London's venues unlocked  (Industry) 

London is even more accessible to event organisers thanks to a new service devised by Visit London, the official visitor organisation and Convention Bureau for London. Visit London has strengthened its business tourism service by creating a specialist ‘Event Solutions’ offer.

The Event Solutions team has been created by Visit London to bolster its previous event enquiry system to create a fully integrated service. The new team’s mission statement is to unlock London for any type of event activity, from experiential marketing campaigns to live business events, through to major sporting or cultural events.

The team, which is headed up by Zanine Adams sits within Visit London’s already established Business and Conventions team whose core business focus is to drive a range of meetings, congresses and incentives travel events to the capital. The Event Solutions offer will reinforce the work of the Conventions team to attract even more economic benefit to London through a bespoke and free event solution service.

As well as their more traditional venue finding services the Event Solutions team are able to assist throughout any stage of the events process – from delivering support for an events bid right through to providing marketing and PR collateral towards the end of a campaign. The team offers a 360º support service which in recent months has seen them working on the following projects:

• Assisting fashion icon Vivienne Westwood find a suitably show-stopping venue for her London Fashion week show after an absence of 9 years
• Helping the NFL with their first international visit outside of the US. The Event Solutions team helped provide access to a number of London spaces so that a 26ft animatronic of Quarterback Jason Taylor could roam around London.
• Producing the website and leverage brand sponsorship of the King Tutankhamen experience at The O2.
• Sourcing unique experiential venues for the media launch of the adidas London 2012 Olympic sponsorship.

The team’s objective is to promote London as the world’s most exciting city. The Event Solutions team will be working with both domestic and overseas businesses and brands to help support and leverage client events.

“At Visit London we wanted to offer businesses a more holistic approach than you might usually find within a traditional CVB," said Tracy Halliwell, head of Business & Conventions. "With our newly formed Event Solutions team we have professionals who specialise in such a vast variety of areas – event experts, bespoke location advisors, specialist event suppliers – all these services are on offer to businesses – so when clients want to create an event in London they now only have to deal with one point of contact – put in basic terms we’ve created a one-stop-shop, which provides the very best event solutions for anyone coming to London.”

Zanine Adams, UK Sales & Event Solutions manager added: “With access to, and understanding of, all that the city has to offer, our dedicated team of London experts guarantees an excellent all-round service by fulfilling clients’ event objectives, while delivering business to our partners. We’re delighted to be able to combine all our specialist knowledge and deliver this free service – so any business or brand can use it – whether you’re a PA wanting to book a venue for a party right through to a Global brand wanting to create a city-wide brand experience – this is about creating a service which will benefit businesses.”

The Event Solution team is working on exciting projects currently – the NBA and the NFL  both return to London in October and the team is helping unlock London for the Restaurant and Bar Design Awards and the British Motor Show.

Contact Event Solutions on +44 (0)20 7234 5833

RK  _________________________________________