Summer City Adventure

The period from 12th July to the end of August 2010 is of particular concern to business in the city centre; specifically to hotels, leisure and retail businesses. The point of the Made it Easy meeting this morning at The Midland was to move from the discussions of 2009 about being a joined up leisure city to an action orientation in 2010. Manchester the resort! The summer is an ideal candidate, how do we know it's ideal? 43 people showed up for the meeting!

After bacon butties, coffee and Mike Magrane, GM at The Midland set out the goal of creating a credible summer proposition in Manchester, this year and every year.

Howard Raynor then followed up with a presentation about how making Manchester more family friendly this summer was a straightforward matter of co-ordinating the fantastic recources currently available in to smart itineraries and illustrated his argument with what's on in the city, what assets there are for the public. You can see this presentation by going to the World Class Service web site.

The floor was then opened up for discussion.

Key features arising fro the discussion were:

1. The concept is essentially worth more effort. Manchester could do better if we were more joined up in communicating whats on.

2. The venues and hotels need to agree the package and discounting that they can can offer.

3. Marketing Manchester will provide a e:mail entry point for people to send event information to.

4. Marketing Manchester and CityCO will co-ordinate the marketing activity to the consumer and liaise with Late Rooms.

5. Family friendly is definitely the agreed way forward. Activity led rather than destination led was also emphasised during the meeting.

6. World Class Service, through their current Manchester Concierge site, and this blog will keep people informed on progress and on the activity in the city this summer. This process will take the form of links and portals as well as overviews of key information and smaller organisations which may not be part of bigger consortia.

World Class may convert one its sites in to a business to business information point to help provide lead information for planning as well as day to day information. If we do this it will end up being paid for service due to the scale of maintenance and content management.

7. Mike Magrane will be running various related meetings with Visit Manchester and the MHA Sales Forum to try and iron out difficulties in product development.

8. Mike will also be having conversations about identity and key messages.

9. It was agreed we should meet again in a month's time to see how much progress has been made.

PLEASE BOOKMARK THIS BLOG, CLICK FOR RSS FEED AND CONTRIBUTE TO THE ARGUMENT

kind regards

Howard

Not-for-profit Wine Course at Harvey Nichols

Following the success of the previous courses at Harvey Nichols, the Second Floor will be hosting a new WSET Intermediate Course.

If you've ever wanted to wow your friends with knowlege of grape varieties, or New vs Old world wines, the this could be the course for you.

This course is ideal for those in the industry who have some knowlegde or wine enthusiasts who wish to acquire in-depth knowledge of wines and want to obtain a recognised wine qualification.

The course will begin on 23 February and will last for 9 weeks, the 10th week will be an exam.

Click for more information and an application form

Valentine's weekend in Manchester: Spoil your loved one

Valentine's Day is this Sunday, 14th February and restaurants across the city are takings bookings for their Valentine's Menu. Harvey Nichol's special menu for the excellent Second Floor Restaurant caught our eye, in particular and here's a suggestion of a way to spend the weekend.

Firstly, tell your loved one they are busy all weekend and book a hotel room in town and get tickets for the following:

Friday: The Bridgewater Hall will be filled with love songs from the musicals on 12th February
Saturday: Dance away Saturday night at South Nightclub where Clint Boon and Mat Horne will be filling the dance floor
Sunday: What better way to start a lazy Sunday than Breakfast at the Cornerhouse and then watch a special screening of Breakfast at Tiffany's?

Indie Clubs feel the love

February 2010 is a good month for Indie clubs in Manchester. South Nightclub is clebrating its 15th birthday and kicks off a year long celebration with Clint Boon and Gavin and Stacey star Mat Horne DJing for their Valentine's special on February 13th.

Clint will be hosting a unique contest: ‘Sid & Nancy’s Cup of Love’ to find the most Rock ‘n’ Roll couple who’ve ever met at South.

To enter the competition, couples need to submit their story about how they found love at South, or have some kind of ‘love connection’ with South. The best ones will get free admission on the night and will have the chance to compete to be chosen by Clint and a live audience, as South’s champion couple. First prize is a night of free champagne plus a luxury hotel break in Manchester. Email your ‘loved-up’ stories to: katesouthclub@googlemail.com

If you can't wait for that, worry not. The legend returns on Friday February 5th as FAC 251 opens at the site of the old offices of Factory Records.

Fantastic Career Map

I would like to throw my hat in the air and shout for the good folk at uksp.co.uk who came up with this stunning career map for the hospitality sector.

http://www.uksp.co.uk/CareerMap.aspx

It makes a complex game a bit more navigable but as someone who moves between the arts, culture and hospitality as a consultant I would have to say there is probably a 3D version of this required. The skills that make people successful in hospitality are exactly the same skills that make them much prized in retail, front desk, front of house operations,in venues and in arts organisations. Hospitality skills are a brilliant start point for an array of careers.

In the end regardless of the investment in ever faster digital solutions the basic building block of any organisation is its people and great people skills transcend technology.

If you are planning your career or changing direction this map is great start point. Well done UKSP.

Britain's most popular science festival is Manchester Science Festival.

Over 100,000 people flocked to the 2009 Manchester Science Festival – making it the most popular event of its type in the UK.

Manchester Science Festival is one of the UK’s newest and freshest science festivals with last year’s event attendance increasing from 65,691 in 2008 to 102,288.

“Science festivals like Manchester's are fantastic at putting science in front of the widest possible audience. They convey the wonder and importance of science and engineering to people at all ages.” Science and Innovation Minister Lord Drayson

Visitors came from the Greater Manchester region, the UK and overseas to enjoy a total of 317 events, exhibitions, school workshops and community projects created by 57 organisations.

Events were held in 48 public, cultural, community, academic, educational, social, indoors and outdoors locations.

In total, 43,112 people attended events, 58,374 visited exhibitions and 802 took part in the schools programme.

The majority of events were free and many were fully booked, including;

• Dr Bunhead's crash test jelly babies - Manchester Central
• The Luck Factor with Richard Wiseman - MOSI
• Nick Arnold : The Horrible Science Show – Zion Arts Centre
• Childhood obesity debate – John Rylands Library
• Geek girl dinner - Sweet Mandarin restaurant
• Human evolution talk by Steve Jones – Bolton Museum
• Blood, vampires and science debate and film – Cornerhouse
• Robot hack day – MadLab

Natalie Ireland, Festival Director, said: “Manchester is a great science city, boasting legendary figures like Rutherford and Turing, so it’s only right that it has a great science festival for everyone to enjoy and participate in.

“We’re absolutely thrilled with the attendance figures and it’s a great credit to everyone involved in the Festival, many of whom gave up hours of their time to help run events.

“Huge thanks must also go to our partner organisations and our funders, whose support allowed us to run a very successful and enjoyable week of events.

“We’re certainly not resting on our laurels and we are already busy planning our programme for Manchester Science Festival 2010, which promises to be bigger and better than ever.

“We’re always keen to get feedback and improve what we offer, and I would encourage anyone with ideas and suggestions for future Festivals to get in touch.”

The 2009 Festival was supported by the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA), MOSI and Siemens.

Manchester Science Festival 2010 will take place from Saturday 23 to Sunday 31 October. Be there.