8
Leeds & Hull
ike Hull, Leeds has
undergone major changes
over the last decade and as
a result the city has become
one of the UK’s major conference
and meetings destinations. Major
industries take the city seriously and
event organisers are always looking
for innovative ways to create unique
event experiences.
Testament to this was the recent
launch of a new platform, aimed to
help conference and event
organisers find unique venues in the
city.
Launched by Unique Venues of
Leeds, the online platform aims to
provide event planners from all over
the UK the chance to discover
alternative, unusual and unique
venues for conferences, exhibitions,
parties and events.
Users can select alternative
venues using different selection
criteria, ranging from the venue
name, the type of event, the number
of attendees, venue location and the
style of venue.
The platform is the result of a
collaboration of six Leeds-based
venues, which describe themselves
as “alternative and unique”. They
include Horizon, Northern Ballet,
Leeds College of Music, The Studio,
Duke Studios and Shine.
A recent British Meetings and
Events Industry survey ranked Leeds
as the fourth most popular
conferencing city in the UK. Business
visitors adding to a tourism industry
that contributes over £200m to the
local economy
“The unique venues are an
important part of our venue portfolio
here in the city of Leeds, with each of
them allowing us to offer very
individual conference experiences
bespoke to organisers’ wants and
needs,” says Claire Heap, head of
Conference Leeds. “It’s excellent to
see these venues collaborating to
form the Unique Venues of Leeds
Leeds is a city in which innovation comes as second nature
and working in partnership for the
good of the city’s conferencing
proposition. It is exciting
developments such as these which
are part of the reason that we are
continuing to climb in the BMEIS
rankings, with Leeds now being the
fourth most popular conferencing
destination in the UK.”
Mathew Jayne, director at Unique
Venues explains more about it the
thinking behind it: “It has always
been the ambition to grow Unique
Venue. To build a strong and
recognisable brand; maintain our
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