Kingsholm kicks off with Rendezvous

Gloucester Rugby Club

Kingsholm is the home of the venerable Gloucester Rugby Club but it’s also home to eight race courses, two cricket clubs, and three football clubs. On its opening, the new Cheltenham & Gloucester Grandstand, which incorporates the Kingsholm Business Conference Centre and banqueting facilities, instantly became one of the most important conference venues in the Cotswolds and southwest.

In fact, within six months of its opening, the centre gained the prestigious Accreditation in Meetings quality benchmark from the Meetings Industry Association.

With all the meeting rooms looking out over the famous Kingsholm stadium and pitch, the centre attracts business meetings, company conferences and social events. To manage its extensive facilities, in August 2008 the conference centre installed Rendezvous, the advanced browser-based meeting room, conference and catering management solution from NFS on a hosted basis.

This means that the venue incurred no hardware costs. NFS hosts the system and the venue gets the benefit. Even marketing functionality, all-important to any venue operation, is included. At present, the venue has two designated users on Rendezvous with access only for other staff as required. Facilities include rooms for two to 400 people theatre style.

According to Patrick Morris, Conference Sales Manager, “Rendezvous is working very well for us and we are enjoying using it.” He says that the job of his Events Administrator has become a lot easier. “Simple things like being able to use standard templates for many administrative tasks speeds up the process.”

Patrick also values the marketing aspects of Rendezvous. “We can now easily trace customer details we have dealt with before and have the full knowledge of what we have provided in the past. This helps us generate more repeat business. We also find the facility in Rendezvous for copy and repeat bookings fast and effective.”

And as a manager, he relies on the forecasting capability of Rendezvous. “It helps me to take action early, for example, if our conversion of tentative bookings is not progressing to plan.”

Also important, Patrick says that NFS has provided good support and he finds the system very stable. Going forward, he plans to use it for much more on the sales and marketing side to build up the client database. Success is highly likely. After all, if you start with such a famous sports-based venue and add the data capture power of Rendezvous, Kingsholm can be expected to score big.

Scheduling & event management software