From the 1st June 2020 venuedirectory.com has enhanced its database to capture and include venues Safe Meeting policies. It will use its existing distribution channels to allow access to this data to all its current clients and to all industry partners who require this information free of charge.
All venues globally will have the facility to upload the details about what their venue is doing to restore attendee confidence and to demonstrate, following the Covid-19 outbreak, that the venue has put into place the steps to ensure staff and delegates are safe to meet at their event space to hire and meeting rooms. There will be an icon on search results and within a venue profile to demonstrate the venue has a policy in place and this will make it easy for meeting planners to source venues that are suitable and ready to receive meeting delegates. Venues will be able to upload the details of their policy and a URL to the policy detail that should be located on their website, which is recommended to give access to the most up to date information. Please login to our venue portal called myeventschannel.co.uk and update your venues details with you ‘Safe Meeting Policy’ details.
Andrew Deakin co-owner of Conference Care commented ‘Restoring delegate and meeting planner confidence will be key to get the events sector restored to volumes prior to March 2020 and having this valuable resource integrated as part of our proposal to our clients will be vital.’ venuedirectory.com license their 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 Safe Meeting policy. venuedirectory.com is supporting distributing the accreditation to the Quality in Tourisms Safe, Clean and Legal programme and 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. Many venues are going above and beyond this which is why venuedirectory.com felt the need to allow venues to highlight what they are doing within the Safe Meetings policy area.
awn Jaynes - Director of Sales Meetings, Events and Support Services - Accor Hotels outlined ‘With over 200 hotels in the UK and 5,000 globally offering customer confidence is key and hence 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 their support’.
It's important for venuedirectory.com that a venues Safe Meeting initiative does not become a competitive initiative for a venue or for the market overall and hence why making the data free to everyone including competing websites is the right thing to do. People will be able access the data via the venuedirectory.com website and via its data API. In addition venudirectory.com will be providing a unique URL to the venues which have a policy uploaded or the details stored with them. 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 their API and will be incorporating the Safe Meeting data and accreditation information into our customer communications’.
Michael Begley - Managing Director - venuedirectory.com said ‘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 we have all had to think very quickly as people review their Strategic Meetings Management Programme and update it as a result of the virus. It's important that we restore attendee confidence as quickly as possible and get the events industry back up and running and 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, thousands of peoples 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 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. We will be working closely with our association partners to distribute Safe Meeting data and working with global partners to ensure that accreditations for safety in the meetings area is recognised and provided to all the people that need it. Jane Longhurst - Chief Executive of MIA commented ‘“As an association we have worked with venuedirectory.com for many years to help buyers source quality-assured AIM accredited venues. We have recently updated the UK’s only nationally recognised standard to embed a range of protocols to provide the additional vital reassurance that AIM venues are COVID-Secure, The Safe Meetings Database will mean that buyers will be able to easily identify those venues that have achieved the AIM standard and absolutely know that they are COVID-Secure.”