On Thursday the sales team went off to the Yorkshire Conference and Hospitality Show at Savilles near the Royal Armouries. It was the first time in a ages that we’ve been to a corporate exhibition. Our new stand, which had been put together at a rapid rate of knots by the amazing Beck Marriott, was a roaring success. We attracted 15% of the total visitors to the show on the day.

Among the many attractions to our stand were the delicious mulled wine and mince pies, prepared by our fantastic hospitality team. Yes it was a bit early for mince pies but there was method in this madness. We were launching our Christmas party options and working on developing awareness of Harewood as a Christmas party venue.

Here is a short video of the stand. It was videoed using a mobile phone so the quality is fairly low.

On Friday we hosted 20 Conference buyers, from Conference Leeds, to lunch and a show around. A great bunch they were too. Fortunately the sun shone as we showed them our new Pavilion which will hold over a 1000 theatre style when it has been completed. Maggie Mash and Sue Sharpe provided us with an excellent tour of the State Floor and highlighted that the House has always been used for business as well as pleasure.

To end the lunch we asked for a volunteer. We didn’t say what they were volunteering for. But Rachel was very overexcited when we told her it was to feed our penguins.

This is just the start of Harewood’s drive to be the best conference venue in Leeds.

Our new website goes live today. What a relief it has been – three months in the planning and eight months in the building! During this time we’ve been writing, sourcing images and working with colleagues on how it should look, feel and work.

We’ve worked hard to make more of the information about Harewood easier to find. Information is, mostly, now only three clicks from the home page. There are loads more images available for people to look at and get a feel of what Harewood is like before they visit.

We’re also integrating social networking sites directly into the website, with both Flickr and our Blog built directly into the website. This provides a direct feedback route for our customers to tell us what they think and also to put their photos up so the world can see them.

I could blather on about all the technical stuff about search engine optimisation and clever things that our agency, BrandNew, have done with the site, but I won’t. I’ll finish with telling you about My Harewood.

My Harewood is our new section whereby Harewood Cardholders and other visitors can tell us what they would like receive in their email newsletters. By choosing your interests in the preferences section, visitors can filter the events, exhibitions and news they see on their My Harewood home page. This automatically updates as new events, news or exhibitions are added.

We’ve also put some ‘not quite accurate’ information into the Did you know section and will be announcing a competition about this shortly. Come back for more later!

Simon Warner is our artist in residence on the Number 36 Bus between Leeds and Harewood during our exhibition ‘Town and Country’ until 20th September. The residency is in partnership with bus operator Transdev Blazefield and Project Space Leeds (PSL), a contemporary art space in Leeds’ city centre. Follow the progress of Simon’s residency and add your own stories and contributions. Simon’s developing work in text, photography and film can also be viewed in the ‘Waiting Room’ at PSL throughout the partner exhibition there. Look out for announcements on the Blog too about other guided walks Simon will be conducting using scheduled bus services.

Did you know that if you come on the bus to Harewood you can get in for half price on presentation of a valid bus ticket?

The Yorkshire Evening Post has done a lovely write up on our new exhibition and Professor David Hill’s new book.