HeadBox wins CN's Venue Finding Agency of The Year Award: An interview with Ryan Grieve

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Hot off the back of becoming CN's award-winning venue-finding agency, we sat down with Head of Meetings & Events, Ryan Grieve, to find out what we're doing to stand out, what the future of venue-finding looks like and how it feels to put 'award-winning' in your email signature.

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Hi Ryan, fantastic news on the award – how does it feel to win ?

Hi, thanks for having me. Honestly, it feels great. The M&E Team work so hard every single day to ensure our customers have the best-in-class performance. Being recognised for it by CN reaffirms that they are delivering industry-leading service. We all know how great they are, now everyone else does as well. 

What about HeadBox's venue sourcing in particular makes it stand out? 

On top of having a bright, enthusiastic, and driven M&E team, I think it's our software integration that allows us to deliver peak service swiftly. Events HQ has allowed us to service more briefs, more efficiently than ever before. In some instances we have been able to turn around confirmed events within hours, not days, saving our team time to harness relationships with our customers, ensuring their experience is top-notch and the venues proposed are a perfect fit for the brief. 

What are the biggest pitfalls you face in sourcing a quality venue?

Availability! Our customers have great taste and that means sourcing venues that are often booked up fast and far in advance. Luckily we've developed strong processes with our customers that allow them to be on top of their events programmes well in advance where possible. 

Where do you see the future of venue sourcing heading?

Two fundamental shifts are coming in the meetings & events sector. Firstly, technology has been disrupting the industry for a while and AI is only accelerating that change. F2F meetings and events aren't going away, so bringing brilliant people and spaces together is as important as ever, which is a good thing for us here at HeadBox as that's our mission! However, agencies will need to keep innovating, using AI to speed up the evolution of their services, making them better and more efficient than ever before. 

Luckily that's what we're all about at HeadBox and our product and tech team are already working on the next iteration of our venue-finding tools. Watch this space... 

The second area is sustainability. Soon it won't be enough to only compare price and service, bookers will also want to see the carbon footprint of their different proposals so they can include sustainability within their decision-making process. We launched HeadBox Zero in February which does exactly this, we can't wait to speak to our clients about how this will transform their booking process. We know the pressure they are under to hit their net zero targets, and we want to be part of the solution. 

What's next for the HeadBox M&E team? 

I would love to say we gave everyone the week off to soak in the win but we are right back to booking our customers into top venues around the world. As our business grows, so does our client base, and so does our team. We are looking forward to welcoming a couple of new HeadBoxers this year and maybe winning a few more awards! 

Was there anything else you wanted to add 

Next time we’ll remember to invite the CEO.

Seriously though, a big shout-out to the entire Business Squad: This award obviously doesn't happen without the M&E Team, but it also wouldn't happen without Product & Tech giving us the tools to be so good at our jobs, without the clients trusting us every day thanks to the work put in by CS and New Biz, Event Managing delivering class events, without marketing keeping our customers engaged (and writing one heck of an entry to CN!), or finance, managing the millions of pounds in event spend that filters through HeadBox. 

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Thanks Ryan and congratulations!