From 15 June, hotel bookers and event planners will be able to use venuedirectory.com ‘s new Safe Meetings database enhancement to choose confidently from thousands of hotels and venues worldwide that have already uploaded their Safe Meetings policies.
To make it easy for meeting planners to source venues that are suitable and ready to receive meeting delegates, there will be an icon on search results and within a venue profile to demonstrate that the venue has a policy in place.Determined to contribute to the recovery of the market by acting as a catalyst, venuedirectory.com is to allow access to this data free of charge through its existing distribution channels to all its current clients and to all industry partners who require this information.
All venues globally are welcome to upload the details about what their venue is doing to restore attendee confidence and to demonstrate what the venue has put into place the steps to ensure staff and delegates are safe to meet at their venue. To give access to the most up to date information, they can also add a URL to the policy detail which venuedirectory.com recommends should be located on their website.
As the industry leader providing the largest data centre of venue information to the UK MICE industry, venuedirectory.com is also helping to increase awareness of venues that have gained accreditation to the Quality in Tourism’s Safe, Clean and Legal programme, which is supported by HBAA and several leading hotel groups and authorities. It will also work with other organisations in the UK and globally to carry these essential accreditations as part of its data on meeting and event venues.
Michael Begley, managing director, venuedirectory.com. said “It’s vital that everything possible is done to restore attendee confidence as quickly as possible and get the events industry back up and running. Our Safe Meetings database should help everyone greatly.
“We also believe that a venue’s Safe Meeting initiative should not become a competitive initiative for a venue or for the market overall and that’s why we think making the data free to everyone including competing websites is the right thing to do. People will be able to access the data via the venuedirectory.com website and via its data API. In addition, venuedirectory.com will be providing a unique URL to the venues which have a policy uploaded or the details stored with them.
“Many venues are going well ‘above and beyond’ in what they are doing within their Safe Meetings policies which is why we felt the need to allow venues to highlight what they are doing within the area. Venues that haven’t provided information yet should do so ASAP.”
venuedirectory.com’s initiative has already been acclaimed by many leading organisations right across the industry. Dawn Jaynes, Director of Sales Meetings, Events and Support Services at Accor Hotels said “With over 200 hotels in the UK and 5000 globally, offering customer confidence is key and is the reason why at Accor we have launched our ALLSAFE policy which we will be uploading to venuedirectory.com for all hotels. Having the conduit of venuedirectory.com to get our message out to the professional meeting planners is a key distribution partner for us and we welcome its support.”
Andrew Deakin, co-owner of Conference Care commented “Restoring delegate and meeting planner confidence will be essential to get the events sector restored to volumes prior to March 2020. Having this valuable resource integrated as part of our proposal to our clients will be vital.” venuedirectory.com licenses its venue sourcing software to Conference Care and the tool will incorporate the Safe Meeting details throughout the search and select process and will provide a link on all client communications to the venues’ policy.
Douglas O’Neill, CEO of Inntel said “We have been working with venuedirectory.com for many years and this is just what the industry needs. We already use its API and will be incorporating the Safe Meeting data and Accreditation information into our customer communications.”
venuedirectory.com specialises in meetings and events data and venue sourcing software and is a member of the Business Travel Association, Meetings Industry Association and Hotel Booking Agents Association. The company will be working closely with its association partners to distribute Safe Meeting data and working with global partners to ensure that accreditations for safety in the meetings area are recognised and provided to everyone who needs it.
Jane Longhurst, Chief Executive of MIA commented ‘As an association we have worked with venuedirectory.com for many years and rely on its data as the custodian of meeting and event venue information. The addition of the Safe Meeting information will be welcomed by our members and we will work with them to ensure as many people have access to this data as possible”
Michael Begley concludes: “Covid-19 arrived with very little warning to the world of events and has decimated the industry overnight. The landscape of events going forward has got to change and it’s clear that venues everywhere have introduced many changes to make their facilities safe and ready for business.
“We believe our Safe Meetings Policy area in our database will be a key pillar of restoring people’s faith in meeting up again. Sharing the Safe Meeting information with everyone in the industry for free is very important for us as thousands of jobs and lives rely on our industry and we need to do whatever it takes to get the industry back on its feet.”
venuedirectory.com is a UK based business established in 1993 and has a database of over 400,000 meeting and event spaces globally. It provides venue data, websites and venue sourcing software to the meetings and events industry and in 2019 over £300m of business was confirmed through its platforms and distribution channels.