This Month we get to know better The Eastside Rooms
What was your motivation to join ICCA?
Association business is hugely important to us as a venue at The Eastside Rooms, the venue was built in a way that it lends itself to Association meetings and events and being part of ICCA is a significant milestone that we wanted to achieve as a venue. The Eastside Rooms is a purpose built state-of-the-art venue that has been setting the benchmark for event space in the region and being an ICCA member firmly cements The Eastside Rooms as a serious contender within the meetings and events industry to deliver events on a global scale.
Tell us your story. How did The Eastside Rooms get started?
The Eastside Rooms was designed because there was evidently a need for a large events space within the city centre. Our largest room the Affinity Suite can accommodate 1,200 delegates and the venue is designed in a way that the 23 meeting rooms can then facilitate all of those delegates across multiple break out spaces, making the venue totally versatile to host large-scale conferences and events. The Venue is built in The Eastside of the city of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, hence our name and the area is known in the city as the Knowledge Quarter as we are surrounded by the cities Universities. The venue was designed to drive new business into the City Centre and is attached to the Aloft Birmingham Eastside hotel, making it the perfect venue to host multiple day conferences and events. The venue will is also located just a few hundred yards from what will be the new Curzon Street Station on the soon to be completed HS2 Rail Network. Curzon Street Station will be one of the world’s most environmentally friendly stations this linked with Grand Central Station and Moor Street Station both being within walking distance of the venue and the hotel being closely linked to the motorway network and Birmingham International airport being just 9 miles away, makes the venue one of the most easily accessible venues within the United Kingdom.
What sets The Eastside Rooms apart?
The Eastside Rooms has always taken a relationship first approach, which has set us apart from our competitors. Even though the Venue opened during the COVID-19 pandemic, in the middle of Lockdown 3 within the United Kingdom, the venue has gone on to be a great success and this is due to the fact that we always put relationships with our clients and event organisers at the heart of everything we do, their success is our success so we ensure that we have a good understanding of every event that takes place in our venue and what is of paramount importance to the client to ensure their event is a great success and we carry this ethos with us throughout which has set us up for great success.
What is your favourite success story from your organisation?
The Eastside Rooms was purpose-built taking 5 years in total to construct. The venue is located within the knowledge quarter of the city of Birmingham and was designed to be a global events space. The venue was due to open in the middle of the COVID-19 Pandemic, having to delay our opening twice, we eventually opened the venue in the middle of lockdown 3 in the UK, during what was probably the most difficult trading conditions imaginable, however due to our relationships first approach, the venue has been a great success. We have welcomed conferences and events from all sectors and have attracted international business too. If we could have written a wish list of all the different types of events that we would have liked to have seen taken place within our first couple of years of trading, we have absolutely attracted those types of events but we have also seen multiple events go on to repeat at the venue, which is a testament to our incredible team.
What can we expect to see from The Eastside Rooms in the future?
Now travel restrictions have eased considerably we expect to attract more and more international business into the venue and we now firmly expect to cement our venue as a true contender in the global events industry.
Which trends do you see in the Association Meetings?
Confidence seems to be coming back and we are now seeing more normal booking patterns starting to emerge again, which is great to see. Associations are booking for years in advance again and booking multiple years at a time.
What is an industry challenge your organisation is facing currently?
The challenge that we are facing as a venue, is that there is still a long line of pent up demand for live events to take place, however lead times have been short, so date availability has been an issue, with us not physically being able to accommodate some events.