Research with member venues
Over the summer, we conducted research with our members to understand academic venues’ current needs and future plans in order to help form our activities over the coming year.
The importance of research
Understanding the needs of members and buyers is essential for Venuemasters to continue its success and ensure that we provide the best and most efficient service to members and buyers alike. In order to continue this, we invite members and buyers to provide feedback on our current services – as well as any ideas they would like us to develop in the future. These surveys are conducted with members and buyers in alternate years, with the results made available to all Venuemasters’ members.
The overall aims of this survey
As the research is sector-focussed on academic venues, the results provide a great opportunity for members to benchmark their operations against other academic venues involved in the meetings and accommodation market. The aim of the '2015 Members’ Report' is to update our understanding of each member’s business needs to ensure we, as a consortium, are maximising our resources to deliver services that are relevant to members, and as a result, help them achieve their objectives. The results in the report are based on the answers from the members who took part. We appreciate that the operations of member venues vary greatly, so this ‘snapshot’ of the current situation was focused on members’ turnover and marketing budgets, the availability of facilities, future developments and challenges, feedback on the consortium’s services and promotional activities, and feedback on potential membership packages for the coming year.
The results showed that:
- marketing budgets varied greatly between venues
- the majority of members’ turnover targets have increased
- vacation dates continue to differ between venues
- there is evidence of continued development in both meeting and accommodation facilities
- the Venuemasters website ranked highly, with members stating that it is the most valued enquiry and promotional option.
- many members are in favour of increasing the cost of the membership package in order to increase the consortium’s activities
A copy of the 2015 report can be downloaded by clicking on the link to the right of the page.
