ADDED VALUE | 29
photo
Sara Appelgren
“ Art is also an important add-on for us”
model. Therefore, in ten years our goal is also to reach 2,000 hotel rooms all under the one roof.” The ‘all under one roof’ business approach is considered a key USP of SECC, one that will help to further bolster its core business of meetings and events but not detract from it by a potential perception of an imbalance of entertainment facilities, especially given their city centre setting. “Our core business is meetings in different ways and that's what everything revolves around, so we would like to add to the meetings ‘the total experience’ – that's our business model and we are very confident about the core business, which is the foundation for everything. The flows that the meetings give us offer the possibility to add entertainment and not the other way around.” “Culture is therefore of course very important for us and we work hard to add culture in different ways to our total package, as well as sports and entertainment in the city, so I would say that we have a good cooperation that is actually one of the secrets of our success,” adds Carin Kindbom. “Art is also an important add-on for us to give the total experience new dimensions; we want to be
professional and give the customers different spaces to be in, so that sitting in one lounge area will be completely different to the next one they sit in. We also have a gallery that is a pop-up rotating different art and sculpture, but that does not compete with the art galleries in the city.” Guiding both the management of such a multi-faceted facility and the oversight of its expansion plans, as well as ensuring the optimum balance of uses is struck within the venue for continued prosperity, is a robust organisational structure that nurtures the conditions for success to continue to breed success towards SECC's overall goal, which is to become Europe's most attractive venue in the not too distant future. “SECC has from the outset been a financially independent foundation and the mission has been the same since the start: promote industry and cooperate with industry in the different unique sectors we have here,” says Carin Kindbom. “We therefore act like any professional company all the time – we are driven to have good earnings and to have a strong cash flow, but as a foundation we never distribute any profits and we can reinvest everything we earn for our
2017 No. 20 MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL