Marketing agency Patch launches Virtually London Live

Venues may be temporarily closed, but the majority of the industry hasn’t stopped working.

Data from venues and buyers is signalling that despite the sudden slowdown, coupled with postponements and cancellations, they are still receiving enquiries for later in the year and even receiving bookings.

But while the industry carries on, we’re all still confined to our homes other than for food, medicine or exercise. This puts site visits out of the question, but they are an important step in the venue buying process and will play a part in making sure the industry returns to its full glory. After all, would you risk choosing an event space you hadn’t seen first?

Aiming to find a solution for buyers, the event, leisure and hospitality marketing agency Patch started talking to its network of venue clients and buyers to find out what they were looking for. Jackson Clark, Managing Director of Patch said: “What I’m hearing from buyers and venues is that without events taking place, they have more time than ever for training and research. The industry’s sentiment over the last few weeks has been very much about sticking together and helping each other during these tough times. There’s no cost for venues or buyers to attend Virtually London Live as it’s designed in the spirit of the industry to provide a lifeline for both venues and agents.”

Hosted on Zoom, the Virtual Fam Trip of London (named “Virtually Live London”) will give those venue buyers working from home the chance to see several London venues, discover the surrounding neighbourhoods and get familiar with their transport links.

Patch will take the crowd of buyers on the virtual tube, down virtual streets, until they arrive at a venue’s virtual door. Then it’s over to the venue to present, using their own 3D tours to walk participants through their venue room by room.

So far there are 15 venues confirmed, including; Congress Centre, Central Hall Westminster, the Barbican, the HAC, 10 – 11 Carlton House Terrace, The RSA, Old Royal Naval College and Prince Philip House. Confirmed buyers include Hire Space, Canvas Events and Trinity Event Solutions who in addition to their own team will be inviting their agent partners who use their Edge platform.

Co-founder of Hire Space Edward Poland said “We’re still placing bookings for later in the year through Hire Space Professional so the need for our Venue Experts to keep learning about new venues hasn’t gone away. We’re really excited to be a part of this and hope it’s something that will bring the whole industry together.”

CEO of Trinity Event Holdings Ltd, Jacqui Kavanagh said “It’s a great initiative and will enable our Agents to continue expanding their venue knowledge at a time when they otherwise couldn’t. Every Trinity agent needs to visit 100 venues per year so this will contribute to that continuous knowledge building that is essential to us as an agency”. 

Virtually Live London takes place at 11:00 on both Tuesday 21^st and Wednesday 22^nd April 2020 and will last for approximately one hour and a half. If you’d like to register as a buyer or venue get in touch with Patch on [email protected]