Based in Newcastle, the Conference Director worked closely with the University for over two years to ensure its successful delivery. Although the company organises events throughout Australasia, they love running events in Newcastle, where they can contract and work with local professionals and operators in delivering a world class business event which in turn showcases this wonderful city.

 

The conference was held at Newcastle City Hall and using Civic Theatre for the main plenary due to the works being completed on the City Hall site. As Newcastle’s pseudo conference centre, the venue can easily accommodate a 300 pax conference with multiple concurrent sessions and space for a trade exhibition. Bluestar catering ensured the food was suitable for all cultures and the delegates couldn’t stop raving about the food. Working within a construction site, the team at the venue ensured they went above and beyond to service the client and are a real asset to the venue. We can’t wait to see this venue back up and running to its full capacity.

 

Fordtronic Video and Sound were contracted to deliver all of the AV and sound onsite. The team delivers every single time and know the venue like the back of their hand. The team is extremely professional and work directly with the presenters to ensure they have everything ready to go as required. The team can work on or offsite, and truly make delivering a conference of this scale with so many concurrent sessions (5 in total) extremely simple.

 

A number of social functions were held offsite including the welcome reception at Newcastle Museum, the gala dinner at Noah’s on the Beach, a board meeting at Customs House, a restaurant night at multiple sites including Silo, Six Degrees and the Happy Wombat and a closing function at Queens Wharf Hotel for one last local beer. All of the venues assisted in showcasing Newcastle on an international scale.

Newcastle has a range of accommodation options and accommodation blocks were arranged by Abercrombie Management. This allowed the PCO to offer all delegates a number of special rates across the city, with the majority taking up this offer. However, a few of the delegates who had booked accommodation direct or through booking sites such as Expedia, had trouble with the accommodation not being what was represented to them online. In future, we’d suggest really pushing your delegates to recommended accommodation to ensure they enjoy their visit to Newcastle.

 

Abercrombie Management continues to work with the University and the Newcastle Business Events Team to bring business events to Newcastle. They are more than happy to offer free advice or assistance during the early planning stages of your event to help shape its direction. Many people believe they can deliver a business event on their own, but with the assistance of a PCO you will have peace of mind that your event will be delivered to the highest standard and without incident.