Carrow Road is set to re-open for Conference, Meetings and Events from Tuesday, October 1.
Head of Conference, Meetings and Events Helen Gooch and Head of Catering Stuart Cox explained how these facilities will be opening safely and what to expect from the venue.
What saftety measures have been put in place?
From October 1 we’ve been given the go ahead to open up for our conference, meetings and events business. We’ve looked at the guidance in great detail and introduced quite a few things with that, which are temperature checks for all of our staff on a daily basis and we’ve also created a health questionnaire for them to complete, which gives us track and trace availability if need be. We’ve also risk assessed all of our venue with the new COVID-19 guidelines and we’ve then drawn up our own safety policy regarding that, so we’re all ready from that point of view to be open from October 1.
What’s available in terms of technology provided?
In the South Stand, particularly where we are today, we’ve got the Top of the City here, alongside 15 executive boxes just down the corridor and Club 101 just on the next floor down. Just as an example, guests could have Top of the City for a conference, but actually have delegates in some of the boxes or Club 101.
The screens we have around the stadium can be linked to the presentation, so no matter what room you were in, you could still see the content and feel joined up, but still have social distancing in mind and being in different spaces, if that works.
Last summer, we spent an awful lot of money on revamping everything we had from an audio-visual point of view, we spent close to about £400,000, really bringing it up to modern day requirements for clients. We’ve also now introduced a live-streaming ability from one of our conference rooms, so you could hold a conference, an AGM or something like that where it can be broadcast live from there and then.
What else can the Executive Boxes be used for?
We have within the stands 17 main meeting spaces and also 41 executive boxes ranging in sizes. Within in the South Stand’s 15 boxes, there’s two double boxes that can open up to hold a maximum capacity of 20. Although lower at a social distance capacity, there is flexibility if you have a small meeting to hold and want some extra space, the double boxes are good for that.
Tell us about the USPs of the venue itself.
We’re lucky to have our renowned Delia’s Canary Catering team on site, where everything is sourced locally if possible and we can adapt and change things as need be for our clients, so we’ve got a real unique selling point.
We can host different companies’ events in different stands, knowing if they want to, they can be the only one in anyone given stand. The great thing is we have lots of different entrances and exits throughout the stadium, lots of washrooms, so wherever you are within the stadium there’ll be a selection of facilities guests can use whilst they are here. It’s really unique in that way that we have got that to help people feel safe and secure when they’re here.