What's Floating Around? 22 April 2014

Adam & Julian from The Studio Venues

Welcome to another (short) week and we hope that every one had a fabulous Easter. We consider ourselves very lucky to be working in such a great industry and as a result, we get all sorts of fantastic invitations to experience the hospitality of great hotels and venues, both in the UK and Internationally.

So, last Thursday, we help an Open Day at Cloud 9 and invited lots of Hotel and Venue representatives to drop in at our Easter Eggstravaganza, as our way of saying thank you. It was also an opportunity to get an update on some of the venues and introduce our newer team members (as well as showing off our new offices!).

Each team member ran a different activity in a different section of our offices and some certainly entered into the spirit of Easter with lots of enthusiasm - including the great guys from The Studio Venues. We feel that Julian is really working the look! 

Paula felt that the ears were not really her thing, and Carol sadly had to miss the day due to a last minute appointment but was there in spirit...and the rest of the team, well its easy to see that they were really up for all aspects of the Easter experience and kicked off with an #Selfie first thing in the morning.

Shannon, Rubina, Becky and Harriet, who is studying Event Management at Leeds Met and is back with us for her third year, all hopped up!

The first port of call for visitors was Carol's Cracking Icing Competition where each of our guests were invited to decorate a Ginger Bread Egg Biscuit and some were more successful than others, its fair to say!

Heather and Jade from the Yew Lodge

in Kegworth took the competition quite seriously!

Katey from Gleneagles with her own Ryder Cup!

Helen with an impressive PUMA Hotels Egg

Luis from Maritim with a Cracking Effort!

Julie from the Raithwaite Estate - Great Branding!

June from Coombe Abbey, if in doubt, sprinkles!

Kevan from Trident - Eggscellent Effort!

Brendan from Millenium Copthorn - Not Giving Up His Day Job!

Great effort from Nikki but Becky's attempt to recreate the Deansgate iconic Hilton, not really going to plan!

Craig's Cracking Effort for the Heart of England

 

Adam trying to curry favour with a Cloud 9 egg!

Julian also trying to cheat!

Fab effort from Alex at Q

 

 After much debate here at Cloud 9 it was a tough call as to who to award the Easter Egg to for this particular challenge and it was really between Luis from Maritim, Alex from Q Hotels and Julie from the Raithwaite Estate. In the end though, we decided that Katey from Gleneagles was the deserving winner for her blatant plug of the Ryder Cup!

After all of that excitement, many of our guests visited Paula in the Pub (well our Pink Office which was kitted out with a little bubbly) and to have a chat without any bunny ears!

As most of our guests were driving, we did have lots of low alcohol stuff on offer and with a drink in hand, it was time to visit Shannon in our meeting room, which we call The Not So Bored Room. Here we had laid out a bit of a spread with Elvis looking on, and a competition, Shannon's Super Sleuth Egg guess.

There were some pretty wild guesses with the lovely Alison from Fairmont St Andrews, guessing 3458 and Becky from the Manchester Deansgate Hilton guessing 2152.

The actual total was 762 and the closest, with a guess of 760 was Adam from the Studio who wins the Egg! His colleague Julian only guessed 246 so what can we say....!

 Harriet's Hot Cross Bun Challenge, was also pretty popular and the clear winner was Craig Cotterill of the Heart of England Confrence Centre, who managed to eat his in just 28.5 seconds. Craig narrowly beat Heather from Best Western who managed 29 seconds, and Kevan Holland from Trident who managed 30.2 seconds. Carla Garman from the Village Hotel was also pretty impressive with a score of 31.1 seconds.

Bringing up the rear however, with 1.22 was Nikki from the Deansgate Manchester Hilton, 1.05 was Adam from The Studio Venues, June from Coombe Abbey with 1.03 seconds and Alex from Q Hotels also with 1.03. Clearly, chaps have bigger mouths and an Easter Egg is on its way to Craig.

Finally once guests had collected their goody bags from Becky, who was guarding the cake tower with her life, it was time to say goodbye with a final stop off at Rubina's Raffle, where each guest was guaranteed to win a prize.

There were smiles all round for those who won bottle shaped prizes - we can't think why ?! - and even those that didn't win a bottle got some rather lovely chocolates.

So all in all another fab day at Cloud 9 Towers - and in addition to placing a rather large booking with a venue, we also got two nice new client RFP's, an update from some fantastic venues, had a giggle and were also lucky enough to receive some lovely gifts from our guests.

A huge thanks to everyone who came, those who had to cancel last minute and those that didn't manage to make it. We love working with you all! Have a great week!