When it comes to venues for hosting your conference or meetings, your choices are limited only by your imagination! We can all think of a number of nearby hotels and conference facilities that would be able to handle seminars and training courses for your business, but the truth is that for regular conference-goers, these venues can get a little repetitive from time to time. No matter; you can always go for a more unique venue, such as a sporting ground ? why not take your team to the races as a reward for their hard work? ? or a country house specially modified to serve as a conference venue.



There's another class of location that may not immediately spring to mind, but which can make an interesting change of scenery, and that's academic venues. Most universities now offer conference facilities to outside organizations, and these can be of the highest quality and, in the case of some of our older academic institutions, offer a delightful and scenic backdrop to an important conference or product launch.

But it's not limited to universities; many distinguished academic bodies offer their premises for seminars and conventions, and you can also book meetings or PR events at museums and other similar venues for that extra little something different. Below we take a look at some of the different types of venues available for your conferences, and in particular the sorts of academic venues that you might be tempted to choose.

The first type of venue to consider is the standard meeting venue. This will range from relatively small meeting rooms for a handful of attendees, all the way up to major conference and exhibition centres capable of hosting events for over a thousand people in comfort. Clearly, which end of the scale you are going for will depend in large part on the size of your proposed corporate event. It's important to ensure that there's plenty of space, not just in terms of seats in the conference hall, but also adequate facilities for registration, social events and breaks, cloakroom facilities and so on. These may seem like obvious points but it may surprise you just how often people hold conventions and large PR events in venues which clearly aren't up to the task. If you're planning to hold a large event, or one with unusual or specialist requirements, make sure that your proposed venue is fully able to meet your needs.

The second most popular type of venues for hosting conferences and seminars are hotels. Indeed, these offer several advantages over a conference centre. For obvious reasons, hotels are normally better set up to deliver catering to guests than conference centres and meeting rooms for whom banqueting and catering may be little more than add-ons. In the case of better hotels this can equate to impressive banqueting facilities that add real class to your corporate event and can help to make it memorable.

Perhaps more important than that, hotels allow you to accommodate your attendees on-site, which can be extremely convenient, particularly if your conference or meetings are going to take place over more than one day. Holding your events at the same location as the accommodation you've provided for delegates allows them to use their rooms during the day for rest periods and breaks, changing in the evening and so forth. It also opens up the possibility of securing discounted room packages from the venue who are hosting your conference ? the more delegates you are expecting at your event, you will find, the keener the hotel are to put them up for the night!

Do not, though, rule out academic venues as a possible location for your corporate events and conferences. These types of venues have a number of advantages. By their nature they will often be set up for large numbers; lecture theatres will have audiovisual facilities already set up and ready to use, and catering is usually nearby and designed to hold large numbers in relative comfort. Depending on your choice of academic venue, this may enable you to feed your delegates in a cost-effective manner if you so choose, so it's something to bear in mind if budget is a consideration.

Academic venues aren't restricted to university campuses, though these can provide stunning backdrops to a major conference or convention. You will also find that academic bodies and learned societies rent out meeting rooms and conference spaces to outside companies ? often old and architecturally imposing premises in major cities. And bear in mind, too, the possibility of using venues like museums ? these can be equally impressive, and provide a different type of location for delegates who are used to the endless round of hotels and conference centres that normally host such events. Academic venues make an interesting choice for hosting conferences and corporate events; widen your horizons a little and your meetings will reap the benefits.