News Stories: Woodside

Top of the League - twice

19 Jan 2007

The 2006 results are in, and Woodside is the top Midlands conference venue, according to BDRC's Venue Verdict'. Sundial Group as a whole, meanwhile, was the top performing UK venue Group.

Nearly 3,000 online interviews produced the 2006 result in ‘Venue Verdict', BDRC's continuous research programme, where competing conference centres and hotel chains are assessed by their customers immediately following the end of their event.  BDRC is the leading supplier of marketing research insight to the meetings sector, with a team of research professionals dedicated to this important part of the hospitality industry.  Their surveys and programmes feature the top UK Conference Centre groups, as well as internationally renowned hotel chains.  To finish top of the illustrious list of companies is a superb achievement.

Our Northamptonshire venue, Highgate House, provided stiff competition to its sister property by finishing in second place in the Midlands, but Woodside won through in the end.

"I'm always torn when our venues are competing with each other", said Tim Chudley, Sundial Group's Managing Director, "because I have the challenge of congratulating the winner without undermining the achievement of the runner-up.  I'm not complaining though."

"It's very pleasing that we consistently perform well in awards and programmes where the customer is the judge, rather than a panel of industry experts", added Tim.  "At the end of the day, you live or die by the service you provide.  I remain grateful to our teams for providing such excellent service, and of course to the customers who take the time to submit their votes and their feedback."

Sundial Group also finished top of the Meetings Benchmark Tracker in Q4 2006.  The Benchmark Tracker uses mystery callers to assess the performance of the Sales team against pre-determined enquiry handling standards.  With an average score of 87.5%, Sundial Group was nearly 2% ahead of the nearest competitor, a significant 10% above the industry average and a massive 30% ahead of the bottom-placed group.