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.

ChUG 2008 - The Best Yet! Annual Chaser User Group meeting success

Winter frost and warm food – all great ingredients for the 2008 Christmas Chaser User Group (ChUG) meeting! The Royal College of Physicians provided the perfect venue for this year's event – easily accessible with an excellent meeting room and superb food at lunchtime.

ChUG 2008 is possibly the most important user group meeting to date. A day packed with information about all three of Velvet's products; ConferenceBookings.co.uk, Reg.istrations.com and Chaser BUREAU, the main highlight and focus of the day was a preview of the new ChaserBureau.com system.

Chaser BUREAU originated in Conference Bristol (now Visit Bristol) in 1998. Ten years on, over fifty UK destinations have purchased the system. Velvet, working with Conference Leeds, are implementing a brand new version of Chaser as a web-based solution using the latest web 2.0 technology. Set to revolutionise the way in which destinations work with local providers, the system will enable quicker responses to enquiries, less data entry and professional on-line proposals for event clients.

Velvet's Tim Clark presented the new Chaser BUREAU system in the first afternoon session. The enthusiasm of the presentation was clearly shared by many of the delegates asking, “When can we have it!” and “wow - will it make the tea?!”. Tim talked through the work-flow of the new enquiry process, the method for adding new providers and the way in which the new actions list may be used to manage enquiry actions as well as general “to-dos” and appointments.

Velvet have always listened to their clients; throughout the year suggestions made by users are logged and evaluated for inclusion in forthcoming system releases. At ChUG, users have the opportunity to “Brainstrom” in groups. This is a great opportunity to generate new ideas for each system and also to share industry knowledge and experience with other destination colleagues.

Velvet's Simon Hawkins and Chris Gibbs helped facilitate the group brainstorming sessions. Simon presented the Google Analytics modules available for both ConferenceBOOKINGS and Reg.istrations.com – an invaluable tool to measure visitors, site referrals and booking value.

Velvet's annual National Conference Statistics were launched at ChUG this year. Simon presented the latest figures from destinations who have submitted anonymous data throughout the year. Possibly the only true and accurate measure of industry performance by destinations, the report is compiled from destinations' Chaser systems and is based on actual enquiry and conversion figures. Despite the “Credit Crunch”, figures to the year end 2008 are looking positive. A full copy of the report is sent to all destinations who have submitted their data.

Velvet would like to thank all of you who braved the cold for your very positive feedback and kind comments. Mostly, we'd like to thank you for attending the event and continuing to provide the invaluable feedback that have made our products a success and continue to be the preferred choice for Business Tourism professionals. Here's to ChUG 2009!

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.

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.

reg.istrations.com LIVE on-line @ Dundee

Velvet Software's new on-line delegate registration system reg.istrations.com was launched with our first flagship clients receiving training for their upcoming event in 2008.

Tim Clark, Director, who made the journey to Dundee to provide the training on the new system said, "It's the most satisfying thing to deliver a new system to clients following months of development and to see it live in action - we took Dundee's requirements and enhanced the functionality of the design to make reg.istrations.com not only a solution to Dundee's requirements but a class leading product that's powerful, flexible and above all, easy to use".