Major International Conference Hubs
London — Brilliant Venues, Difficult Get-ins and a City That Is Part of My Life
London conference venues have been part of my working life for decades, from historic hotels with difficult get-ins to modern purpose-built event spaces across the capital.
I lived in Clapham in South London as a boy and young teenager. My son now lives in London too, so the city has remained part of my life across several generations.
And what an extraordinary city it is.
I also worked in an enormous variety of London venues over the years, from grand historic hotels and purpose-built conference properties to modern venues such as Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
London has some fantastic event spaces. The problem, particularly with older hotels, is often getting the equipment into them.
More Than a Conference City
London Has Always Been Part of My Life
My relationship with London started long before I worked in the conference and events industry.
I lived in Clapham as a boy and young teenager, and later returned to London to live in Islington when I was in my twenties and playing guitar in bands.
Years later, conference work regularly brought me back into the city, often carrying equipment into hotels and venues that I had known simply as London landmarks before they became places of work.
My son now lives there too, which means London continues to be part of the family story as well as my professional one.
A Venue That Stayed With Me
The Cumberland Hotel
The Cumberland was one of the London hotels I particularly enjoyed working at and eventually became important enough to me that I wrote a separate article about it.
Like many central London hotels, it combined a strong location with the ability to host significant corporate events.
Repeatedly returning to the same venue also changes the working experience. You learn the rooms, the access, the practical limitations and the little details that never appear in a hotel brochure.
Those details are often what determine whether a conference installation is straightforward or unnecessarily difficult.
Built for Large Events
Hilton London Metropole
The Hilton London Metropole represents a very different type of London venue.
Located on Edgware Road, it is a large hotel with substantial conference and event facilities, designed to accommodate the scale of international meetings that regularly come to London.
Purpose-built conference facilities usually make life easier for the production team because the movement of delegates, equipment and technical crews has been considered as part of the building.
That contrasts sharply with some of London’s older hotels, where beautiful historic architecture can create considerable problems behind the scenes.
Nurse of the Year Awards — 2001
The Savoy
The Savoy is undoubtedly a magnificent London hotel, but working in historic luxury properties often came with rules and restrictions that made technical production more complicated.
I project-managed the Nurse of the Year Awards there in 2001.
One of the restrictions was that we could not simply use gaffer tape to secure cables to the floor in the way we might at many other venues.
Our normal lighting bars also would not fit the room, and the hotel had its own lighting bars that we had to use and pay for.
From a venue’s point of view, those rules are understandable. Historic interiors need protecting. From the production team’s point of view, however, they mean another layer of planning and additional cost.
Historic Venue Rule
Never assume that the equipment and installation methods you use elsewhere will be permitted inside a historic London hotel.
Ask about floor protection, cable fixing, rigging, lighting positions and approved equipment before the production specification is finalised.
Beautiful Room, Difficult Get-in
One Whitehall Place
One Whitehall Place is another perfect example of the challenge created when a historic building becomes a modern event venue.
The conference areas are excellent.
The get-in was not.
That was something we encountered repeatedly in older London hotels and historic buildings. They were designed long before anybody imagined rolling flightcases, large loudspeakers, projection systems, lighting equipment and racks of audiovisual technology through the building.
Once the equipment finally reached the room, you could have a fantastic event. The problem was getting it there in the first place.
The London Venue Problem
Wonderful Victorian Hotels Were Not Designed for AV Equipment
This became one of the recurring themes of working in London.
Many of the city’s finest hotels occupy buildings designed for another age. They were created around grand entrances, staircases, restaurants, bedrooms and beautiful public rooms rather than modern conference production.
For delegates, that history can be part of the attraction.
For the production crew arriving with road trunks, loudspeakers, screens, projectors and control equipment, it can be a very different experience.
Service lifts can be small. Corridors can be narrow. Loading bays may barely exist. Equipment may need to travel through complicated back-of-house routes before finally reaching the meeting room.
In London, the quality of the conference room and the quality of the get-in were often two completely different things.
Another Interesting Get-in
Park Plaza Victoria London
Park Plaza Victoria was another London venue with a very good conference area once the equipment was actually inside.
The memorable part was getting it there.
Our equipment had to travel in a car lift up to the conference area.
It is exactly the sort of detail that makes a site visit so valuable. Looking at photographs of the ballroom tells you almost nothing about how your technical equipment will reach it.
I did enjoy working there, though, partly because of the journey home afterwards.
After the Conference Day
The Walk Back Through London
One of the things I particularly enjoyed about events at Park Plaza Victoria was travelling through London rather than driving.
I would take the train to Liverpool Street and, after the event, make my way back through the city.
The South Bank was always a wonderful part of that journey.
Walking beside the Thames and across areas around the Millennium Bridge gave me time to leave the conference behind before getting on the train home.
It is another example of why location matters. A venue is not only the room in which the conference takes place. The city around it becomes part of the working experience too.
The Modern London Venue
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium
Then there are venues that show just how far London’s event infrastructure has moved beyond the traditional hotel ballroom.
I worked at the Digital Accountancy Show at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, and what a venue it is.
Modern stadiums increasingly operate as major conference and event destinations as well as sports grounds, and Tottenham demonstrates what becomes possible when a building has been designed around modern infrastructure.
The scale is enormous, but it is a very different type of scale from trying to adapt a Victorian hotel to twenty-first-century event production.
London can offer both extremes: beautiful historic venues full of character and vast modern buildings designed for contemporary crowds, technology and logistics.
What Decades of London Events Taught Me
In London, Always Inspect the Get-in
London has an extraordinary collection of conference and event venues, but I learned never to judge them only by the meeting room.
The ballroom may be magnificent. The stage may fit perfectly. The delegate facilities may be excellent.
But how does the equipment reach the room?
Is there a loading bay? How large is the goods lift? Can your road trunks fit inside it? Are there steps? Can cables be fixed to the floor? Are there restrictions on rigging or lighting? Does the venue insist that you use its own equipment?
Those questions can have as much effect on the production budget and schedule as the size of the room itself.
That was particularly true in London, where some of the most impressive venues were designed long before conferences involved the amount of technology they do today.
My City
There Is Still Nowhere Quite Like London
I have worked in remarkable cities all over Europe, but London will always occupy a different place in my memories.
It is where I spent part of my childhood, where I returned as a young musician, where I worked on countless events and where my family connection continues today.
From the Savoy and Cumberland to modern venues such as Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London has given me some fascinating working experiences.
The get-ins were not always easy.
But then London has never been a simple city — and that is probably part of what makes it so extraordinary.
Practical Lessons from Real Events
Planning a Conference in London or Europe?
The European Conference Survival Guide brings together practical lessons from decades of international conference production, including venue selection, technical access, audiovisual systems, suppliers, logistics and the realities of getting equipment into some of Europe’s most challenging venues.