What's Floating Around Cloud 9? 27 February 2017

Welcome to another week and with Spring around the corner, this is really exhibition season for anyone working in Events. It was Awards season last week and now exhibition season, what will be next we wonder?

Last week was the North East Venue Expo in Newcastle, the week before was the BNC Show in London and this coming week see's the start of International Confex at Olympia. Combined with the numerous emails hitting our respective inboxes to attend both the CHS Show in Leeds in April and The Meetings Show in June, and its clear that exhibitions for events, and indeed most industry's are here to stay. 

What is clear though is that visitors don't just want to visit an exhibition, they want to be engulfed by it and use it as a complete opportunity to be engaged.Experiential events are quite the draw these days as attendees look for something unexpected, and with so many events and online experiences competing for our time, audiences to gravitate towards events that are producing amazing experiences. 

So which exhibitions are delivering in terms of education and our increasing demand for entertainment combined? Here at Cloud 9 Towers we love to know so we did some digging!

 

James Cameron’s “Avatar” created a world people were drawn to and an Avatar exhibition, AVATAR: Discover Pandora, has opened in Taiwan where Pandora becomes a “real” place and visitors can interact in a hands-on way to learn more about science and the wonder of Cameron’s 2009 movie world. 

This is not the first exhibition inspired by a film, as you may remember another of Cameron’s blockbusters – Titanic – has also inspired several exhibitions and permanent exhibits across the world. 

The exhibit plans to expand to other cities, before the 2018 release of the first of four Avatar sequels but this is not a one-off exhibition attended only by extreme fans as there is an increase in desire for virtual reality experiences.

Physco fan had the opportunity back in 2015 to attend and stay in the illustrious Bates Motel and the exhibition enabled visitors to step inside Norma and Norman Bates’ world in a truly unique and innovative way.

 

Closer to home and capitalising on the current popularity of escape rooms, Immersive Events have created a Prison Escape experience at Dana Prison in Shrewsbury. 

 

Attendees/prisoners are dressed in prison clothing and locked in cells and it's up to them to get out, navigate the guards, and other prisoners who may report the attempted escape. The first person who who makes it to freedom is declared the winner. Challengers can even decide to spend the night at the prison if they desire to. 

 

So these are exhibitions are not simply about walking round and collecting all of the freebies available (we can spot the freebie hunters a mile off!), they are instead a platform to change visitors to participants.  

Have a great week, enjoy! 

 

What's Floating Around Cloud 9? 24 February 2014

Welcome to another week and we cannot believe how quickly the time is flying by - it doesn't seem two minutes since Christmas!

With the various events we have on the go, and lots of venue visits for client activity, the team are all a little like ships that pass in the night and never more so than last week.

Half of the team were at the BNC Show which is an exciting exhibition based in the heart of the City of London. The Show is designed to bring top event planners together with leading UK and international event suppliers in a refreshingly relaxed environment. 

As an incentive to get visitors along, every guest to the show was offered the choice of a gift which included luxury make-up from MAC, Chanel, Clarins, Clinique and more. 

Or if that was a little bit too girly for them, they had the choice to pick a free bottle of Champagne, restaurant vouchers or luxury products from Jo Malone London.

As well as these amazing registration gifts, they also received a luxury goodie bag from Fortnum & Mason which included luxury Tea Bags, Jam, Biscuits, Chocolate etc. On top of all of this, the team also came back with more business cards, brochures and gifts from exhibitors than they knew what to do with! 

Excluding all of the goodies the team received, they thought it was a truly spectacular event, with interesting, educational seminars and met with some lovely people as well as the cat from Harry Potter!

Meanwhile last week Paula enjoyed the fantastic hospitality of Accor with a Champagne Taster evening at the Sofitel Heathrow Hotel (never one to turn down a free drink!). In addition to lots of bubbly, the event was also a unique meet and greet event for the Sofitel Group as  most of European Hotels all had representatives there. Sofitel remains a real luxury brand within Accor and the service is always excellent with the facililties.

 

For conferences and meetings, it's a really wonderful property and with a walkaway access to Heathrow T5, incredibly useful so if anyone has any international events looming we would recommend it without a doubt.

 

Little touches always make a big different to an event and we couldn't agree more!

 

 

 So the team at Cloud 9 would like to give a huge thank you to the team at BNC, The Brewery, Accor and the Sofitel Heathrow Hotel for a great event and wonderful hospitality!

 

That's all for this week folks, have a great week!