How Shortflatt Tower took event planning out of the inbox

An exclusive use country house in secluded Northumberland with in-house catering and accommodation for seventy one, where the documents, floor plans, menus and room photographs hosts used to email for now sit in a login of their own.

The challenge

Shortflatt Tower is an exclusive use country house in secluded Northumberland, with in-house catering, accommodation for seventy one and events for up to 160 guests.

Every event involves a great deal of communication between the venue team and the host. Shortflatt Tower describes planning as “time consuming and meticulous”.

“We were finding it hard to keep track of what needed to be done and when, using our old system of dropbox, spreadsheets and paper documents, especially as our business was growing.”

Shortflatt Tower

Three tools, none of which talked to each other, and an inbox doing the work that none of them did.

That is the part that costs the most. Every question a host has arrives as an email, and the answer is a document sitting somewhere the host cannot reach. The team spends its day retrieving things rather than planning events, and the busier the venue gets, the more of the day that takes.

The solution

Shortflatt Tower moved its planning into Hostology and, just as importantly, gave hosts a login of their own.

“I needed a system to help us remind and keep track of our planning process, and the Hostology event management software does this for us brilliantly.”

Shortflatt Tower

The venue side gives the team the reminders and the running order it was missing. The host side is where the inbox problem gets solved.

Everything a host might otherwise ask for is put in front of them: every document, a photograph of every room in the accommodation, floor plans, menu choices and added extras. Hosts can see what has been booked, what it costs and what is still to pay, and leave a note against a room rather than starting an email.

“We upload every document, photo of every room for their accommodation, floor plans, menus choices, added extras, even our social media accounts if they can’t get enough of us.”

Shortflatt Tower

The platform is straightforward enough that the team could take it on without a long changeover, and flexible enough to be reshaped when an event does not fit the usual structure.

The result

The inbox is no longer the planning system.

“We find our inbox is not full of questions anymore as our clients can find everything on Hostology.”

Shortflatt Tower

Hosts stopped asking because they stopped needing to. The questions that used to arrive one at a time, by email, now have an answer already waiting in the host’s own login.

That changes the quality of the relationship as well as the volume of email. Hosts can see their event progressing without having to check in, which gives them confidence rather than anxiety, and it means the contact the venue does have with them is about the event rather than about admin.

It has made the team easier to grow, too. New members take a short amount of training and are then working in the platform immediately, because the process and the detail are both already in it.

And when the venue wants to change how an event is structured, it can. The set-up side is amended rather than worked around, and the Hostology team talks them through anything they are unsure of.