I have been asked to run a 4 day in person training course which I am very happy to do. The course will run 6 times per year mainly in Lincoln which is where the organisation is based. However there is a demand for it to be taken 'on the road' so I am thinking 3 times a year in Lincoln, and then Leeds, London(ish) and Bristol for the others.
First question does Leeds, London, Bristol give a fair covering of the rest of the country - if not where else should I consider and second question does anyone have recommendations for good conference style hotels in those areas which could host a 20 delegate course with accommodation.
and yes it does have to be in person - there is an online version but the organisation are not happy with the results it produces.
Any thoughts welcomed.
Nothing wrong with those locations generally, though you'll know where people are coming from. They've all got reasonable transport links. You could argue that you need sone further north if you have any Scottish delegates, but you're not far off. I'd be in London, not London-ish too, make transport and accommodation easy for everyone. Lincoln is a pain in the backside for most people to get to, so I'd question if you should do more away from there.
In terms of hotels, 20 people with accommodation is standard fair for any reasonable hotel. The low risk option is to book a Crowne Plaza or Hilton that's central. It won't be glamorous but it'll do the job.
England only, or including Scotland, Wales, NI?
The AI says...
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If your objective is to reach the most people with the shortest overall travel times, the problem roughly maps to a population‑weighted k‑median (pick k=4 sites that minimise total travel‑time distance to people). Without running a full optimisation model, we can still get very close by placing your four sites near the largest population concentrations and the main rail/road spines.
What the data says (in brief)
- Population is heavily concentrated in Greater London & the South East, with the North West, West Midlands, and Yorkshire & the Humber next in size. Scotland and Wales together account for ~8.6 m people, with their own dense nodes (Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cardiff/Swansea). [statistico.com], [ons.gov.uk]
- Major inter‑city rail times set typical catchments: London–Manchester ~2h, London–Birmingham ~1h20, London–Edinburgh ~4h15, Glasgow–Manchester ~3h (so clustering sites where these networks intersect improves accessibility). [thetrainline.com]
Recommended 4‑site plan (with Lincoln fixed)
Keep: Lincoln (anchors the East Midlands/East of England; good for Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, South Yorkshire, and parts of East Anglia).
Add these three:
-
London (King’s Cross/Euston area)
- Why here: By far the biggest population hub and the country’s primary rail node—fast links to the Midlands, North, South West, and Scotland. Captures the ~18 m+ in London+South East and is “good enough” for much of the South. [statistico.com], [trustforlo...don.org.uk]
- Rail time benchmarks (fastest): London–Manchester ≈ 2h; London–Birmingham ≈ 1h20; London–Edinburgh ≈ 4h15. [thetrainline.com]
-
Manchester (Piccadilly/City Centre)
- Why here: Dominant for the North West and well‑placed for Leeds/Sheffield (TransPennine, Northern, Avanti corridors), also reasonably reachable from North Wales. Greater Manchester‑Liverpool is one of the densest UK conurbations outside London. [en.wikipedia.org]
- Rail time benchmarks: Manchester–London ≈ 2h; Manchester–Glasgow ≈ 3h. [thetrainline.com]
-
Glasgow (Central/Queen Street area)
- Why here: Best single point for Scotland (captures Glasgow and Edinburgh as a 1‑hour pair), while still inside a long‑but‑workable daytrip window for Cumbria/North East via WCML/ECML links. [thetrainline.com]
Combined with Lincoln, this 4‑node pattern minimises the average travel time across Great Britain’s population by:
- Anchor nodes at London (South & East), Manchester (North West & Yorkshire fringes), Glasgow (Scotland), Lincoln (East Midlands/East)—with reasonable reach into Wales via London/Manchester.
- Coverage aligns with where people live now: London+SE (≈18 m), North West (≈7.4 m), Yorkshire & Humber (≈5.5 m), Scotland (≈5.5 m), East Midlands (≈4.9 m), Wales (≈3.1 m)
It then goes into even more detail.
First question does Leeds, London, Bristol give a fair covering of the rest of the country
Where are clients coming from? For England and most of Wales those locations work well.
Scotland and NI, errr, no.
Of all the odd places to run courses: we found that Reading was a pretty good call with good trains for a lot of south England.
given you already have lincoln (x3), suggest manchester-ish rather than Leeds.
whats it for? are your potential clients going to be overwhelmingly in major cities, or are they the kind of people who are going to be more biased to living and working in suburban or semi rural?
If you are including a significant number of Scots, I'd say Edinburgh, Manchester, Reading.
Eng + Wales only: Manchester, Bath/Bristol, North London
I used to run a few similar events per year in London, but civil service so cheapskate end of the market but of budget is an issue, I always tended to try and use Wyboston Lakes conference centre. Doable from London, reasonable accomodation and good conference facilities. You could probably do your Lincoln ones there too as well.
Well, at least you haven't said Kettering! I used to do some training which someone had looked at a map and decided Kettering was roughly right in the middle, so should be the base of all training. The only thing it had going for it, was that it was equally shit for everyone!
If I was organising training with no specific budget I'd be looking to have it on the west or east coast main line within literal walking distance of the station or simply accept central London is often easier to get to even if further away. Is the venue in Lincoln "free" or are you still paying for a venue there? if its not free Doncaster would probably be more helpful but close enough to "home".
Does it help the training "team" if its always in the same place? If you get to know the venue and arrangements or can negotiate better rates that might be worth considering v's moving it round. If there's no such benefit - then if you know it will be a 2 yr programme move it round 12 different venues which you publish in advance so nobody can complain (they still will). If you are trying accomodate Scots - remember their school holidays are different if that has any bearing on the likely audience - a genius once organised a training session the first week of July in glasgow and was surprised that most of the Scots came the one in Manchester instead!
Finally think about travel times, eg. a 4 day course which starts/finished so people have to spend 6 days is shit!
I'm another one who really dislikes coppy and paste AI answers. The point of these forums is human interaction and knowledge, variance in views and discussion. AI is just web-scraped crap that adds nothing to a debate.
I see "according to AI" as a step below "let me google that for you"
It provides an probably incorrect answer that the original poster has likely already looked at in some way or other before deciding they wanted humans to help!
Speaking of human help... for maximum UK coverage I would look at London, Liverpool and either Edinburgh or Newcastle
London is very easy to get to and navigate for most of the south of England. Reading would also be a good shout - not quite as easy by public transport but more chance of being able to park vehicles for a reasonable rate.
Liverpool mainly because if offers decent ish access to folks in NI
Newcastle or Edinburgh are both on the East Coast Main Line so really would depend where participants would be.
fwiw - I generally am not a fan of AI answers on forums, but that one actually seemed to be at least on the face of it pretty useful. The issue will be that LLMs give very credible sounding answers whilst being notoriously bad as maths - so if determining the ideal location(s) matters you need to check the calculations.
Some is, some isn't. That used a reasoning model that looked at population density and transport links, took into account travel times and came up with a solution. It wasn't a raw pre-trained LLM. I tried it out more as an experiment than anything but quite liked the output.
I could have just posted "based on population density and travel times, the best locations in addition to Lincoln are Glasgow, Manchester and London" but I thought I'd be open on how I got that result.
I'd choose Reading, Maidenhead and London, as they're easy for me to get to. But they'd be crap suggestions overall.
You must have some idea where clients are located?
Rather than Bristol I would go with Cheltenham which is better for Midlands based clients whilst still being ok for those from Wales and the South West. It is on the M5 and not too far from the M50 and M4.
The "crossroads motel" is a good venue and is now operated by Leonardo.
You could bring your bike for some evening blasts around Leckhampton, Cleeve and Cranham. and have an evening out at Deya brewery taproom.
https://www.komoot.com/guide/673901/mtb-trails-around-cheltenham
https://www.deyabrewing.com/collections/deya-brewery-taproom
They seemed have stopped it now but our company used to insist on having their training courses in the Skipton office. Starting at 9am on a Monday...
So... Not that.
If leeds is meant to capture the whole of scotland as "the north" its a bit of a dick move. And adds a day of travelling unless and one night away if you want to start at a sensible time and finish reasonably early.
Newcastle over edinburgh probably a better shout. Edinburgh kind of just flips it by going further away from the people further south.
Starting at 9am on a Monday...100% this - for those who have to travel this matters way more than whether its in Bristol or Birmingham. Another dick move is finishing the last day early but not having made that clear before everyone booked their travel.
Sorry, should have said England and Wales only - different laws in Scotland and NI so a completely different course.
I know Lincoln is a PITA but they have their HQ and a dedicated training centre there so it is non negotiable. Courses will most likely be Tuesday - Friday with a 10am start and 3pm finish on the friday.
So anyone know any decent conference hotels in reading, Bath and Leeds/ Manchester?
So anyone know any decent conference hotels in reading, Bath and Leeds/ Manchester?
Are you the "conference organiser" as well as the trainer? If so - I'd look to make your life as easy as possible by engaging a chain like Hilton who will have properties in all three.
So anyone know any decent conference hotels in reading, Bath and Leeds/ Manchester?
Do you need a hotel?
I used the Town Hall as a room hire - catering was good, room was good, staff were excellent. Cost half what a few of the hotels wanted. Walking distance from train station.
EDIT: We work with teachers, so this was very appropriate to them.
https://www.readingtownhall.co.uk/venue-hire/plan-your-conference-or-meeting
Are you the "conference organiser" as well as the trainer? If so - I'd look to make your life as easy as possible by engaging a chain like Hilton who will have properties in all three.
This. Hilton, Crown Plaza, Copthorne/Millenium, anywhere like that. 20 people in a room is bread and butter to them, they'll be boringly predictable which is no bad thing.
Yes, they are outsourcing their training to us so we have to offer a complete package.
Ex Hospitality sector worker here.
As others have said, 20 people is an easy number for most hotel groups, so you might be able to negotiate a bit of a deal by sticking with one brand such as Hilton, Holiday Inn, Marriott etc and that sorts the meeting space and the accommodation etc.
There are also specialist conference groups with bedrooms where things are generally slightly better setup and capable for conference style events. They have shrunk a bit since I dealt with them, but Devere Venues are a good example of this. Built around the concept of conference/meetings during the week and weddings at the weekend, meals are often a buffet so are 'fast' and people choosing their own food can be vegetarian/gluten free etc without forms/lists/organisation. Often there is something like a games room for informal gatherings in the evening for those staying over.
Centre Parcs have also been targeting this sort of thing for a while with dedicated conference facilities based in a hotel on the site.
Then there are companies that rent space such as Regus who generally only provide the actual meeting space, but the facilities will be good and they are 'everywhere' so finding a hotel nearby should be easy.