Velvet Software

Roll out the red carpet!

Dressed to impress the Velvet team looked the part on the red carpet at the exclusive NSPCC premiere screening of the new James Bond film Quantum of Solace in Swindon.

The evening was organised by the Swindon and North Wiltshire branch of the NSPCC to help reach their target of £110,000 during its 110th anniversary and made over £3000.00 through ticket sales and raffle tickets.

The Empire Cinema in Swindon worked with the NSPCC to ensure the event was a sell out, Other audience members included the patron of the Swindon and North Wiltshire NSPCC branch, TV's Johnny Ball and players from Swindon Town Football Club. "We just couldn't resist attending the premiere,” explained Chris Gibbs, "It was the prefect excuse to get dressed up for a night out and support our local branch of the NSPCC."

Dundee & Angus Convention Bureau Team train on reg.istrations.com

Karen Tocher, Business Tourism Manager, of Dundee and Angus Convention Bureau was instrumental in the specification and development of Velvet Software's on-line delegate registration system, http://reg.istrations.com in 2007. Live in January 2008, Laura McGlashan at the Bureau has been using the system since it's launch. "It was great to visit the team again and to see how Laura's been using the system and to train the rest of the team", said Velvet's Tim Clark.

Pictured (from left to right): Karen Tocher, Tracy Duncan, Lorna Reid & Laura McGlashan

Following their success with an initial event through the system Karen wanted the whole team trained so that they are able to effectively promote and support their new on-line delegate registration system in addition to the existing accommodation booking and enquiry handling services that they currently offer.

Using reg.istration.com's integrated dashboard view, it's easy to get a graphical view of booking over a period of time automatically broken down by delegate type, package and revenue. Laura has already loaded a major European conference for 2009 that will be accepting registrations shortly - by the end of the training all four team members were not only able to manage bookings, but also create and configure complex multi-day events for themselves.

Dundee and Angus Convention Bureau have a well-established ambassador programme in addition to which they have strong links with the University of Dundee working with them on both academic events and external events hosted at the University.

Dundee's Tourist Information Centre and leisure tourism bas it at Discovery Point, home to the RSS Discovery. Pictured, Discovery has been restored and is key attraction in the City for visitors and local residents alike. "It's amazing, impressive and quite admirable to think that Captain Scott and his crew navigated to Antarctica and back in this very ship!", commented Velvet's Tim Clark. RSS Discovery may be hired as a venue for corporate events and private dinners in addition to serving as one of Dundee's major attractions.

We look forward to supporting the whole team in addition to the other destination clients who have adopted reg.istrations.com throughout the year in offering a professional, complete conference service to national and international event clients.

Velvet @ Event UK 2008

Great anticipation awaited the new two day Event UK show at Birmingham's NEC on Tuesday 16 and Wednesday 17 September. A new format, new layout and new approach were very much evident at this year's event attended by Velvet's Chris Gibbs and Tim Clark.

Key Velvet clients Conference Leeds and HEY (Hull & East Yorkshire) held prominence of position with their stands at the main entrance to welcome visitors as they arrived. Yorkshire Tourist Board's (YTB) Nick Bond coordinated the Yorkshire show area grouping each of the region's destinations into one key area of the exhibition space. For the first time, YTB had their own stand space in amongst the exhibiting destinations.

"Event UK is a great opportunity for us to meet with existing clients and also to pre-arrange appointments with new clients" commented Velvet's Tim Clark. "The NEC is just over an hour from our offices in Swindon and is ideal for use to meet with almost half of our clients over the two day exhibition.".

BICB, Bournemouth's International Conference Bureau team member Suzy Wheeler used their award winning stand design to attract visitors. The innovative surf board themed stand won the "best at show" award at Confex earlier in the year. Maximising stand space and providing a welcoming open meeting area worked well again for Suzy and her team on the stand. "I love the design and the layout - simple, clean and clever", said Velvet's Chris Gibbs. Chris attended the show on Tuesday to meet with Worcester's Emma Robinson and Nottingham's Andy Melton. Chris was giving Emma some face-to-face support and help with Chaser BUREAU whilst her discussions with Andy were focused around Velvet's new on-line registration system reg.istrations.com and their web based accommodation booking system ConferenceBookings.co.uk.

ALARM choose Reg.istrations.com

ALARM, the National Risk Management Forum, evaluated a number of different registration systems before choosing Velvet's latest product - reg.istrations.com - the powerful, logical yet simple to use web based delegate registration system.

ALARM's Keith Southwell and Julie Gray received training on the system following which they had two events live and ready for booking. Keith had evaluated a number of established registration systems before viewing a remote demonstration of Velvet's new reg.istrations.com following a link from  their on-line accommodation booking system www.conferencebookings.co.uk.

Easy to use, flexible and yet offering powerful reporting, Velvet Software's Tim Clark was able to demonstrate the system's ability to adapt and provide all of the complex booking features required of ALARM's monthly and annual conferences. Multiple streams, delegate types and pricing are no problem, explained Tim, "Reg.istrations.com is great - even with complex event the system has been designed to be as flexible as possible allowing users to create instant registration web sites for delegates offering multiple choices linked to one or more itinerary items behind the scenes. It does away with all of the paperwork, first / second / third choices and the hassle of amending bookings when an event fills up".

"It's the first computer training I've actually enjoyed!", commented ALARM's Julie Gray. "There's nothing we've come up with that it can't do!".

HEY - they also have reg.istrations.com

HEY - Hull & East Yorkshire Conferences now have Velvet's new on-line delegate registration system reg.istrations.com in addition to ConferenceBookings.co.uk, Velvet's allocation-driven on-line accommodation booking system.

HEY's Claire Hill and Liz Neal are long-time users of Velvet's original and industry leading conference enquiry handling system, Chaser BUREAU. Clients since 2002, the team originally consisted of just Liz and Claire. Today they are joined by Elaine Larney and Nicki Capes - all of whom use each of Velvet's three business tourism systems to manage enquiries, on-line accommodation booking and delegate registrations.

Earlier in 2008 Hull Conferences, based at the city's main council offices, became HEY Conferences, encompassing Hull and the surrounding East Yorkshire district. Based at impressive new offices opposite Hull's well know attraction, "The Deep" their offices and meeting room look out over the Humber Estuary towards the North Sea.

ConferenceBookings in Kent

With a continually growing number of bookings amounting to over £1M of reservations each month throughout 2008, Velvet Software's on-line accommodation booking system ConferenceBookings.co.uk is the preferred choice for UK conference destinations for allocation based event bookings.

Dawn Bowen and colleague Beni-Lee Allder of Conference Kent are the latest system users of Velvet's on-line accommodation booking system www.ConferenceBookings.co.uk. Velvet Software's Chris Gibbs travelled to Kent to deliver their on-site training and to help set up their first conference using the system, "It's great to see clients using our systems in a live environment. Dawn and Beni both took to the system really well ".

Conference Kent are coordinating accommodation for a major medical conference in the autumn of 2009 and are using ConferenceBookings to manage their allocations from independent and major corporate accommodation providers. Ease of use, automated management and an attractive booking engine for delegates, ConferenceBookings allows the team at the bureau to log-in and manage live allocations whilst accommodation providers may log in to upload initial event allocations and download room lists whenever they wish without having to contact the bureau.

The Velvet Touch in Conference News

The June 2008 issue of Conference News features a page article on Velvet Software's Tim Clark & Simon Hawkins.

Conference News' Rochelle Long met with Tim and Simon at Confex in February 2008 for an overview of the company's activities and to gain an understanding of Velvet's unique, long-standing working relationship with UK destinations and BACD (British Association of Conference Destinations).

Detailing their achievements with convention bureaus, the article reveals the technology behind Velvet's latest on-line delegate registration system, reg.istrations.com - a cutting edge web 2.0 application.

The article details how Velvet's on-line accommodation booking system ConferenceBOOKINGS.co.uk has taken destinations by storm over the past four years and how much business has been placed by Velvet's original enquiry handlings system Chaser BUREAU.

TMI Conference - Hot Topic Update

Sponsors of this year's TMI Hot Topic  "Successfully mixing business with pleasure"  Velvet Software attended the event alongside industry colleagues and clients at the impressive Royal Society of Medicine headquarters in London.

The one day seminar hosted jointly by TMI and BACD was introduced by Paul Hemphill, President TMI closely followed at a plenary session presented by VisitBritain's Kenny Boyle. Kenny stressed the role of business tourism in destination management and how the importance of business tourism is often overlooked and undervalued. Kenny's presentation came ahead of VisitBritain's publication of their national recommendation for conference desks.

Keynote speakers included Tony Rogers, Chief Executive of BACD (Birtish Association of Conference Destinations), VisitBritain's Kenny Boyle and Adam Bates, Head of Tourism at Visit Brighton. Tony presented the latest findings from recent research and the implications for destination managers. Representatives from destinations around the UK listened intently as Tony described the latest trends and ways in which destinations are working to maintain levels of business tourism.

Velvet sponsor the TMI Hot Topic 2008

This years Tourism Management Institute Hot Topic is a full day of seminars and networking looking to help destinations improve service levels and harness the benefits of business tourism working in harmony with leisure products.

As the largest supplier of Business Tourism software, sponsorship of the event and the Conference Desk seminar is only natural for us.

Our software is in use by over 50 destinations across the country. Providing management reporting and complete workflow for enquiry handling Chaser BUREAU is the solution for conference desks.

Our on-line accommodation booking system provides real time allocation management across multiple hotels with delegates booking themselves on-line.

Our latest product - web based event registration, providing all the functionality you require to handle event registration.

Together these software products provide a complete business tourism software solution.

The event is being held on the 21st May 2008 at the Royal Society of Medicine, London. More details can be found on the TMI Hot Topic 2008 web site.

If you would like to know more about what we do, Tim and Simon from Velvet will be available throughout the day, please come and talk to us.

HEY - that's 27 UK destinations using ConferenceBookings.co.uk

HEY - Hull & East Yorkshire Conferences are the latest UK destination to have Velvet's new allocation-driven on-line accommodation booking system ConferenceBookings.co.uk bringing the total number of UK destinations using the system to 27.

Launched in 2004, Velvet's industry leading on-line accommodation booking system was re-developed in 2007 as a completely new web 2.0 application utilising the latest web based technology and infrastructure.

"ConferenceBookings was always a great system, now it's even better!" says Velvet's Tim Clark. "The system makes a complex manual task into a simple, easy process going from basic event details to full on-line accommodation event web site in as little as 20 minutes".

The two days training were attended by Elaine Larney, Liz Neal, Claire Hill and Nicki Capes (pictured above). Liz and Claire have used Velvet Software's Chaser BUREAU system for many years and have provided valuable feedback via ChUG, the Chaser User Group. We welcome Elaine and Nicki as relatively new members to the HEY team and new Velvet system users.