Karen obviously joined us straight out of school…!
Our amazing Venue Finding Manager, Karen, has just celebrated her 25th work anniversary. Karen started in Event Management originally, but soon moved into Venue Finding where she found her true passion for the industry.
We asked Karen for a few of her favourite projects during her time with us;
What has been your favourite venue find?
We wouldn’t be doing this job if we didn’t love what we do, there are just so many enquiries that I have dealt with that have been so rewarding and enjoyable to work on – we do so much in the UK that when we do get enquiries for anything in Europe of further afield, it just feels a little different and a bit more exciting, investigating new locations and places.
Las Vegas as a destination has been one of my favourites, it’s an either love it or hate it location and I absolutely love it – the conference spaces are just so much bigger than most and there is always just such a buzz! Of course, if we had more enquiries for the Maldives I would certainly be putting my hand up first and volunteering to go and site visit 😉
What has been your most challenging?
There have been a fair amount over the last 25 years and almost impossible to pick the most challenging, but that is what we are here for and it might be challenging for some but we love doing this.
We organised a large event in Brighton for over 500+ delegates and on one of the nights they wanted to do a dine-around. I mean if you are going to do this, Brighton is the perfect place! They were looking to split the delegates into 15 small groups and we were tasked to find 15 different restaurants / unusual venues to host these dinners. It was actually a lot of fun, looking into small independent restaurants to unusual venues like the Sealife Centre and many more – everyone had a blast and it was very rewarding as there were a lot of logistics involved moving 500 delegates around the city!
What is your favourite thing about our industry?
I don’t think I would still be here 25 years later if I didn’t love everything about this industry – once you are in it, you are here for life – every day is different and that is what keeps us going, you can be working on a dinner in London for 20 to a conference for 500 in the Midlands and the next thing you know, you are working on the other side of the world in Australia finding unusual venues for dinners. We get to see and stay in so many amazing places, why wouldn’t you love this industry!
