Ever wondered what it would be like to attend our one-day flagship event in Leeds called The Conference & Hospitality Show and how it would benefit you?
1. Tell us about a little about yourself and what you do.
My name is Heath Gardiner and my business is called List of Life Ltd. I am the founder and owner and we incorporated in 2001 and we’ve been working in the events industry ever since.
2. What sort of events do you organise?
A huge variety – we’ve done about 2000 this year. We work across several different business sectors. One of which is we do a lot of corporate events for bankers, lawyers, accountants, finance people… London city folk generally. And what we do for those kind of companies is we often do networking events. We do a lot of events where they go away for team building and/or planning and/or decision making sessions. Sometimes they’re called management retreats, sometimes they’re called team building, but actually they often amount to the same thing. They’re a couple of days in a hotel with lots of meetings and sessions to help them make decisions and things like that.
3. What attracted you to register and attend the Conference & Hospitality Show 2017?
We go to quite a few networking events where venues pitch to agencies. That’s quite an important part of how we work out who we like working with and come across new venues that we haven’t heard of before. A lot of the events we go to are very London-centric but our clients are not necessarily quite so London-centric. In fact getting away from London is sometimes an important part of their brief. When I met CHS that seemed like a really easy way of seeing lots of venues at once.
4. What was the biggest benefit to you attending CHS17?
The fact that it wasn’t so London-centric. We met lots and lots of venues and we had not been able to do that – not in one hit like that. We attend other networking events between event managers and venues, but they are all quite London-y.
5. What was your favourite part of the day?
When we went around the show I think I met about 50 venues in the space of about 2 or 3 hours which is incredible efficient.
6. What advice would you give to event professionals/PA’s thinking about attending CHS18 this year?
For me, the way I used to do those shows, I’d start off on one aisle and work my way around every single stand and it does make it quite a long haul day but it’s an important way of doing it. And actually, if you stop and talk to everybody, even if their stand doesn’t look so interesting to you, you’ll be amazed at how a 2-minute or 5-minute conversation can turn out. That’s the best advice I could offer.
7. Would you recommend the Conference & Hospitality Show?
Yes, to everybody. Particularly agents. For me, an agent is only as good as the venues and suppliers they know. That’s effectively our role – to know which venues and suppliers are suitable for which group. I’m only as good as the venues that I work with so that’s the really important part of making that work for me.
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If you want to meet 200+ venues, hotels and event suppliers all in one day then you best get yourself to CHS18 on the 24th of April!
Best of all? Tickets are complimentary. That’s right – you don’t have to pay a single penny to get in on all of the exciting action. It’s a good idea to register ASAP so you don’t miss out.