Month: February 2016

Corporate events hardly ever last just an afternoon. To create an enjoyable and rewarding experience for attendees and to fit in every single item on the agenda, they can often last a day or even a whole weekend.

What this means is that the venue you choose needs to work doubly hard. In the daytime, it needs to be a professional, fit for purpose space that meets all the demands and challenges of the event. It’ll be set up for key speakers, seminars and demonstrations, as well as fitting in catering, breakout and networking spaces. There’ll be a reception area, information point and vital facilities such as toilets and plenty of seating.

By night, however, the space will need to transform into one suitable for entertaining. Gala dinners, discos and awards presentations will all need to be held here, so how do you accommodate both? There’s an awful lot of stuff, setup and preparation involved with the daytime look, so is it feasible to change things up completely for the night-time, in just a matter of hours?

Yes, it is most certainly possible, but you’ll need to be clever in your planning. Here are 6 of the best ways you can create a day-to-night corporate event venue:

1. Choose a versatile venue. This is by far the most important factor. A building can be hard to alter, unless there’s a dedicated in-house team with experience in changing everything around without disrupting the day’s activities. A more versatile and customisable option might be corporate event tents, which can be configured to meet your exact needs thanks to their modular design.

2. Use zoning – it’s the event planner’s best friend. Leading on from the suggestion to use event tents as your venue, there’s another reason why this might be a good idea. With large marquees such as the SaddleSpan, you can add on extra sections and shapes to create ‘zones’, especially with the TriSpan and DuoSpan configurations. Not only is this useful for the daytime, allowing you to run several activities at the same time, but you can also prepare certain zones for the evening without causing disruption in the daytime. For example, you can close off an area when seminars are over for the day and prepare the stage area in the same space.

3. Use technology to decorate the space. Decorating and branding a space with digital displays, screens and coloured lighting can make it much easier to change the décor ready for the evening.

4. Invest in a great lighting scheme. Lighting can significantly change the mood of a space to help it go from day to night, and it’s much easier to pre-programme than changing décor from scratch. This is why it’s worth getting in a lighting specialist and investing some money in it.

5. Recruit a big team of helpers! To get everything ready in the short window between day and evening sessions, you’re going to need a big crew of helpers on the ground, along with a schedule for when everything needs to be completed by.

Staff motivation can be one of the biggest driving forces of any business, but it can also be a weak point. Motivated employees are more productive, creative and much happier, which means that they are more likely to remain loyal and stick around.

As for how to motivate employees, an ongoing strategy is crucial. However, a key part of this is are events such as team-building and motivational weekends which show staff that you are willing to invest time and money into their development as a team.

Planning a motivational weekend for your staff that does actually boost their morale and motivation can be trickier than you may think. We’ve all been on drab, rainy staff weekends in uninspiring venues, and these are not experiences we’d want to repeat. If the announcement of your last team-building weekend was met with eye rolls and groans, it’s obvious you need to make drastic changes to how you plan your events.

It’s all about the venue

To inspire your team, start with an unusual ‘outside of the box’ venue. Around 18 months ago, the Amazing Tents Company provided national retail chain Fat Face with a DuoSpan event tent for a motivational weekend for their key staff members.

Holding talks and team-building activities in such an unusual and exciting structure, especially compared to the usual hotels and conference centres these events are usually held in, was a great way for Fat Face managers to surprise their teams. Attendees stayed in market bell tents on site in a remote and very beautiful part of Cumbria, with easy access to every activity during the weekend.

The dramatic proportions and shapes of the DuoSpan, along with the impressive lighting and design of the interiors, made this venue very special indeed – which, of course, makes employees feel special. The weekend was fun, educational, productive and inspiring, with fantastic feedback all round. If you want to shake things up and inject new enthusiasm into your way of working, this is most definitely the way to do it.

Tips for motivating your team

As well as organising amazing events to motivate your teams, there are lots of other things you can be doing to reinvigorate your key employees. Here are just a few handy tips for managers and motivators:

• Treat everyone as an individual
• Offer constructive feedback and praise good work
• Lead by example
• Give teams ownership of projects and systems
• Offer benefits that boost morale, not just bank balances
• Put excellent communication at the heart of everything you do
• Be firm, fair but flexible
• Encourage your team members to take a break
• Establish a ‘no blame’ culture within your workplace

If you’re planning a motivational or team-building weekend for your employees and you’re looking for an amazing and unique venue, The Amazing Tents Company could have the ideal SaddleSpan for you and your team. Get in to get the ball rolling and start discussing options.

Event Buyers Live, one of the most unique events of its kind, is back for 2016 with a jam-packed schedule of events and some of the UK’s most prominent event organisers and suppliers already on the books. The Amazing Tent Company is delighted to be able to join them for yet another year – will you be popping by to say hello?

It all happens on the 24^th and 25^th of February 2016 at the Heythrop Park Resort in Enstone, Oxen. If you’ve never attended before, you’ll need to know how it all works. Both event organisers and suppliers need to register for places, which are limited and the supplier list is already full. If you’re approved as a qualifying organiser, you get free entry to EBL. It’s the ideal event for making valuable new contacts and sourcing the ideal suppliers for your next events face-to-face, in a relaxed environment.

What makes Event Buyers Live so unique?

EBL isn’t like other business events or conferences. You don’t have to spend hours making small talk with contacts who aren’t very useful to you – instead, you get to choose who you meet with.

The setup at Event Buyers Live is bespoke, as each attendee has their own personal programme drawn up in advance. Before it all begins, organisers will have scheduled in face-to-face meetings with the suppliers they are most interested in. These 25-minute appointments are a unique chance to ask all of those burning questions and find the ideal suppliers to make your upcoming events truly special. This is the start of an open discussion that continues throughout the event and could end in a lucrative and rewarding partnership for both parties.

Another unique part of the experience is the informal yet professional atmosphere within the Heythrop Park Resort venue. Event Buyers Live is all about networking, but in natural circumstances such as coffee breaks, delicious lunches and even a gala dinner. Lucky attendees not only get to grow their contact book, meet personally with preferred suppliers and network with like-minded professionals – but there’s also five star hotel facilities to enjoy as a VIP.

Lastly, Event Buyers Live is well-known for its rich education programme, one of the best in the business. In between your scheduled personal meetings, there are plenty of chances to grow your expertise and discover exciting new ideas, through a series of fascinating problem-solving workshops, round table discussions, seminars, key note speakers and case studies.

We’ll see you there!

Amazing Tents is delighted to be attending this year’s Event Buyers Live as one of the UK’s best event tent suppliers, and we can’t wait to meet the event organisers we’ll hopefully be working with in 2016v or beyond. If you’ve reserved your place or you’re rushing to apply, we look forward to a friendly chat over coffee or pencilling you in for a personal appointment. Everyone’s talking about EBL 2016, so get out of the office and join us there!