London 2012: A V&E How-to guide on Hospitality at the Games

In the Summer issue of Square Meal Venues & Events I've written an in-depth piece on everything you need to know in order to plan hospitality around the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Below are some key questions answered and a section on five things buyers need to know.

For the full six-page article, jump to page 179 in the digi-mag.

Key London 2012 Hospitality Questions Answered…

What can we expect from the catering at official Prestige hospitality?
We’re told that the food served to corporates and their guests will be high-quality British produce, with an emphasis on provenance and sourcing food from multi-generational providers. Expect this ‘Great British Experience’ to be a big part of the sell – the country will be basking in patriotism after the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Prestige is currently in the process of appointing catering companies for each location, and promises there won’t be a celebrity chef in sight.

Why is there no hospitality being offered at venues such as Lord’s (archery)?
Any venue with poor sight lines to the action or deemed to have limited group appeal has been withdrawn from offering official hospitality packages.

What about all the fighting and table tennis action happening at ExCeL?
The likelihood is that Prestige Ticketing will come up with packages for the Olympic action at ExCeL as the venue has been told it can’t produce its own. No package details were available at time of press.

Will corporates be able to access the Olympic Park for picnic entertaining during the Games?
It is anticipated that there will be restrictions put in place to prevent access to the Park without an event ticket, but this may simply involve buying day passes. Agencies are also advising clients that restrictions on taking alcohol and food into the Park may also be imposed to protect sponsorship rights holders. That said, Square Meal V&E understands that LOCOG is looking into granting permission to provide non-sponsor-branded food within the Park after complaints in Beijing that the only snack available was McDonald’s.

Which brands are likely to feature heavily on the hospitality circuit?
The Worldwide Olympic Partners signed up for London 2012 are Coca-Cola, Acer, Atos Origin, Dow Chemical Company, GE, McDonald’s, Omega, Panasonic, Procter and Gamble, Samsung and Visa. LOCOG then has seven domestic Tier One Partners - Adidas, BMW, BP, British Airways, BT, EDF and Lloyds TSB. And seven domestic Tier Two Supporters – Adecco, ArcelorMittal, Cadbury, Cisco, Deloitte, Thomas Cook and UPS. With a further 24 domestic Tier Three suppliers and providers and Sainsbury's signed up as the one domestic Tier One Paralympic Games Partner, there is sure to be a host of activity from everyone involved.

Will Olympics hospitality cause a decline in the sale of packages at other sporting events such as Wimbledon?
Ted Walker of hospitality agency Keith Prowse is confident that there will be no impact on hospitality at annual blue riband sporting events. ‘The fact is that we are blessed with a decade of iconic sporting events for which the demand for hospitality will be high. It started with the Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor and will include the Rugby World Cup in 2015 and the Rugby League World Cup in 2013. Clients are allocating their budget to buy into not just London 2012 but the whole decade of sporting excellence in the UK.’

Should companies be worried about how the Bribery Act will impact on their 2012 hospitality plans?
No. Section Nine of the Act makes it clear that corporate hospitality, which seeks to improve the image of a commercial organisation better to present products and services, or establish cordial relations, is an established and important part of doing business. It is not the intention of the Act to criminalise such behaviour.

Things buyers need to know…
1. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) cracked down on black market ticketing at Beijing, with many companies left stunned when they discovered they’d purchased unofficial packages. London 2012 will impose even tighter controls.

2. Prestige Ticketing is using three authorised sales agents in the UK. They are Sportsworld (Tel: 01235 555 844), Keith Prowse (Tel: 020 3137 7420) and IMG (Tel: 020 8233 5854).

3. Re-selling Olympic tickets is illegal and applicants who receive balloted tickets will not be allowed to re-sell them on eBay or as part of unofficial hospitality offerings. Anyone caught illegally trading could be hit with a fine of up to £20,000.

4. When buying packages for team sports such as football, hockey, volleyball and handball, be aware that there is no way of knowing at this stage when your country of choice will compete.

5. A levy placed on Prestige Ticketing hospitality will pay for a Ticketshare scheme, enabling 125,000 school children to experience the Games. A further 50,000 tickets will also be distributed to schools across the UK under the same guidelines and 25,000 tickets will be allocated to other goodwill causes such as Tickets for Troops.

See sold out Olympic sport one year early...

London will be warming up for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in August by staging the BWF World Badminton Championships and ITU World Championship Series Triathlon.

Both Championship events will form part of an exciting week of international sport, with spectators having the chance to see the Triathlon for free and Badminton for as little as £10.

The BWF World Badminton Championships will take place at Wembley Arena from 8-14 August and the ITU World Championship Series Triathlon will be in Hyde Park on 6 and 7 August.

More than 1.8 million people applied for tickets in the first-round of the 2012 Olympic ticket phase and both Badminton and the Triathlon sold out. Next month however, Londoners and visitors to the UK capital will have the opportunity to see the top athletes from each sport in action, with less than one year to go before they battle it out during London 2012.

Mayor of London, Boris Johnson said: “For these two great international events to be sold out already is glorious testimony to the huge sporting enthusiasm that exists in the capital and throughout the UK.  We couldn’t send out a better message to the world's sporting federations that if you want to fill seats, hold your event in London. And I am particularly excited that our world famous Wembley arena is hosting its first ever World Badminton Championship, a perfect dry run for the 2012 Olympic Badminton events."

Held at Wembley Arena (the venue for Badminton and Rhythmic Gymnastics at the London 2012 Games), this will be the third time England has hosted the World Badminton Championships, but only the first time they have been staged in London.

The London leg of the ITU World Championship Series Triathlon will be held for the third time in Hyde Park and feature the world number 1 triathlete, GB’s Alistair Brownlee.
Access for the event, also supported by the Mayor of London and part of UK Sport’s National Lottery funded World Class Events Programme, is free to spectators throughout the weekend.

Iain Edmondson, Head of Major Events at London & Partners added: “The Badminton and the Triathlon world championship events signify key milestones for London as an ever growing sports events destination. Both events feature globally recognised and highly popular sports which have chosen London as host for their world championships. These events not only give us the invaluable opportunity to learn how we can host other major events after 2012 but also give young people in London more chances to be inspired by top class sport.”

For more information on The Yonex BWF World Badminton Championships at Wembley Arena, join my Facebook fan site or visit the official website.

Nice day for a Royal Wedding...

Speaking as someone who once strained filter coffee through a pair of stockings belonging to a friend’s wedding outfit, (it seemed a good idea in the absence of a coffee percolator), I wasn’t that concerned with the finer details of Kate Middleton’s dress on her big day.

My take on the Royal Wedding was how London, as a city, would perform, hosting the first major event in a series which, over the next 18 months, will include the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the Olympic Games.

With an estimated two billion worldwide television viewers and one million spectators on the streets of the UK capital, the day went off seamlessly well.

Even the sun shone, despite every weather report predicting rain.

And if that minor miracle wasn’t enough, there was also a ‘Good Service’ reported throughout the day on every London Underground line. I know!

As the world witnessed the wedding guests arriving at Westminster Abbey, I was mingling with the crowds in St James’s Park, taking photos which I hope capture the colour and character of the day.

My base was the London Media Centre at St Ermin’s Hotel.

The four-star hotel next to St James’s Park has just re-opened following a £30m refurbishment and it’s looking really smart…. not as smart as David Beckham in his wedding clobber mind, but well worth checking out nonetheless...

Events and hospitality are aiding economic recovery

On 10 March, my article on the value of corporate hospitality and events appeared on the centre pages of the Times newspaper. Published in conjunction with Raconteur Media, I am now able to post it here, in its original form, with kind permissions.

If you would like to access the entire supplement with two further articles by me, please click here.


The UK’s events and hospitality industry is a major contributor to the domestic economy. Its tentacles extend into areas of retail, tourism, sport and leisure and its extensive supply chain consists of catering, farming, floristry, logistics, production, venue management, entertainment, staffing, accommodation and many other small-to-medium sized British businesses.

According to a lobbying body called the Business Visits and Events Partnership (BVEP), the core of the sector is worth £36.1billion to the country’s wealth.

The BVEP is chaired by Michael Hirst, OBE. He says: “It’s a vibrant part of the visitor economy but also has an active role in the creative industries, trade development and in encouraging cultural appreciation.”

The conference and business events market on its own contributes £18.8billion. This includes spend at venues and in the wider destination by delegates and organisers before, during and after an event.

Industry association Eventia arrived at this figure after conducting its 2010 UK Events Market Trends Survey. The annual survey is based on data supplied by 403 venues from across the UK. Further key findings show that 94 million people attended an estimated 1.32 million events in 2009 and that hotels currently hold the majority (61 per cent) of all business events in Britain.

The BVEP calculates that, exhibitions, conferences, meetings, corporate hospitality and incentive travel, together form an economic contribution of £30.3billion. The remaining £5.8billion is made up from sports events (£2.3billion), music events (£1.4billion), festivals and cultural events (£1.1billion), plus other outdoor events (£1billion).

All these event types contribute significantly to tourism, creative enterprise, trade and export development, as well as to the exchange of information and knowledge and to community cohesion. By bolting on the hospitality sector’s far reaching services such as restaurants, contract catering, hotels and other accommodation providers, consultancy Oxford Economics estimates that the overall economic impact could be closer to £46billion.

Mike Kershaw, chairman of event services firm the Concerto Group says: “Events are one of the most efficient means of keeping money within the UK economy. Retail spend has maybe a three or four-time multiplier before it leaves the country. But spending money on an event will see transactions multiply along a more extensive and predominantly British supply chain. With 20 per cent VAT on every transaction heading back into government coffers, plus the amount of people being kept in employment, the hospitality and events industry should be championed, when instead it is often thought of as frivolous.”

In an independent study carried out last year on behalf of the British Hospitality Association (BHA) - a trade body, which includes event management within its representation - Oxford Economics determined that the wider hospitality and events industry directly contributes 2.44 million jobs and another 675,000 jobs through multiplier effects along the supply chain. Two-thirds of these multiplier jobs involve the manufacture of food, beverages and tobacco, agriculture and business services.

The BVEP says that there are some 550,000 people employed by more than 25,000 businesses with a core remit to stage or supply events. These businesses include event management agencies, venues, suppliers and destination management companies.
“The sector is resilient and events provide real recreational and motivational opportunities for communities,” says Hirst. “During the recession for example, whilst corporate meetings inevitably fell back in line with lower levels of business activity, attendance at UK festivals, sporting, cultural and music events grew by up to 20 per cent.”

The BHA states that, with the wider total of 2.44 million jobs representing around 8 per cent of total employment, this makes the hospitality economy the UK’s fifth biggest industry in employment terms. It places it ahead of other broad sectors such as financial services, transport and construction, and gives it a similar scale to education.

Like the BVEP, the BHA is also focused on forming closer links with government, in order to achieve a shared goal of sustainable economic growth.

“Given the right framework, there is real opportunity for hospitality economy jobs in Britain to rise to 2.76 million by 2015 and 3.09 million jobs by 2020,” says BHA chief executive Ufi Ibrahim. “Hospitality and events create jobs at local level and impact upon regional regeneration schemes. At a time when the Government’s spending review has lead to redundancies and job losses, here is an industry that really can make a difference.”

At the end of last year, the BHA put forward a partnership proposal to government, which asks for, amongst other things, a permanent cross-cabinet committee for hospitality and tourism.

Ibrahim says: “Our fragmented industry is affected by policy decisions taken across many government departments. By engaging senior cabinet ministers, this will help to ensure that the decisions of individual departments do not hinder David Cameron’s pledge to make Britain one of the top five tourist destinations in the world as well as the industry’s potential contribution to job creation across the UK.”

In June 2010, the opening of the UK capital’s International Convention Centre, the ICC London ExCeL immediately created 1,000 new jobs in this regeneration area of east London.

The venue’s director of conferences and events James Rees anticipates that a further 3,200 local jobs will be created as a knock-on effect of the ICC by the end of this year.

“The build represented a private investment of £165million but the projected economic benefit stands at £1.6billion by the end of 2011,” he says.

Both the ICC London ExCeL and the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in the heart of Westminster work closely with convention bureau Visit London to pitch for large international congresses, which bring delegates to the UK capital from all over the world.

Ernest Vincent, chief executive of the QEII Conference Centre estimates his venue contributes around £200million a year to the visitor economy.

“The role events play in the development of the tourism industry needs much more recognition and encouragement. It can readily be one of the engines to rebalance our national economy,” he says.

But it’s not just purpose -built venues that rely on the full impact of event spend. Visitor attractions, heritage venues, museums, art galleries, stadia and a host of other dual-use facilities all depend heavily on the business of events.

The Concerto Group’s Kershaw says: “Where would London’s museums be without the revenue generated from holding corporate and private events? At the Government’s door with cap-in-hand, that’s where. The business model for hotels doesn’t stack up with beds alone. They all need conference and banqueting business to survive. And I don’t believe there is a single restaurant in London that could exist without hosting corporate dining and events.”

Kershaw’s claims are backed up by Lisa Hatswell, the corporate sales manager of the EDF Energy London Eye and chair of marketing consortium, Unique Venues of London (UVL).

She says: “Our 73 members collectively generated £68million from events held in 2010. With a mixture of charities, free public attractions and heritage sites, many rely on a secondary events revenue stream to maintain their architecturally renowned buildings, grounds or exhibits.”

Kensington Palace, Hampton Court Palace, the Victoria & Albert Museum and ZSL London Zoo are all UVL members.

Charlotte Winship is events manager at Kensington Palace, which is managed by independent charity Historic Royal Palaces. She says: “In hiring venues like ours, clients are providing valuable support to the conservation of our country’s heritage. We receive no government or Crown funding and therefore rely on income derived from visitors, donors and venue hire. All revenue received from venue hire directly contributes to the conservation of Kensington Palace.”

Next year, events and hospitality will play a major role in the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It’s reassuring to know that not only does Britain already have a gold medal-standard industry, but that its impact is driving the country’s economic recovery as well.

Life's a beach at Rosa's

London Restaurant Festival gets underway on Monday 4th October. During its two-week stint, there's some 250 restaurants throughout the UK capital offering Festival Menus for as little as £10. To book a festival menu, just visit the LRF website. This week I went along to one of the participating restaurants in Soho to continue my series of Street Level blogs and report on a Thai evening at Rosa's.

Street Level: Life's a beach at Rosa's
The best nights out are often those that produce the unexpected. Catching up with an old friend over Thai food in the heart of Soho was always going to result in stories of surprising and often salacious gossip. What I really didn’t expect however, was to discover some of the best Thai cuisine in London from a restaurant I must have walked past a thousand times and never acknowledged was there.

What’s even more surprising is that Rosa’s doesn’t exactly blend into the Dean Street brickwork. Its bright red frontage is hard to miss when you’re actually looking for it. Even on this cold and rainy evening, in-the-know diners sat outside under the awning, no doubt drinking green teas whilst watching the Old Compton Street characters and chaos unfold.

On opening the bright red door, you half expect a bell overhead to ring akin to an old curiosity shop but instead, you enter a modern Thai family eatery, designed to resemble a Phuket beach hut. Wooden benches upstairs are made for sharing and the wooden wall paneling has interspersed coat hooks or rather, hooks to hang your towel on if this really was a beach hut on a Thai island.

After ushering my guest onto the bench and taking my seat on the wooden stool opposite, we order a bottle of red before I head downstairs to dry myself off after getting caught in the torrential downpour outside. The basement is a darker, more mood-driven bar dining area and the toilets are communal, adding to the rustic ambience Rosa’s sets out to create.

Back upstairs, and I discover we’d been moved to a more intimate wooden booth towards the back of the restaurant. These booths should be requested when booking in order to keep confidences private and to allow greater room to spread out the Thai delicacies as they arrive.

For starters, we shared a mouthwatering deep fried soft shell crab topped with thai herbs, shallots and spicy fresh chilli sauce and a Som Tam papaya salad with prawns. It may have been the beach hut surroundings, but we both opted for more seafood with coconut rice as our main course.

I went for grilled squid, pan fried tiger prawns and scallops stir fried with mixed spices and yellow chilli. My guest ordered a thai chilli seafood mousse, baked in half a butternut squash which, when served, looked more like a tropical cocktail than a main course but tasted divine.

Thailand is known as the ‘Land of Smiles’ and our waiting staff didn’t disappoint, maintaining friendly fast service without interrupting the flow of our conversation.

When we left, the rain outside no longer mattered. We could have been in a tropical monsoon as we’d just dined on Thai seafood which I was more than happy to believe had been line-caught fresh from the pier at the front of our Phuket beach hut.

Rosa’s is running a Festival Menu as part of this year’s London Restaurant Festival.

Street Level: A series of restaurant reviews

A slight decline in the regularity of blog posts on here can be somewhat explained by the fact that I've been busy blogging for the London Restaurant Festival, which takes place across the UK capital next month.

Part of my role is to post restaurant reviews, which for someone who has never professed to being a food critic, seemed at first a little daunting. Fortunately however, the job doesn't call for an in-depth critique (I'll leave that up to the Evening Standard's Fay Maschler, the festival's creator). I simply have to experience each restaurant and produce a creative write-up from a 'Street Level' perspective, thereby showcasing the restaurant's offer to the public.

I thought I'd share with you three such write-ups, not only as an overdue way to update my blog but also to highly recommend three top London restaurants. I hope you enjoy reading my recommendations and for updates on next month's festival, join the Facebook page or visit the website.

Street level: An invitation to Sam’s place
It’s not often that I venture from zone two for an evening’s dining out experience. But when Sam Harrison, the man who partnered with Rick Stein to open Sam’s Brasserie in Chiswick, invited my guest and I to dinner at the duo’s second eatery in Balham, we headed for the gateway to the south.

Harrison’s has been around since October 2007. On occasion I have spent a lazy Sunday afternoon nursing a bottle of red with Balham friends in its relaxed bar. But I’ve never graduated to the 90-cover restaurant, taken my seat underneath the circular brown lampshades and perused the simple menu of classic brasserie-style dishes with a modern twist – until now.

I should point out here that Sam Harrison didn’t actually join us for dinner. If he had have done, we probably would have tried harder to stifle our giggles when my guest asked our waitress what type of bread we were being offered and received the polite friendly reply ‘brown’. She did redeem herself however by explaining to my australian friend what kind of fish sea bream is and the fact that a poussin is a young chicken, without feeling the need to add the rather gruesome fact that it has to be younger than 28 days at slaughter to be classed as such.

For starters, we opted for the sharing platter but added a side order of chilli and garlic grilled squid because you can always tell the quality of a restaurant’s food by the texture of its squid (it obviously helps to eat a lot of squid at various different restaurants to aid the comparison).

The sharing platter was furnished with morsels of buffalo mozzarella, cheese croquettes, pâté and other butcher’s delights, served with flat bread (we resisted the urge to ask again what type of bread this was although the answer would have been both accurate and just as funny).

I’m pleased to report that the squid was tasty and succulent and went extremely well with a mid-priced Argentinian Malbec. It’s also pleasing to report that tap water was regularly topped up throughout our meal and the service was always friendly, attentive but non-intrusive.

For our main course, I couldn’t resist choosing from the Harrison’s Classics section of the menu. I opted for the aged Scottish rib-eye steak which came beautifully presented on a butcher’s board with fries in a pot and bearnaise sauce in a small pan on the side. To me, this choice was in keeping with the relaxed picking and dipping nature of our meal and the steak was cooked to perfection.

My guest experienced her first taste of english sea bream and enjoyed it. I’m sure though she was eying up the amazing looking cheeseburgers delivered to our adjacent table with envy. She consoled herself by giving in far too quickly when our waitress suggested ordering the hot chocolate fondant for dessert. The 15 minute baking time this pudding takes is well worth it but unfortunately it just wasn’t enough time for either of us to have found enough extra room to fully enjoy it. Full to bursting we were both forced to admit defeat and decided to walk the long way back to the tube, determined to return again another day and finish that goddess among desserts.

Street Level: An evening with Andrew Edmunds
I spend far too much money on eating out. It’s one of the inconvenient pleasures of living in a city with 50 Michelin-starred restaurants and hundreds of secret hideaway eateries just waiting to be discovered and then savoured.

Despite a constant urge to try out new places however, I always find myself returning to one of my favourite Soho establishments, Andrew Edmunds on Lexington Street.

Admittedly, Andrew Edmunds receives most of my custom during the winter months. It’s somewhere familiar to escape the drizzle and swap the falling temperatures for the warm dark glow of intimate candle-lit tables, plain white tablecloths, great British food and an extensive red wine list. I wasn’t entirely convinced therefore that I’d made the right choice when, on one of the warmest days of the summer so far, I reached for the phone and booked a table for two downstairs at this charming gourmet bolt-hole.

Maybe I opted for a table downstairs so we could pretend that the balmy summer’s evening unfolding on the street outside was actually a dark winter’s night as we swapped stories over a naked flame and drank a 2006 mid-priced bottle of Argentinian red.

Actually, the real reason I requested downstairs is because that’s where my preferred table is located (the only restaurant where I actually know which table I prefer). Tonight, table 22, side on to all the other diners so that you’re not distracted by their food choices or over-heard snippets of conversation, was available and ours for three straight hours.

My starter choice was the same starter I always go for at this home away from home diner – Dressed Crab (superb). After our very amiable Kiwi waitress Katy had joked about the hand-written menu and then translated the hieroglyphics, my guest went for Lincolnshire asparagus vinaigrette with thin slices of Pecorino cheese.

For main, I went for the Calasparra risotto with squid, mussels, prawns, clams, chorizo and langoustine whilst my guest plumped for the poached wild sea trout, accompanied by Jersey Royals and a watercress mayonnaise. I had definitely plumped for the more flavoursome dish as my seafood arrived infused with chili and was extremely satisfying with just the right amount of heat. The trout looked a tad boring but I was assured that it tasted very nice.

I rarely go for dessert but was quite happy to sip my expresso whilst my guest pondered long and hard over whether to have the peach and almond tart. With no decision reached and a cursory look round to see that most of our fellow diners had departed as it was approaching 11pm, I requested the bill and inspected the damage.

Our meal for two, with wine, coffee and 12.5% service charge came to a very reasonable £79. It was only after the tab was settled that Katy returned to our table with a slice of peach and almond tart and two forks. “There’s only two slices left and I know you were tempted so you have this one and I’m going to save the final slice as a treat for when I finish my shift,” our waitress said with a smile.

It’s service like that which will keep me returning to Andrew Edmunds all year round and sets London’s restaurants apart, in my view, from those anywhere else in the world.

Street Level: Circus has come to town
It’s easy to walk straight past Circus on Endell Street, Covent Garden, if you’re not paying attention. There’s no big top entrance, or street entertainers juggling or hula hooping outside. In fact, there’s nothing to betray the entertainment that awaits within, only a polite doorman who ensures you have the correct destination and bids you a pleasant evening as you enter a short corridor with a cloakroom at the far end, guarding the main doors to the restaurant and cocktail bar.

Since opening in January 2010, I’ve walked through those main doors on two other occasions. My guest for this particular evening had never seen what lies beyond the cloakroom. Her interest was immediately peaked by the Californian-sounding model attendant who took our coats and led us through to the main dining area with its catwalk showpiece table that doubles up as a performance stage.

Aware that the circus-style performances wouldn’t begin until after 8pm, I encouraged a visit to the bar before we settled down to eat. Circus’ bar cocktail list is designed by Henry Besant and the Worldwide Cocktail Club – the team responsible for the bars at Bungalow 8 and Notting Hill’s The Lonsdale. It’s a short but encyclopedic menu of cocktails from which my companion chose a Kumquat & Almond Caipirinha. Unable to decide, I asked the barman to surprise me with a bourbon-based creation. I already knew my drink would taste amazing however it was created so the requested surprise must have been its bright pink coloration when poured into a martini glass.

For dinner, I had the special of marinated steak in a tiger prawn and chorizo dressing whilst she opted for the cajun sea bass (I would have opted for the highly recommended 24 hour slow roasted beef short ribs if the special hadn’t changed my mind). For starters we shared baby squid and chicken and prawn satay skewers. The Circus menu is Pan-American (just like almost all the staff) and, just as on both my previous visits, the baby squid and steaks are divine perfection.

The first indication that a performer is about to take to the stage is the open kitchen’s shutters going down along with the lights. If you’ve timed your food order correctly this will coincide with the end of each course. If not, then it’s a straight choice between melt-in-the-mouth steak in the dark or an aerialist, performing on a hoop above the catwalk table.

On each of my previous visits the performances have been different so you never know what to expect. On my first mid-week visit, we stayed all night and witnessed the acts grow ever-more burlesque as the evening draws on. This time however was a Friday night and the DJ was playing more to the bar crowd than the diners who wished to talk. So after a hula-hoop girl, a fire-dancer and the aerialist, we settled the bill, saved our vocal chords and made our escape.

Thankfully, with Circus now catering for weekday and weekend brunch menus and quieter mid-week sittings, there are better times to plan a visit to ensure you get the full performance and dining experience in Covent Garden’s unique cabaret restaurant. The popularity of this particular Circus has ensured that it’s not about to leave town any time soon.

Summer Eventia sets new standard in Glasgow

Over the past eight months, I've been working with Eventia to pull together the speaker programme for their annual conference, aimed at professionals working in the events, destination management, conference and incentive travel sectors.

The Eventia Summer Conference took place at the Glasgow SECC from 4-6 July and, I'm chuffed to say, has been widely hailed as the best of its five-year history. The programme was split into two days, with the economy acting as a major theme for day one and brand communication forming the key trend for day two.

Speakers included Dr Dominic Swords who gave an insightful and relaxed keynote on the current and future economic landscape; Andrew Barke from Google who presented the power of YouTube as a marketing tool for brands and, Claire Smith from the Vancouver Convention Centre who gave a fascinating account of what happened behind the scenes during the Winter Olympics and the lessons businesses should apply to London in 2012 and Glasgow in 2014 during the Olympic and Commonwealth Games.

Every single one of the speakers over the two-days of Summer Eventia performed to the highest standards and I'm exceptionally grateful to all of them for dedicating so much time and energy.

If you missed the 2010 Summer Eventia, next year's conference will be held in Cardiff and is sure to raise its game again in order to beat the standard set by all those involved this year. For highlights of the Glasgow event, check out the video by DRP Group embedded below. Highlights from the 2010 Summer Eventia can also be found on YouTube here or on the Eventia website here.