Reduced event budget? The solution is in Wales

A new section on the Visit Wales website helps businesses to save money in today’s difficult economic climate by listing the best bargains to be found in venues across Wales.

By visiting the easy-to-navigate website (www.businessevents.visitwales.com ), businesses can access a list of good-value meetings and events venues, with special offers on business packages.
    
Jane Landstrom, senior product marketing executive at Visit Wales, said: “I hope that the offers section of our new website will help attract businesses to Wales for meetings and events. With the click of a button, businesses are able to download a list of great money saving deals for venues right across Wales.
    
“In the current economic climate, it is crucial that businesses reduce costs and save as much money as possible when organising meetings and events. This new resource allows businesses to book cost-effective packages in high-quality venues quickly and easily.”
    
The offers include a number of high profile venues in Wales, including the Millennium Stadium, Chepstow Racecourse and the SWALEC Stadium.
    
An example of some of the offers available include the Barceló Cardiff Angel Hotel, which is currently offering one free place to every five delegates until the end of September, and St Brides Spa Hotel, which has a deal on spa treatments for delegates such as stress busting massages and relaxing facials.  

WHAT’S NEW IN WALES FOR 2011?
Just opened in October 2010 is the new £20m Cardiff School of Management
building at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff (UWIC). Its conference and meeting rooms are used for seminars, conferences and networking events and a range of professional development courses on leadership and management will be offered to businesses and organisations. The new building also includes a roof top board room with panoramic views across Newport.
    
Meanwhile the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, located in the centre of Cardiff, is due to open its new £22.5m million facility in spring 2011. This will include a new 450 seat capacity acoustically excellent world class Concert Hall, 160 seat state-of-the-art theatre, new drama and movement studios and public exhibition and café-bar facilities and a renovated and upgraded 150-200 seat Bute Theatre. Facilities will be available for conferences and social functions.

ART AND BUSINESS
Chapter Arts Centre, one of Europe’s largest and most dynamic arts centres, has undergone a major £3.8 million refurbishment programme.
    
Home to many of Wales’ best-known and award-winning names in theatre, dance, music, art and animation, Chapter also has a number of hire spaces and hospitality packages available to the corporate market.  This includes the newly revamped Cinema One and Cinema Two, which can hold 188 and 57 delegates theatre style respectively, and First Space and Media Point, which are flexible and welcoming spaces, both of which hold 50 delegates theatre style.
    
Another notable venue is University of Wales’s newly opened £35m city-centre campus in Newport. This is the first phase of an intended two-phase £50m development for the university with partnership funding from Newport City Council and the Welsh Assembly Government.

HISTORIC VENUES
Set in 600 acres of Pembrokeshire National Coast Parkland is newly renovated historic country residence, Slebech Park.
    
After a £4million refurbishment the 18th century, grade II listed building has extensive gardens, woodland trails and a 12th Century chapel as well as state of the art conference and meeting facilities for the corporate market.
    
The main corporate facilitates are housed in the venue’s coach house where a maximum of 100 delegates can be accommodated theatre style. There is also the harbor room, a semi permanent structure which can hold up to 200 delegates banquet style. Other options include the stable, a number of syndicate rooms, or the terrace of the main building which offers unique water’s edge location.
    
If you’re after sea views, the 46-bedroom cliff-top St Brides Spa Hotel has launched six new luxury-styled apartments to the corporate market. Each apartment has two bedrooms, a lounge, contemporary kitchen area and limestone bathrooms.
    
It has also opened its fourth conference room that can accommodate 20 delegates boardroom style. This is in addition to St Brides’ three existing sea view suites: the Cliff Room which can host 100 delegates theatre style; the Harbour Room which can host 60 theatre style and the Boardroom, which can host 40 delegates theatre-style

SPORTING VENUES
The £6.5m Eirias Park is north Wales’s latest sporting venture, due to be completed in mid September 2011.  Located in Colwyn Bay, it will offer delegates the chance to combine meetings with team building, outdoor events space and corporate hospitality.
    
The venue will be available for exclusive hire, and will comprise a 3,000 seat sports stadium with nine boxes, an indoor events and training centre including indoor rugby pitch, a boating lake and an outdoor event space similar in size to a standard Olympic athletics track.
    
In addition, the venue will be adding a dedicated conference facility which will include 11 individual meeting rooms and an indoor space which can hold up to 3,000 delegates. In-house catering will be provided and all rooms will have state-of the-art facilities and wi-fi access.
    
The site is also able to host outdoor sporting and music events, with a stadium capacity of 6,000 and an outdoor capacity of 35,000.
    
The Quay Hotel and Spa, Deganwy, located on the north Wales coast on the edge of the Conwy Estuary, has just unveiled its newly refurbished conference and meeting rooms.
    
Its meeting facilities have been moved from the ground floor to the first floor creating space for 140 extra delegates.
    
The largest of its conference rooms, the Castle Suite, can hold a maximum of 240 delegates theatre style and can also be partitioned into two rooms. The Tegid and Vyrnwy suites can hold 80 and 60 delegates theatre style respectively. The venue also offers the option of a number of breakout rooms.
    
Over-looking the Welsh hills, the venue has 74 accommodation rooms. All rooms have broadband access and interactive TVs and are finished to contemporary, luxury standard. It has also recently refurbished its restaurant.
    
Nant Gwrtheyrn is a refurbished Victorian village located in a 250 acre site that offers conference organisers the chance to hold their events in a range of meeting places. The village is located in a private valley overlooking its own beach.
    
The recent investment has provided new conference facilities in a newly refurbished building for up to 350 delegates theatre style and 150 banquet style with the option of creating multi-room meetings.
    
Accommodation is available for 80 delegates which is located in the refurbished Victorian quarry cottages within the village site and the newly refurbished Plas Education centre.

IT’S CLOSER THAN YOU THINK
Accessibility is a key consideration when conference organisers decide where to host their venue.
 
Cardiff International Airport is 12 miles from the city centre and there are flights nationally to Edinburgh, Belfast, Glasgow and Newcastle and internationally to Amsterdam, Munich, Geneva, and Paris, Toulouse, Palma, Murcia and Sofia. This is in addition to the major international connections that are available via Amsterdam.
    
North Wales is well served by Manchester Airport bringing in the transatlantic market of Washington and Chicago, while Mid Wales is easily accessible from Birmingham Airport.
London is just two hours away from Cardiff by train and three hours by road, while five services operate across the Irish Sea, connecting Wales to Ireland

Incentive ideas
•    Private tour of the Millennium Stadium www.millenniumstadium.com
•    Behind-the-scenes look at the Welsh National Opera, Wales Millennium Centre www.wmc.org.uk
•    Ghost tours at Tredegar House in Newport  www.newport.gov.uk
•    Dine in style on the Ffestiniog Steam Railway www.festrail.co.uk
•    Tour of old mining works by former miners at Big Pit Mining Museum www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/bigpit/
•    Quack pack involves just one man and his dog and a herd of sheep www.quackpack.co.uk
•    Delegates watch, listen and then have a go at herding up the sheep by using just four commands www.ewe-phoria.co.uk   
•    Team spirit will be galvanized with a Dryad Bushcraft team building experience on the stunning Gower peninsula. The day begins with a shipwreck situation! www.dryadbushcraft.co.uk  
•    Coasteering is a wild combination of scrambling, climbing, traversing, cliff jumping and swimming that was first developed in Pembrokeshire in the 80s

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Contact Jane Landstrom
Tel: 029 2047 5359
buisnessevents@visitwales.com
www.businessevents.visitwales.com