ward,
heads up the management team. She has launched new
events such as 'Strawberries & Shakespeare', held last
year for 250 conference and event buyers. She has also
put catering at the top of her agenda - and thrown
traditional menus out the window. "People are much
more sophisticated about food these days and we cater
for highly knowledgeable guests," she says.
To improve menu development, Lacy introduced food
tastings for regular customers, and even hosted a blind
coffee tasting to be sure of serving the best.
She has also been instrumental in launching the
Westminster Collection, a group of high-profile
Westminster-based venues. This new collective aims to
help maximize the conference and meeting potential of
the area by sharing availability. Other founding members
include the Royal Horticultural Halls and Conference
Centre, One Birdcage Walk, Central Hall Westminster, the
Banqueting House Whitehall, and the Grange Hotels Group.
Recent awards won by Church House Conference Centre
include Employer of the Year 2000 from London Tourism
Awards, Best Value for Money Venue 2001 from the
Meetings Industry Association and Hospitality Assured
awards in each of the last four years. It has also won
food and beverage prizes.
Looking to the future, Church House will review the
system and consider putting availability information
online early next year. Kate Hunter sees the ability for
clients to view availability as important for her
marketing strategy. "We want more different kinds of
events, not just meetings," she comments, "and we
want more evening business. So we may well want to
introduce an online aspect and see how our clients like
it. It could make a big difference."
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