Westfield welcomes the BT Visit London Awards

Whilst most of the country were out celebrating the discovery of Guy Fawkes sitting on twenty barrels of gunpowder in a cellar under the Houses of Parliament, London’s tourism and events industry came together at Westfield Shopping Centre to celebrate the 2009 Visit London Awards, sponsored by BT.

Staging an awards ceremony in the heart of the capital’s newest retail centre, with the shops remaining open until mid-way through the awards, was always going to draw a crowd.

But what if guests disappeared during the pre-awards drinks reception to grab a bargain? Had we been asked to don black-tie just so store security could recognise and return us to our seats should the urge to begin our Christmas shopping early grow to strong? And what would have happened if one of the actual shoppers that stopped to peer down on us from the balconies above had suffered a fit of excitement at the mere sight of host Neil Fox, outstanding achievement award winner Tony Hadley or cater Rhubarb’s amazing sticky toffee pudding?

I suspect that, at times, the 700 guests gathered at tables in a basement mezzanine area at the heart of Westfield, probably felt a little exposed to an over excited housewife throwing her La Senza purchase off the balcony in the direction of Foxy.

Heavens forbid, a depressed shopaholic X-Factor fan should have decided that this was the perfect moment to end it all and, in the same final breath, extract revenge for Britain’s Got The Pop Factor….And Possibly A New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly on Ice.

Thankfully however, the shoppers on the balcony above simply looked on with mild curiosity as London’s attractions, people and businesses were rewarded for their hard work and dedication.

This was my first visit to Westfield. It’s a truly modern and first-class retail complex and made for a uniquely fitting setting for the annual leisure and business tourism awards. I can’t wait for Westfield Stratford to open closer to my doorstep in 2011.

Congratulations to all the winners of the 2009 Visit London Awards. The full list is outlined below:

Outstanding Achievement Award
Sponsored by BT
Tony Hadley, lead singer of Spandau Ballet
Visitor Attraction of the Year
Kindly supported by Visa
Gold: National Maritime Museum
 Silver: ZSL London Zoo
Bronze: Imperial War Museum London
Best Tourism Experience 
Sponsored by Smiles of London
Gold: National Maritime Museum for International Year of Astronomy 2009 at the Royal Observatory Greenwich
 Silver: Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms 
Bronze: BBC Tours
Best Consumer Event of the Year 
Sponsored by Cake
Gold: Greenwich+Docklands International Festival
Silver: Winter Wonderland 
Bronze: Westminster Council for West End Live
Best Corporate Event of the Year
 Sponsored by Conference & Incentive Travel
Gold: ExCeL London for The London Summit; Growth, Stability & Jobs
 Silver: The Brewery for Glaston-Brewery
 Bronze: Maybourne Hotel Group for Event Organisers Party at The Berkeley 6th April 2009
Business Venue of the Year 
Sponsored by Confex Group
Gold: ExCeL London 
Silver: Natural History Museum 
Bronze: Cavendish Conference Venues
Small Hotel/B&B of the Year 
Sponsored by SML Marketing & Events
Gold: Bingham 
Silver: The Colonnade 
Bronze: SACO Holborn/SACO Serviced Apartments
Large Hotel of the Year
 Sponsored by OMD
Gold: Grosvenor House, A JW Marriott Hotel 
Silver: InterContinental London Park Lane 
Bronze: The Athenaeum
Budget Accommodation of the Year
Sponsored by visitlondon.com
Gold: Generator Hostel London 
Silver: Palmers Lodge Boutique Backpackers 
Bronze: Think Apartments Limited
Outstanding Customer Service Award
 Sponsored by British Airways
Gold: The Operations team at The Cavendish Hotel London 
Silver: The Meetings & Events team at Royal College of Physicians 
Bronze: Nicholas Babbs at National Maritime Museum
Sports Tourism Award 
Sponsored by BT


Gold: England and Wales Cricket Board for ICC World Twenty20 England 2009
 Silver: Arsenal Football Club, Emirates Stadium for Emirates Cup 2008 
Bronze: Chelsea Football Club for Chelsea Football Club Stadium Tours & Museum
Sustainable Tourism Award 
Sponsored by Heathrow Express
Gold: Cavendish Conference Venues
 Silver: ExCeL London 
Bronze: The Cavendish Hotel London
Accessible Tourism Award 
Sponsored by OpenLondon
Gold: St Martin-in-the-Fields
 Silver: Greenwich+Docklands Festivals 
Bronze: The British Postal Museum & Archive
Best Gastronomic Experience 
Sponsored by London Restaurant Festival
Gold: Bingham
 Silver: Paternoster Chop House
 Bronze: Vinopolis
Marketing/PR Campaign of the Year
 Sponsored by Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R
Gold: Natural History Museum for Darwin Exhibition 
Silver: Historic Royal Palaces: Tower of London and Hampton Court Palaces for Henry 500 - Henry VIII: Dressed to Kill and Henry VIII: Heads and Hearts 
Bronze: Westfield for the launch of Westfield London
People's Choice Awards
London Evening Standard's Best Family Fun 
Wicked – The Musical
London Evening Standard's Best London for Free Experience 
Natural History Museum
Kiss 100's Hottest Music Event
 West End Live
Magic 105.4's London Hero 
Emma De Souza

Keeping Britain Talking

Keep Britain Talking is the awareness campaign run by VisitBritain to encourage business in the UK to keep communicating through meetings and events, and also to support the UK meetings industry by holding those events in the UK.

I played my part this week by jumping on a double-decker routemaster bus with the Business Tourism and Event Solutions teams from Visit London.

The purpose of our extreme bus ride was to have a lengthy meeting, lasting from Paddington station to the Birmingham NEC, whilst promoting the new Visit London business branding along the way.

The Global Radio Big Events Bus also served to remind those pointing and taking photos of us as we navigated our way out of London, that there's a host of quirky meeting spaces available to event planners in the capital.

Keep Britain Talking is the campaign theme for National Meetings Week, which runs from 21-27 September. It coincides with the NEC exhibition Event UK so, the bus has another role to fulfill this week as it turns into Visit London's exhibition stand.

During National Meetings Week, key partners and supporters will be getting across the message that the meetings and events industry in Britain is worth more than £22billion. Around 80 million people attend 1.5 million conferences held annually in the UK and business visits and events account for some 5.3million jobs either indirectly or directly.

Check out the video embedded below for more information or go to the Keep Britain Talking website.

London Twestival turns up the tweets

London Twestival (or @LDNTwestival as it’s more commonly referred to on Twitter) took place last night at Vinopolis (or @vinopolislondon - you get the idea).

The wine attraction near London Bridge in Borough Market, gave over its four main cavernous event spaces so that the tweeting masses could party in aid of ChildLine.

More than 700 Twitter users bought tickets through the micro-blogging website, with all the proceeds going to the UK’s free 24-hour helpline for children in distress or danger.

Everyone involved with the Twestival event gave their time and services free of charge and the result was a party, rich in content and flowing with free booze.

Fresh from their tour supporting U2, The Hours joined a line-up of bands that included Newton Faulkner and Sound of Rum.

For the £15 charitable donation, guests could experience zones dedicated to arts and crafts, face-painting, DJ sets and collaborative story telling. Free drinks all night were supplied by Magners Pear Cider and Barefoot Wine.

Vinopolis is no stranger to hosting bands with the Friendly Fires and Scouting for Girls having played the venue in the recent past. But, this was a conveyor belt of talent performing on its main stage throughout the night.

Vinopolis excelled itself and transformed the overall Twestival backdrop with its stunning in-house lighting capabilities. Twitter folk are, by nature a sociable bunch. This is one event that will be talked about online and offline for a long time to come.

For more of my photos from London Twestival, check out my Facebook Album.

London's warm-up weekend of sport allows two Olympic venues to shine

A school basketball court is the scene of my most embarrassing moment. I had just scored after coming on as a sub following a time-out and was standing under the basket, my 16-year-old arms aloft, wondering why no-one was celebrating my amazing dribble and dunk from the re-start. The reason no-one was sharing my elation was because the time-out had, in fact been half-time and the teams had swapped ends. I’d been sent into the game unaware and had promptly scored in the wrong basket.

No surprise, that was the end of, not only my basketball career but also any future interest I may have developed in the game. I should add that I went on to achieve at every other school sport but I never returned to a basketball court, until last week.

Game On at the O2 was a four-nation tournament that began on Friday 14 August. It kick-started a Warm-up Weekend of sport that would be the UK capital’s first real test for two 2012 Olympic venues.

Whilst Turkey got the tournament underway with a comfortable 85-69 win over Israel, my Melbourne accomplice was still crying with laughter as we'd swapped the opening game for happy hour on the O2’s entertainment avenue and I’d told her of my embarrassing school tale.

I tried to distract her from recalling my teenage sporting failure by asking how she thought London would measure up as an Olympic host city in 1076 days time.

I was heartened to hear that, compared with her own 2006 Commonwealth Games host city, she believes London already has a much cleaner and more reliable transport infrastructure. I elected not to tell her that the Jubilee Line would be closed from Green Park to Stratford the next day for engineering work, thus significantly reducing the chances of a high-turn out for the tournament’s final day.

The game we’d come to see was Team GB versus Poland. So too, it seemed, had most of London’s youth Polish community and the sounds of ‘Polska Polska’ reverberated around the arena.

We took our seats in amongst a band of passionate Polish supporters who, throughout the game, depending on which team had the ball, kept up their cries of ‘Defense!’ or ‘Polska!’.

When taking free throw penalties, both sets of supporters tried feverishly to put the opposing team off by booing. It proves, in my view, that ‘extra man spectator tactics’ is simply a part and parcel of sports banter worldwide and it only added to, rather than detracted from the overall atmosphere.

It didn’t help the Team GB cause however as their line-up, apparently depleted through injury and unavailability, could only match the Poles until half-time.

A 17-0 run, wrapped around the half-time break, set Poland up for a 70-56 victory. If only my school had put on a half-time show, half as good as the dancers and slam-dunking trampolinist that entertained the crowds at the O2, maybe I’d have paid more attention to what stage of the game we were in all those years ago.

Unsurprisingly, with its wealth of experience for hosting major events, the O2 (or the North Greenwich Arena as it will be referred to during the Olympics) sailed through its 2012 test. It’s already a world-class venue and will prove a fitting arena for 16,500 artistic gymnastic fans and 20,000 basketball supporters in three years time.

The next day it was the turn of Hyde Park to test its Olympic credentials.

One of the Royal Parks of London, Hyde Park is more famous for its Speakers’ Corner than it is for holding large capacity sporting events. In 2012 however, it will stage both the Olympic Triathlon and the 10km Open Water Swim and have grandstand seating for 3,000 spectators.

On Saturday, 15 August 2009, it staged the London leg of the ITU Dextro Energy Triathlon. Participants swam the Serpentine before cycling 40km and running 10km in laps around a park that was created to satisfy Henry VIII’s passion for hunting.

Britain’s 21-year-old Alistair Brownlee was the sporting hero of the day as he stormed to victory, underlining his status as an early gold medal favourite for London 2012. Earlier, in the women’s race, Britain’s Helen Jenkins was edged out into bronze medal place after a dramatic sprint finish.

For me though, one of the most inspiring aspects of the day, on a par with the British triathlon performances, was the aerial broadcast footage, beamed onto big screens and aired by global television networks as it followed the athletes as they made their way around the course.

Hyde Park is a lush green space surrounded by famous London landmarks. On a sunny day, and filmed from either the air or ground, it makes for an amazing setting. When you consider Hyde Park alongside other Olympic backdrops including Horse Guards Parade for the Beach Volleyball and Greenwich Park for Equestrian and Modern Pentathlon, the picture of just how stunning the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games will look on a global television stage begins to really take shape.

There ain't no party like a Smirnoff party

You know it’s a going to be great party when you have to visit the Fortune Teller to find out the location of the secret garden room and, all of your earlier wardrobe choices, made for a night out at superclub Matter become irrelevant as you rummage around in the dressing up box for a fish-net glove, top hat and a fake mustache.

This was Smirnoff’s U.R The Night party, held at the O2’s nightclub last week. The party’s content was devised and voted on by the fans of its Facebook group, who had been sending in their ideas by the bucket load for a chance to win free tickets.

The results, as you may expect, ranged from the clever to the comical, stopping off at inspired and good-fun idiocy along the way.

After a visit to the dressing up box, guests could either sit in the tattooists chair or head straight to the DIY cocktail bar, where you could create your own Smirnoff-based jumping juice.

A digital graffiti wall enabled guests to upload their masterpieces to Facebook in one click whilst a make-up station resulted in the art appearing on your face.

If you found yourself standing next to one of the KGB agents hiding behind their newspaper, you would be given a secret mission. If you stood next an usherette you’d end up with another item of clothing to wear.

In the club’s second room, The Underground Rebel Bingo Club staged a game of...er..bingo, which then turned into a game of swapping clothes. The room was finally taken over by Bristol club night, Monkey! Flash! Light! and everyone was given a torch for a night vision rave.

On the main stage, Little Boots and the Pet Shop Boys provided the headline half hour live sets whilst DJs Tom Middleton and Hot Chip kept the crowds jumping until the wee small hours.

It was a truly ridiculous evening that will have won the brand a lot of fans. It continues the Smirnoff Experience series, which has already appeared in Moscow, Shanghai, Paris and New York. The events celebrate originality in nightlife by bringing to life original concepts, forming one-off collaborations and championing original drinking experiences.

Congratulations to the team at RPM for making it happen and if anyone wants any of their stuff back, I appear to have an oversized Hawaiian shirt, a sun-visor, top hat, white feather boa, red fish-net glove and a lot of fun memories from a truly original club night.

Talking social media at Summer Eventia

Brighton played host to the Eventia Summer Conference this week so I headed to the south coast for three days of stimulating sessions on events industry trends, fun networking and a community programme that saw delegates painting a local school’s playground. (see more of my photos included in C&IT's 48 hours at Summer Eventia slideshow)

I was also there in my capacity as an events industry speaker. At 9.30am on the conference’s second day, I joined Simon Burton, MD of Exposure Communications and Rob Shimmin, MD of Shimmin.biz, to talk-up the benefits of social media to businesses.

The session drew a lot of interest from an industry that is still quite slow to embrace the opportunities presented by an ever-changing media landscape so I’ve decided to use this blog to repeat and expand on some of the key points.

Firstly, the events and hospitality industry needs to stop thinking of Twitter as a social tool for online conversation and start viewing it as a marketing and business channel that can be used for: amplification, community building, feedback, research, awareness and to build brand advocacy amongst business and consumer audiences.

Statistics that show how Twitter has transcended basic social networking include:

• The total minutes spent on Twitter rose by a staggering 3712% from April 08 to April 09. (Neilson)


• 88% of marketers say they are using some form of social media to market their business with Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook, in that order, forming the top 4 social media tools used (mediaplanner.com)


• The average age of a twitter user is 35-49 (Neilson)


• Twitter has more than 32 million users, an increase from about 2 million a year ago


• Some Internet measurement services show that figure increasing 50% to 100% month over month. (Wall Street Journal)


• Twitter is now growing at a mind-boggling 2,565 percent


• Twitter reached more than 13 million people in the US during April 2009 and that’s just on its website (i.e. - not counting 3rd party applications and mobile) (Mashable)


• The top two brands mentioned on Twitter as of May 2009 were Starbucks and Google

In a media rich and time poor environment, more and more people are selecting channels to allow for filtering of vast quantities of disseminated information. People want a lot of information instantly but need to find ways to focus on what’s useful or interesting or relevant.

This means that if an audience has a genuine interest in your proposition and has chosen Twitter as the key channel by which to filter their information, they are more likely to engage with your messages and click through on provided links than they are to engage with, say a newsletter that appears in their email inbox daily, or a piece of direct marketing that’s landed on their doorstep.

My example of the potential reach of Twitter made during the conference session:

I recently did a marketing consultancy exercise for an events industry client which involved live Tweeting from an event they were staging. They wanted to know the worth and potential reach of Twitter so that they could decide how to use it as an effective communications tool.

During the course of the event (one hour), I sent 10 Tweets with relevant key words and Hash tags:

The Tweets were Retweeted 17 times across the world

The furthest away was Retweeted in New Zealand

Of those 17 Twitter accounts that repeated one or more of my messages, the potential reach was 18.109 people

We exist in a world where content is accessible and free. The days of being able to control or manage that content are long-gone. Seeking the removal of online messages will now legitimize and simply bring further attention to any negative sentiment.

Brand communication strategies have to focus on engagement. And the engagement needs to be long-term, from senior players in the business (rather than PRs) and abide by basic ‘Netiquette’ principles.

By banning social media from your business, not only are you making a statement about your brand’s unwillingness to engage, but you’re also cutting off a key research tool that allows you to see what others are saying about your business in real time.

Do you know your brand’s perception according to the Twitterverse?

Footnote:
Remember, just as so much content is free, so too are the applications that allow you to broadcast or access this information.

I’ve recently discovered AudioBoo - a free iPhone application that allows you to record five minute segments of speech before immediately publishing online.

Here is five minutes of Rohit Talwar, CEO of Fast Future, predicting the future trends for the events industry at the Eventia conference:

Celebrity Wine Tasting with Oz Clarke

This weekend I joined around 150 wine enthusiasts at London’s Vinopolis for a celebrity wine tasting, hosted by Oz Clarke.

For those that don’t know, (and I confess I didn’t) Oz is best known for his recent television wine adventures with James May.

As I’d not seen his television appearances, I didn’t know what to expect. What I quickly discovered was a wine expert who gets his message across via a not so subtle blend of directness, wit and audience banter, combined with an expansive knowledge that spills out in unique rambling non-pretentious monologues that had the whole audience gripped from the moment he began talking.

The session, during which Oz focused on five wines selected from his new book, was only meant to last one hour. An hour and a half later, audience members were still asking questions, eager to press another story from this walking wine encyclopedia.

So what did I learn? Well, amongst other things, I discovered:

Dom Perignon did not invent champagne:
In 1662, almost 40 years before the Benedictine monk, an English physician called Christopher Merrett presented the Royal Society with a paper in which he had documented the addition of sugar to a finished wine in its bottle to create a second fermentation. This is the method for making champagne.

A Chilean Merlot is a safe bet because it’s not really a Merlot:
It’s a Carmenere (at least its blood-line stems from former French Carmenere vineyards used to make fine vintages such as Rothschild’s Chateau Lafite.)

In 1850 the valleys around Santiago were planted with vine material from Bordeaux including a lot of Carmenere mixed in with Merlot. After phylloxera wiped out most of the French vineyards, the French opted to replace Carmenere with the more robust Cabernet Sauvignon or traditional Merlot, (Carmenere ripens several weeks after Merlot and often produces yields lower than Merlot and the French were desperate for guaranteed harvests).

Chile meanwhile was relatively isolated from international wine markets. Carmenere to the rest of the world became an old forgotten or extinct wine grape.

As more Chilean 'Merlot' found its way onto the world markets during the past 20 years, someone noticed the 'Merlot' had stronger and spicier flavours than Merlot from anywhere else in the world. In 1994, Professor Jean- Michel Boursiquit of Montpellier's school of Oenology identified the Chilean 'Merlot'. Using DNA mapping he showed the world the Chilean 'Merlot' was really Carmenere and was identical to Carmenere vines found in France.

The difference between Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay:
Sauvignon Blanc is recognisable by its green flavours such as pepper and gooseberry. The Chardonnay has a more golden colour, possessing more oak, mature flavours such as nuts and honey.

I also learned that Oz Clarke is a fantastic orator and would be ideal for after-dinner speaking. If you'd like to discover him for yourself, he returns to Vinopolis on Saturday 10th October for another celebrity wine tasting. For more information visit www.vinopolis.co.uk/meettheexperts

This is Oz explaining why we no longer drink Chardonnay: