Velvet Software

Passkey Completes Acquisition of UK-Based Velvet Software

October 12, 2011

 

Dear Velvet Software and Passkey Customers and Partners:

Passkey is pleased to announce that it has completed the acquisition of UK-based Velvet Software.  Velvet is the leading provider of conference, event and accommodation technologies for organizations, conference destinations and individuals in the UK.  Its client base includes over 40 of the UK's largest Convention and Visitors Bureaus such as Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Belfast, Glasgow and Cardiff, as well as corporate clients, associations and event management companies.

 

The addition of Velvet underscores Passkey's commitment to leadership in the event housing space and advances the Company's strategy of global expansion following the opening of our office in Singapore last year.   

 

As we welcome Velvet into the Passkey organization, we believe that their expertise in the tourism industry and software development will greatly contribute toward expanding our product offerings and market expansion, particularly in Europe.

 

Most importantly, our primary mission remains unchanged:  To ensure that we continue to provide the industry's leading event accommodation and housing technologies across the globe.  The combination of the two companies will also allow us to serve our mutual clients more effectively.   

 

Velvet will continue to operate from Swindon, just west of London.

 

Greg J. Pesik

President & CEO

Passkey International, Inc.

 

Please contact Passkey Public Relations with any questions at

+1-781-373-4131 or marketing@passkey.com.

ChaserBUREAU.com live at Conference Leeds

Two years in Development, Velvet's all-new Chaser BUREAU enquiry handling system has gone live at Conference Leeds. Development partners for the project, Nicky Lockwood and her team have provided input throughout the system design and implementation.

User training was provided by Velvet's Chris Gibbs, "It's so exciting training the users on the live system - I've been actively involved in the testing; now it's really rewarding to see it all in use".

"It's really good and so, so much easier"

Following training for the Conference Leeds team, venues and suppliers across the region who work with Conference Leeds attended one of six training sessions over a two day period. Positive feedback was received from each session as providers viewed demonstrations of enquiry responses, status updates and updating their own details.

"More cost effective & green!"

Providers are notified via email that a new enquiry has been sent - without entering a username or password they may click on a secure link to view and respond in an instant. Alternatively, conference and reservation staff may log-in to the system to view new and provisional enquiries at the click of a mouse. ChaserBUREAU.com features a unique dashboard highlighting enquiries that require attention using an automated "traffic light" priority system.

Updating facutal information and images is also a breaze; providers may update their own data on-line, including images and video content. Using the custom templates, Conference Leeds are able to include selected or custom content directly in client proposals. Feedback on client choices is also recorded enabling providers to view confirmed business and any reasons selected if they were unsuccessful.

 

Confex 2011

Impressive stands, bustling clients and lots of leads! Destinations exhibiting at Confex 2011 included regulars such as Marketing Birmingham, Visit Scotland,  Sheffield Conference in addition to some new comers. Conference Leeds were back after many years and benefited from their Yorkshire stand share.

James Jones of Nottingham Convention Bureau commented, "We've got a new, fully recyclable green stand this year - everyone's said how effective it is!". Nottingham hosted a number of stand-sharers from their members and captured a number of excellent quality leads from visitors to the exhibition.

Congratulations go to Glasgow City Marketing Bureau who were awarded "Best Convention Bureau" again in 2011.

"Confex is always a valuable meeting place for us", commented Velvet Software's Tim Clark. "We use the time to meet with existing clients to discuss and new requirements or questions that they may have regarding any of the systems they use. Most importantly, it's a great opportunity to speak face to face as we now carry out so much business on-line".

2011 is the end of an era for Confex at Earl's Court as the historic site undergoes re-development next year. We look forward to an all-new Confex at ExCel in 2012.

EventUK 2010

Velvet Software's destination clients were out in force again at this year's EventUK exhibition.

Hosted at Birmingham's NEC, the show was well attended with many destinations reporting quality leads from visitors. Claire Williams of Staffordshire, Stoke on Trent and Ruth Robinson representing Blackpool and Lancashire Conferences were amongst those for who the show proved a success on the first day.

Both Eventia (Events Industry Association) and the MIA (Meetings Industry Association) had a presence at the show; supporting members and also generating leads for processing using Velvet's Chaser BUREAU system.

Velvet's Tim Clark and Chris Gibbs met with destination clients who were exhibiting and several who were attending the show as visitors. "Event UK has always been a great place to meet with clients", explained Tim. "Whilst the show may not be as large as in previous years, destinations have reported some excellent, quality enquiries and were upbeat about the level of potential business generated by the exhibition".

EYE Spy ConferenceBookings!

Velvet Software's Chris Gibbs travelled to the beautiful market town of Beverley to train East Yorkshire Events' (EYE) Kieran Lawry and Matthew Whittingham on ConferenceBookings.co.uk.

EYE have a variety of members ranging from large hotels to family-run bed and breakfast accommodation. ConferenceBookings will be used to offer an on-line accommdation booking service for events being held in the recently redeveloped 1930's Bridlington Spa. The Spa's Edwardian Theatre combines state-of-the-art technology and facilities with traditional surroundings to offer a unique service - the heart of their business. Kieran Lawry, Conference and Events Officer at EYE, needed a system that would enable all of his members to provide and manage their own accommodation allocations for delegates, with varying requirements, across a broad range of events and conferences.

Following a remote demonstration of Velvet's ConferenceBookings on-line accommodation system in January, Kieran felt that the system was the perfect solution for handing accommodation bookings at EYE and a much-welcome replacement for the current, time-consuming, manual system.

The system training for Kieran and Matthew took place over two days at the EYE offices. “Kieran and Matthew were a delight to train” said Chris, “They picked up the system really quickly; by the end of the first day we had all of their accommodation providers loaded onto the system and a demonstration event live for Kieran to show hoteliers at a members' meeting that very evening!”.  The new system was received well by the EYE hotel and guest house association members. After receiving just one days training, Kieran was able to dispel any reservations members had about on-line allocations and bookings by demonstrating the benefits of ConferenceBookings to both delegates and accommodation providers.

By mid-afternoon on the second day, Kieran and Matthew were ready to go live with events on the system. We would like to wish Kieran and the team at EYE every success for the future working with ConferenceBookings.co.uk for their events.

To Book Or Not To Book?

Following a brief meeting at Confex 2009, Velvet's Tim Clark was delighted to hear from Siân Smith, Visitor Services Manager, at Shakespeare Country to say that they were ready to proceed with their purchase of ConferenceBookings - Velvet's on-line accommodation booking system for conferences and events.

Siân felt that being able to provide delegates with a dedicated accommodation booking site with secured allocations could only enhance the service that they are already offering and secure more business for the destination. With delegate accommodation ranging from traditional Tudor buildings to modern business hotels, Shakespeare Country can meet the requirements of the business tourism and events industry while offering is unique character & charm.

Siân already has one major event confirmed for 2009 for which she will be using the system. Siân hopes to build the number of events for which they not only source venues but also manage accommodation bookings. Training was arrange for the end of June and Velvet's Chris Gibbs travelled up through the Cotwolds in the midst of the heatwave to Shakespeare Country and was relieved to find Siân waiting in an air conditioned room!

Chris spent the first day with Siân setting up the system. Siân added hotel descriptions, transport details and images to help delegates make the right selection when booking. Chris then took Siân  through the customisable system text and emails and they spent some time make minor updates to make them consistent with their other literature. “I really like the fact that I can customise the emails”, said Siân, “I'll be looking at various ways that I can use this correspondence to subtly up-sell our services.”

“We hit the ground running on the second day”, explained Chris, “having completed all the set-up and reviewed the system text and emails on the first day, we had an entire day to focus on the events.”. When Chris left Siân at the end of the second day, they had set up their first major event with all allocations and also set up a demonstration event to promote the system to new clients system.

“The training was great”, said Siân, “it was so easy to pick up and I can't wait to make ConferenceBookings work for our destination.”

We would like to wish Siân and her team every success with their delegate accommodation booking service.

New Cadiff & Co Team Offer New Velvet Services

The cold Winter December morning of the 2008 ChUG (Chaser User Group) meeting at the Royal College of Physicians in London seemed a million miles away when Velvet's Chris Gibbs stepped off the train into dazzling Spring sunshine in Cardiff just five months later heading for the Cardiff & Co office.

After the reg.istrations.com presentation at the 2008 ChUG Jacqueline van de Stadt, Head of Tourism Campaigns at Cardiff & Co, spoke with Chris over lunch in more detail about the delegate registration system and how it may be coupled with the additional services they may be able to offer.

Chris was delighted to hear from Jacqueline at the end of March to say that Cardiff & Co were ready to purchase reg.istrations.com and arrange their user training.

Chris was on site on 11th May 2009 to train Cheryl Walker, Sara Llewellyn and Rachel Dancey  (pictured above).  Sara Llewellyn, is Cardiff & Co's newly appointed Conference Bureau Manager. Sara has been in her role for just three weeks and is doing a sterling job having just got to grips with Velvet's other leading products,  Chaser Bureau and ConferenceBookings.

“The day was very successful”, said Chris. “There is quite a lot of information to take in, especially if the destination hasn't offered a registration service before - they took to it really well and have some great ideas to move forward with the system and service provision”.

Seeing reg.istrations.com for the first time during the training session, Sara was impressed by it's usability; “It's so easy for the delegates to book”, Sara told Chris after seeing how delegates would register for an event. “There is a great deal of potential for collecting delegate information by using the system too”, Sara commented after learning how she could add custom questions to the delegates packages.

Chris left the team at Cardiff & Co at the end of a full day with an example events that they could use to practice on and enhance there new skills by using Velvet's on-line training system. "Ideas were buzzing in the air!", said Chris.

We would like to wish Cardiff & Co every success for the future with their delegate registration service.

Velvet sponsor 2009 York Tourism Awards

Velvet Software are proud sponsors of this year's York Tourism Awards hosted at the prestigious York Race Course. This year's awards were presented by BBC's Look North host, Harry Gration.

The annual high profile event was organised by Visit York's Stuart Blackmore. Stuart's meticulous organisation made for a seamless event - the timing, awards ceremony, food and post event entertainment were all excellent. Velvet Software provided their professional event registration software, reg.istrations.com to Stuart and his team in 2008 to allow sponsors, attendees and organising members of Visit York to book their tickets for the event.

"Stuart had limited staffing resources and a relatively complex structure of attendees each of whom were able to book differing numbers of tickets at various rates", said Velvet's Tim Clark. Stuart attended a one day workshop during which he not only completed various sample exercises but also set up his complete event by the end of the day. "It's so easy to use", commented Stuart, "it's great! It does everything I need and more in one easy system - this was going to be such a headache to manage manually using spreadsheets".

 Following the main awards and dinner, Stuart had organsied a charity casino and live music - both of which were absolutely excellent.

Visit York are looking to use Velvet's reg.istrations.com system for other events. They join a number of growing UK destinations who are offering registration services in addition to accommodation booking and venue finding services using Velvet's other on-line systems.

Velvet's Tim Clark (pictured right) would like to thank the team at Visit York for their hospitality on the evening and looks forward to continuing to support them in the future.

Our congratulations go to all those who made it to the finals and in particular to the individual category winners. Of note were the York Marriott who won awards in no fewer than three categories including best sales office.

Experience Nottinghamshire complete the Velvet suite of products

New to Chaser BUREAU and the on-line Chaser WEB module in January 2008, Experience  Nottinghamshire were quick to see benefits and potential of offering a delegate registration. In June 2008 they purchased Velvet's latest on-line registration product, reg.istraitons.com to enable them to offer this addition service. 

In addition to venue finding using Velvet's Chaser BUREAU and on-line WEB module, Experience Nottinghamshire were also offering a delegate accommodation booking service however, the majority of the work was being done manually. This took time to manage requiring numerous excel spreadsheets and manually generated emails.

At Event UK in 2008 Velvet’s Chris Gibbs had an informal meeting with Andy Melton, Business Tourism Coordinator from Experience Nottinghamshire to discuss Velvet Software’s on-line accommodation booking system ConferenceBookings.co.uk.  A remote demonstration of the system was arranged to enable the entire team at Experience Nottinghamshire to see the features and benefits that the system offered.

Chris was delighted to receive the call from Andy just before Confex 2009 to confirm that they wanted to proceed with ConferenceBookings.co.uk and arrange training for the end of March.

With the sun shinning and spring in the air Chris set off to Nottingham to train Andy Melton and James Jones on ConferenceBookings. “It was a pleasure training Andy & James on the system”, said Chris, “They’re good fun and a friendly team.”

“I like the way the system send emails automatically through the various stages of the event” said Andy “The system is logical and easy to use”.

“They took to the system really well” Chris reflected at the end of the second day's training, “they have customised the system text and emails, set up all of their accommodation providers with a synopsis and image and have an event live with allocations ready for delegates to book. I couldn’t be happier!”

Experience Nottinghamshire are the latest of nearly 30 UK destinations using ConferenceBookings.co.uk. They now offer a complete conference solution from on-line venue searching to enquiry handing and proposal service using Chaser BUREAU, a choice of delegate registration services using reg.istrations.com and an accommodation booking service using ConferenceBookings.co.uk - the complete suite of Velvet Software's Business Tourism products. We would like to wish them every success for the future and look forward to working closely with them.

VisitScotland implement Chaser BUREAU across Scotland

VisitScotland's newly appointed Meetings and Incentive Manager Neil Brownlee managed the implementation and roll-out of Velvet's Chaser BUREAU system across VisitScotland's organisation, which has bases in multiple locations across the UK in addition to their international sales offices

Based at Ocean Point One, Edinburgh's recently developed dockside development is also home to the offices of the Scottish Parliament, a new shopping complex and is also the home of the Royal Yacht Britannia. VisitScotland chose to implement Chaser as a hosted solution within the organsiation to enable access to the system from any location.

Headed by Caroline Packman, the Business Tourism Unit (BTU) is tasked with generating business for all regions across Scotland both at home and Internationally. They have dedicated marketing and association contacts for each of the Scottish regions in addition to key areas of the business tourism sector including, London, North America and Europe.

VisitScotalnd's Moira Unwin and Caroline Smith are not strangers to Chaser. Prior to the reorganisation of VisitScotland's marketing strategy, Moira and Caroline used Chaser at an individual destination level to handle enquiries. Now representing key regions, Moira had direct responsibility for the collation and organisation of all of VisitScotland's key business data and contacts. "It's going to be great having all of our product data and clients in one place!", said Moira.

Chaser is acting as a CRM for all business generated leads in addition to marketing and campaigns carried out by the BTU. Velvet's Tim Clark provided on-site consultancy, guidance and initial user training to each of the BTUs sixteen team members. "It's great working with Neil, Claire-Jayne and the other team members at Ocean Point", said Tim. "Having Moira directly involved with the implementation and set-up has been excellent - her knowledge of Chaser from a destination perspective has really helped with the setting-up of the system across the whole organisation which while not dis-similar is a whole new challenge".

Chaser BUREAU is used by around fifty individual UK destinations - implementing across a whole region and to work for users based both nationally and Internationally has enabled VisitScotland to pool their collective product and client data knowledge. All members of the team whether based at Ocean Point One North America, Europe or at a trade exhibition have direct access to live, up-to-date product and client knowledge with the capability of generating enquiries direct to partner destinations and venues.

Velvet and VisitScotland are currently working on integrating their new web site that will feature up-to-date product data driven by Chaser's WEB module, including venue search, product details, enquiry and brochure request forms. "VisitScotland have chosen an innovative, new approach to taking the data maintained by Chaser and presenting it to consumers", said Tim. "The new exciting site will 'talk' directly with the Chaser WEB module using Chaser as it's source for content and passing enquiries directly to Chaser for handling by the appropriate team member".

We wish Neil and his team every success with Chaser and look forward to working closely with them in providing on-line services in addition to enhancing their service offering.

An ideal working environment - the VisitScotland offices at Ocean Point in Edinburgh are a stones-throw from the original MalMaison Hotel, Tower Place, Leith, which overlooks the stunning harbour side and is adjacent to an excellent selection of restaurants, cafes and traditional pubs housed in developments of warehouse conversions, traditional buildings and modern apartment blocks (pictured above).