NEC invests over £27m to improve visitor experience

Most of the money has been spent on improving catering facilities, an upgrade for lighting at the site and toilet improvements.

It has converted to more energy efficient LED lighting and spent more than £7m on its 55 toilet blocks.

The NEC occupies a 610-acre site housing 2 million sq ft of exhibition space that handles around 2.1 million visitors each year with more than 500 events ranging from pop concerts to international business conferences.

NEC general manager Linda Ritchie said: “We have focused on improvements that help reinforce why we are the venue of choice for our organisers but that also improves the experience our visitors have with us.

“Last summer we invested £7.35m revamping the catering offering in three halls with the launch of ‘The Edge’ – one restaurant location boasting four deliciously different styles of food – which provided more dining choices but also brought with it more tills to improve the speed of service. This concept is being rolled out into a further four halls this summer – halls 17-20 are in their final stages of transformation and will be ready to serve our customers next week.

“The NEC has 55 toilet blocks and we were aware that we hadn’t invested in improvement works since 2006, so we took the decision to make a £7.45m investment in a rolling refurbishment programme for all the toilets across the venue. This will make them more fit for purpose for our customers into today’s world, but they will be much easier to maintain and far more environmentally friendly too.

"We have then taken the step to change the sodium lighting in all our halls to LED lighting. This £3.1m investment has removed the orange colour lighting that sodium creates to a fresher and brighter daylight white lighting which shows product more naturally. This not only improves visibility and visual appearance within the halls, but has also increased our energy saving from 60% to 85%.”

Other works currently being completed are external lighting improvements around the loading bays of halls and some of our footpaths. To make it easier for our visitors we are improving our car park signage and kiosk branding along with the addition of two new bus stops to help create new bus routes for visitors using our complimentary shuttle buses around the NEC site.

Managing director of the NEC Group Conventions & Exhibitions, Kathryn James, added: “We are aware that for visitors to have a good experience it isn’t just about the show content but the complete customer journey.

"From the moment, they start to plan their visit –which is why we have recently redesigned and restructured our website – to when they arrive with us all the way through to when they leave. We understand the standard of the facilities at every touch point provided by our venue can impact how they feel about the time spent with us.”

In April the NEC won its first international award from UFI, the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry, for for its initiatives improving the customer experience.

Kathryn added: “We had a fantastic 2016 and momentum has continued into 2017. The awards are a true endorsement that we have raised the bar in terms of both customer service and customer experience.

"We are now looking forward to the future and building on our success, pushing ahead with more investment in the overall venue experience. We recognise no business can ever be complacent – so whilst it is great to celebrate success – we are always then moving on to how we can improve further for our customers – existing and new.”