In contrast with the academic venues favoured largely by the association market, residential conference centres - also known as management training centres - have traditionally attracted a mainly corporate market.
Training is essential to the continuing success of all businesses, and new technology, a more flexible workforce, more demanding employees and the growingrecognition from managers of the importance of investing in staff have all contributed to an increase in staff training. The venue in which this training is carried out is critical to its success, and residential conference centres, with their focused environment in which to learn, are playing an important part in providing venues for this activity.
Such centres are usually situated in their own grounds in rural locations that are close to motorway, rail and airport links. Their aim is to concentrate on providing a purposeful and business-like atmosphere where everything is geared to make life easier for the company organising the event, the trainer running it, and the delegates attending.
In providing meetings facilities and accommodation under one roof, residential conference centres are often considered to be in direct competition with hotel conference venues. Wakely (1997; p.11), in her comparison of the two types of venue, emphasises that in residential conference centres there are not the distractions or conflicts of interest sometimes found in hotels, such as leisure groups or weddings. She adds that residential conference centres generally offer an extensive range of professional meetings rooms (with natural daylight, unlike many hotel function rooms) and an abundance of syndicate rooms (not converted bedrooms). Regarding the actual accommodation, she claims:
The wide divide between hotels and management centres is narrowing. Gone are the days of sparse single bedrooms, shared bathrooms and canteen meals [in residential conference centres]. At the upper end of the market, bedrooms are now all en-suite offering tea and coffee, trouser presses, televisions, message systems and study areas. Leisure takes a higher profile as it is recognised how important it is for delegates to be able to relax after a possibly stressful day in the training room.
Gosling (1998a) points out another advantage that residential conference centres may have over hotels, claiming that at a time when organisations do not wish to be seen as frivolous or ostentatious, the serious image of the former is likely to create a more favourable impression in the minds of company shareholders and customers.
The ownership and management of residential conference centres can take a variety of forms. 'In the past, the majority... were spin-offs from academic institutions, and some of the best-established centres are still those which are firmly based in the academic world' (Gosling, 1998a; p.59). Although they may be situated far from the main site of the institution, a number of successful residential conference centres are run by universities, including Aston Business School, Cranfield Management Development Centre and Radcliffe House.
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However, as Shone (1998) states, most are operated by private companies, whose raison d'etre is management development or conference centre provision as a commercial activity. Moreover, many of these privately owned venues are owned or leased by blue-chip organisations to ensure exclusive use. Through this arrangement, the parent company will have priority in booking space or courses but will offer the venue's spare capacity on the open market. Gosling (1998a) gives the examples of Latimer House in Chesham, which is leased by Coopers & Lybrand; Uplands nearHigh Wycombe, which belongs to the Nationwide Building Society; and Durdent Court in Uxbridge, which is a wholly-owned BP conference and training centre.
Despite all of their apparent advantages for the purchaser, however, one disadvantage of residential conference centres is the fact that, in the UK at least, there is still no official grading system. But even that may be about to change in response to market demand. In the same article, Gosling (1998a; p.60) states:
Now that dedicated conference and training venues are fully established in their own niche, there are moves in the meetings industry to grade them in the same way as hotels. According to a 1997 survey of UK organisations, 82% of buyers of conference and training venues were in favour of a grading system to help them judge the quality of facilities.
In the meantime, however, buyers and meeting planners are assisted in their decision process by the services provided by the marketing consortium, Conference Centres of Excellence (CCE; www.cceonline.co.uk), whose members are 29 UK dedicated residential conference centres. Membership of the group is via a very rigorous accreditation process, which requires the candidate centre to produce documentary evidence and to undergo an inspection visit by an independent assessor. Successful candidate centres guarantee to provide a range of facilities and services, from 'dedicated meeting rooms with natural daylight and purpose-built conference furniture, designed for comfort and concentration' to 'ensuite bedrooms with well-lit study areas'.
The CCE consortium's main benefit to its members is to provide them with new business through its venue-finding service, although there are other spin-off benefits, including benchmarking, networking and staff education. More generally, the CCE consortium jointly markets residential conference centres to raise their profile as an alternative to the hotel product.
Unusual venues
Often classed (erroneously) as the 'everything else' category, unusual venues have been defined more precisely as 'comprising a wide range of facilities that are used for conferences, including museums, historic houses, art galleries and a number of other buildings normally used for quite different purposes' (Leask and Hood, 2000). Eisted buildings, theatres, sports venues, ships and theme parks are further examples of venues where, in addition to their primary use - as visitor attractions, cultural resources, sports facilities and so on - the hosting of meetings provides an additional income stream. Rogers (1998; p.39) sums up the allure of such venues:
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The attraction of unusual venues is they can give an event a special appeal and can make it memorable for years afterwards. Some have very high quality meeting and conference facilities; others may be quite limited in this respect. But the setting in which the event is being held compensates for such shortcomings in the eyes of the conference organiser (and, it is hoped, of the delegates). The main appeal of unusual venues, then, is the high recall and entertainment value they can bring to events held in them.
Leask and Hood (2000) concur, insisting that it is the uniqueness of many unusual venues that helps make them memorable, especially for meetings-weary delegates for whom yet another event held in a conference centre or hotel holds little attraction. Gosling (1999a; p.73) also highlights the motivating factor, which explains why organisers wishing to attract greater numbers to a conference, or to reward employees with something more innovative, are opting for unusual venues. She adds: 'At most events, communication is the objective. If the venue itself is a talking point, it may well promote interaction, and delegates are more likely to remember the event.'
The motivation of meeting planners to use unusual venues is more than matched by the motivation of property owners and managers to enter the meetings market. In the UK, a number of supply-side factors have encouraged a range of different types of facilities to promote themselves as venues for the meetings market. Changing funding systems and increased competition for leisure spending has resulted in many properties having to generate more revenue or look to alternative revenue mixes. In particular, museums and galleries have been hit by decreased central and local government funding (Leask et al., 2000). Shallcross (1998) highlights another contributing factor, underlining the importance of a particular mechanism of National Lottery funding, whereby development grants for facilities are often made conditional on the venue taking action to generate income from new sources.
As a result of these supply-side factors, much investment has gone into adapting historic buildings or attractions such as zoos, museums and gardens for occasional use as meetings facilities. Gosling (1999a) mentions a range of UK examples. In Morecambe, an Edwardian railway station on the promenade has been fully restored into The Platform, a new conference and meeting venue for groups of between 60 and 300. Newcastle's unusual venues include Blackfriars Monastery, a restored thirteenth-century friary, and the Newcastle Discovery, a museum dating back to 1899, housing engineering, transport and maritime exhibits.
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In the same article, Gosling points out that occasionally new, out-of-the-ordinary venues are created from scratch, such as London's Vinopolis, primarily a visitor attraction based on the history and heritage of wine. The Vinopolis project was unusual in that one of the primary focuses for the developers was to design the venue to meet the needs of the corporate market. Its galleries and wine cellars can be hired for meetings of up to 900 delegates or a seated dinner for up to 650.
A profile of the type of facilities offered by unusual venues in the UK is given by Leask and Hood (2000). In general, they provide small meeting room facilities, with catering services available in-house or contracted in, and an equipment base often limited to only an overhead projector (OHP) and a flipchart. Only 8% of unusual venues in the UK offer facilities for residential conferences.
However, one type of unusual venue where accommodation is plentiful is the cruise ship. These, too, are increasingly being designed to cater for business tourismclients, incorporating in their design dedicated meeting space with state-of-the-art audiovisual equipment. Gosling (1999b; p.84) gives the example of the 142000-tonne Voyager of the Seas, which entered service in 1999. This offers dedicated facilities for up to 400 delegates, capable of converting into six breakout rooms. It also includes an executive boardroom, a multimedia screening room, videoconferencing and classroom training facilities, and floor space large enough to accommodate exhibition or trade shows. She goes on to quote the Marketing Services Manager of Silversea ships, whose vessels Silver Shadow and Silver Mirage were launched in 2000 and 2001 respectively: 'Quality meeting facilities are becoming a really valuable commodity. New ships cannot really enter the conference and incentive industry unless they have the facilities to justify it.'
It is clear that the most convenient itineraries for incentive and conference groups are short cruises, since very few corporate clients are prepared to let their key staff remain out of the office for more than seven nights. Cruise lines are therefore adapting to this need by offering more three- and four-night cruises. As examples, Gosling cites Celebrity Cruises' Horizon, which has offered shorter itineraries since 2000, including a four-night trip from Southampton to Amsterdam and the Channel Islands, and a four-night cruise that starts and finishes in Barcelona.
Estimating the level of actual demand for meetings in unusual venues is more difficult than tracking growth in supply. And the task is often made more difficult by the practice of combining unusual venues with other types of venue under the 'miscellaneous' category in surveys. However, one snapshot is produced by Leask and Hood (2000), who use British Conference Market Trends Survey data to demonstrate a rise from 125 large conferences at unusual venues in 1994 to 225 in 1997. In their own research, the same authors portray a buoyant market, with nearly all of their unusual venue-operating respondents predicting growth well into the twenty-first century.
Although quantitative data on this market are scarce, more is known about the type of demand that unusual venues attract. One of the few in-depth pieces of research in this sector suggests that the biggest single-user categories for unusual venues is the corporate sector, but that association and academic users were also important (Leask and Hood, 2000). Clearly, unusual venues are well suited to business-related events, such as promotional days and product launches, which need to be distinctive to make a lasting impression. Confirming this, Gosling (1999a; p.73) quotes Newcastle upon Tyne's tourism and conference officer: 'This is especially true for events such as product launches where there is no immediate obligation to attend. Surprisingly, using different venues can also boost local attendance. You would be amazed how many local people have not visited some of our more unusual venues.'
However, despite a measure of growth and success in the meetings market, unusual venues are not without their disadvantages, and the occasional use of properties for meetings events presents its own challenges. Conflicts between the primary uses of the properties and the demanding needs of the meetings market were highlighted in the research undertaken by Leask and Hood (2000). Most of these related to thestructure of the properties and problems with staff: a lack of breakout rooms, restriction and inflexibility of the actual buildings, lack of up-to-date equipment, lack of staff availability, logistical problems, and balancing daytime use of the facility with conference use. Gosling (1998b; p.47) quotes one event organiser who has encountered such difficulties: 'Unusual events still need a level of practicality. Some London venues are too rigid in their primary function to be flexible enough for state-of-the-art meetings. One cannot easily do a large-scale conference at the Natural History Museum, for example, because the museum cannot close to give time and space to set up.' Shallcross (1998; p.B-47) concurs:
There is a danger that after an initial period of growth, [unusual venues'] conference business will become limited by venue design and facilities such as the absence of breakout rooms and the expense of providing an irregular catering service. The venue is then faced with the decision of whether to invest, which may be difficult to justify if conference hosting is a peripheral business.
Another weakness of unusual venues may arise from the fact that much of their appeal appears to be based on their novelty value, an asset obviously prone to producing rapidly declining returns. If a client's main motivation in booking an unusual venue for a meeting is to surprise the delegates and make the conference stand out from other meetings they have attended, then it may be unlikely to book the same venue again for a long time. Without this type of repeat business, unusual venues may be required constantly to spread their marketing nets wider in order to reach new potential clients.
Given these limitations of unusual venues, it remains to be seen how they will perform in a less buoyant market. But in the meantime, unusual venues continue to play a key part in the overall infrastructure of supply in the meetings market.
A summary of the main advantages and disadvantages of the types of venue: