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Wednesday 11 October 2023

With autumn conferences and January kick-off meetings just around the corner, we take a look at the top five conference venues London and the South East have to offer, covering everything from brand new spaces, to sustainability and hybrid ready options.

• Best new venue: Convene London

Convene is officially expanding globally, opening in London at 22 Bishopsgate. Their expertise in bringing hospitality to the working world can be delivered across 50,000 square feet of flexible meeting and workspace. Convene’s world-class new conference and event venue offers everything you need to exceed the same old. The artfully designed spaces come equipped with built-in technology and full-time production, IT, and hospitality staff to ensure a flawless experience for your guests, and a painless one for you. From executive summits to training workshops, networking events to round tables, they provide everything your event needs under one roof—space, furniture, technology, catering, and staffing.

• Best for large airy space: Magazine 

Magazine London boasts 3,205 sq m of versatile interior space for up to 3,000 people and can extend to accommodate a further 7,000 people across the venue’s extensive outdoor showground. Located on Greenwich Peninsula, the venue offers unbroken views of the River Thames and Canary Wharf skyline. Both Mezzanines in the venue are accessible via two black steel staircases in Space 1 and can be utilised as VIP areas or as overflow for higher guest numbers; they can also operate as break-out, seminar and exhibition space. The venue is defined by simple architectural form, offering clean and functional spaces that provide a means for large-scale creative expression. Located in the heart of Greenwich Peninsula, with breathtaking views of Canary Wharf, the venue is easily accessible by the Underground (within a three minute walk), road and river.

• Best for out of town: Fairmont Windsor Park

Located on the edge of historic Windsor Great Park and within an hour of London, the hotel is surrounded by 40 acres of open green space featuring a tranquil lake. Formerly known as Savill Court. the hotel has been designed to reflect the sites heritage while offering modern elegance. The Arora Ballroom accommodates up to 700 delegates in a Theatre style layout with a multitude of breakout rooms available, making the venue a perfect residential conference venue away from the hustle and bustle, in close proximity to London Heathrow Airport. Their 15 elegantly designed meeting and event rooms will stimulate thought, discussion and mirrors their ethos and commitment throughout the hotel towards wellness.

• Best for hybrid: IET: Savoy Place

Centrally located in London, IET London: Savoy Place offers state-of-the-art AV facilities, innovative catering and spectacular views over the River Thames. With 18 versatile event spaces provide capacity from 20-626 guests, perfect for conferences, presentations, meetings, exhibitions and award ceremonies. All spaces are geared up to support technology-driven events, with advanced digital fibre-optic and ethernet embedded throughout the building. Savoy Place is well placed to meet any tech requirements; including being able to stream content from any room to any other room in the building, live broadcasts, worldwide streaming and much more. With a 500MB bandwidth, Savoy Place has no problem supporting multiple devices simultaneously to the Wi-Fi during an event, offering up to 2GB capacity to delegates. No two meetings are identical, but the most successful hybrid events are those that can combine the physical and ‘virtual’ location seamlessly. From an hour-long consultation to a day-long hybrid conference, IET Savoy Place have a tailored package to meet client needs.

 

• Best for sustainable: Barbican

The AIM Gold accredited Barbican has 19 flexible and creative spaces that can be hired for a wide range of events, from conferences, AGMs and product launches to meetings, receptions, and weddings. With its superb technical resources, intelligent design and excellent acoustics, Barbican Hall is justifiably acknowledged as one of the country's finest auditoriums. Its breadth of facilities and size, seating from 500 to 1943 people, make the Hall the ultimate venue for larger conferences. Awarded ‘Most Sustainable Venue’ at the London Summer Events Show in 2019, Barbican have also signed the City of London’s Plastic Free City pledge at a platinum level and are supporting Clean Air in the City of London through the Clean City Air Business Engagement Programme.

The Barbican opens out onto a lakeside area that provides a habitat for a variety of flora and fauna, an oasis in the heart of the city. In order to reduce the use of water for watering plants they have planted drought resistant plants around the Centre along with plants that promote better air quality as well as offering a home to an on-site bee colony and have recently installed two bug hotels to encourage pollinating insects.

If you need help finding the perfect conference venue in London to hire, then our free venue finding experts are on hand to create the perfect shortlist based on you specific budget and requirements, Just drop us an email, call us on 0207 870 9305 of fill in the enquiry form to the right of this page and we will get started on your free London venue search.