Business Festival draws to a close after outstanding fortnight with even more businesses involved
The 2018 Leicester Business Festival concluded this afternoon (Friday 9 November), following two packed weeks filled with more than 100 seminars, workshops, expos, tours, networking, showcases, roundtables, discussions, speed networking, talks, demonstrations and more.
Numbers are yet to be finalised but initial indications show that around 7,250 people registered to attend the Business Festival events with around 20 per cent of these coming from outside the area – showing that business goes beyond boundaries and the Festival and the events are continuing to be recognised more widely and are a draw.
The feedback reinforces this, with 89 per cent of businesses rating the events they attended as good to excellent and 87 per cent saying that the Festival had a positive effect on their business.
More businesses are continuing to get involved and new attendees and event organisers are up by 16 per cent of. Furthermore, 47 per cent said the Business Festival was the first business event they had been to in the past six months.
Prof Dana BrownProfessor Dana Brown, Principal, Leicester Castle Business School and Pro Vice-Chancellor/Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law said, “The Leicester Business Festival is a great demonstration of the region’s assets on a local, national and global scale and Leicester Castle Business School has been delighted to once again be at the forefront of this.
“The Business Festival is also great platform to exponentially increase business engagement – something we have definitely seen particularly through our events this year, which have been phenomenally successful. This certainly helps to place De Montfort University as a world-leading university for business, research and innovation.”
Speaking at the closing event, Scott Charlish, from Brewin Dolphin said, “Leicester and Leicestershire really know their way around the Business Festival now as it’s a firm fixture in the annual business calendar. It is fantastic to see that new businesses are getting involved and engagement is increasing.
“But we must not rest on our laurels as there’s so much more that can be done. We really want the LBF to become the ‘region’s annual economic showcase’ – a place to demonstrate and announce future plans and developments.
“We would like to expand the Festival with internationally-placed events to attract more people from outside of the area – including overseas visitors. We also need more businesses in the county to become involved because 81 per cent of events this year, were in the city.
“Additionally, we will make sure that we are keeping up with advancing technology. This year we introduced an app and moving forwards, we will seek to increase our online and interactive presence as not everything needs to be ‘face to face’. Leicester should be accessible by the world from anywhere - and so the Festival should be too.”
Alister de Ternant, managing director of Associate Events, the agency managing the festival programme said, “We are still collecting figures, but so far, it has proven to be an outstanding Business Festival.
“There have almost been too many highlights and ‘stand out’ events to mention, but the ‘Event of the Year’ goes to Spottydog communications. Not only has their marketing and engagement been excellent, attending many events themselves, but their event, ‘Snap Spot free corporate headshots’ completely sold out and they continued their hard work by increasing capacity to allow more people to attend. We are delighted to acknowledge this great practice.
“Finally, on behalf of Scott Knowles and all the LBF board, I would like to thank all our sponsors and partners listed below, in particular our headline partner, Leicester Castle Business School – without whom the Festival w
ould not exist. I am already looking forward to another year working with LCBS and naturally, we are keen to hear from any other organisations that are interested in getting involved.”
