Wolverhampton banqueting and events hall with big award wins and eye of the future

It's a venue which has become a must-see venue for international events, conferences, banquets, gala nights and to make your first dance at a wedding.

Grand Station in Wolverhampton has become a trusted place for events such as Miss England, as well as a centre for corporate events from companies such as Bidfood, Specsavers, Severn Trent, Porsche and the NHS.

Based on the site of the former Wolverhampton Low Level station, the venue on Sun Street has been built up around the site of the station, with a large multi-purpose hall and adjacent car park available for use.

It has also enjoyed a lot of award success over the last year, recently winning ‘Corporate Event Venue of the Year’ at the Central England Prestige Awards and also winning British Asian Awards Wedding Venue of the Year 2023 and Weddings & Honeymoons Magazine - Venue of Excellence 2024, as well as being a finalist in the 2024 Wedding Service Awards - Wedding Venue of the Year.

Director of sales and development Danny Thompson has been a part of the venue since it opened in 2013 and said the building had built up its corporate reputation since the end of 2023.

He said: "It means a lot to us and in the last 12 months, we've done some really nice and big corporate events, such as the Miss England finals and unveiling the new Porsche and we've hosted numerous award ceremonies.

"It's nice to recognised by those events at Grand Station and we do everything from conferences to exhibitions to meeting to seminars, black tie events and charity balls, such as one we hosted for Promise Dreams recently, which raised more than £75,000, which is a massive amount.

"We have plenty of weddings here as well and I think the bridge and groom love and have a great time, but the corporate events are nice because the clients could potentially come back to us, which I think helped towards us winning that award."

Mr Thompson said the scale of the building had grown from being just a wedding venue and while there were still regular weddings there of all cultures on Fridays and at weekends, the corporate events had helped to fill the dead days of midweek.

It has meant more than 300 events each year at a venue which Mr Thompson said had also leant itself to the regeneration of the area around it, while also saying that the city could do more to accommodate the people coming to these events.

He said: "We've had more than 7,000 people attend the venue in the last year and the benefits from that are not just what it brings to Grand Station, but also to the city as these people need hotels to stay in.

"They also go into the restaurants in the city centre and spend money there and in the pubs and other parts of the city centre and a lot of our clients are international or from across the country, so they travel in and they will want to stay the night.

"One of my frustrations is that there aren't enough hotel rooms in the area and we need to get the infrastructure in place to ensure we can house all these people as it does help the economy in Wolverhampton."

Mr Thompson said the need to evolve was what drove the venue on, saying that sticking to what worked 10 years ago wouldn't work now.

He said: "It's very important that we continue to evolve as if we get stuck thinking that we're the same venue as 10 years ago, then we'll go completely wrong.

"At the moment in the events industry, there's a lot of venues closing down and businesses which are struggling, whereas one of the reasons we keep growing year on year is because of being able to evolve and change and amend products as we go along."

In terms of the future, Mr Thompson said that the venue was already getting booked up for events, not just in 2025, but as far ahead as 2028, and said that the venue was in a great place, with the team behind it being the driving force for it.

He said: "It's a massive team at Grand Station as we have office staff, event planners, event managers, as well as the kitchen staff, the chefs, security and toilet attendants and it's unusual to have 60 to 70 staff working on each event.

"It's a big thing, particularly if you have up to 700 people at an event, so there's a lot of people behind that to make it work and that's what the staff do.

"We have a great team and it's great to see so many people working in the hospitality industry."