‘Web Marketing for Restaurants’ is the title of the very first in a series of Small Business Seminars – launched today by the Hotel & Catering International Management Association (HCIMA), the internationally recognised body for professionals in the hospitality, leisure and tourism industry – to provide advice and guidance on the essential elements required in setting-up and running a small hospitality enterprise. The ‘Web Marketing for Restaurants’ Seminar will be held on Tuesday, 27 September 2005, at the stylish and contemporary 300-seat Bankside EC2 Restaurant at 1, Angel Court, Throgmorton Street in the City of London (nearest tube: Bank). Breakfast refreshments will be served from 9am – prior to the 9.30am start of the seminar, which is scheduled to end at 11.15am.

Speakers at the event will be: Alison Sawyer, Business Development Manager of Livebookings – one of the UK’s major providers of internet restaurant reservations technology, and Chris Wood, Managing Director of toptable.co.uk – Europe’s largest restaurant table-booking service. They will be addressing delegates on ‘Technology and the Use of Websites’, and ‘Marketing and Promoting On-line Bookings’ respectively. Completing the line-up will be highly successful restaurateur and host for the event – Kelvin Macdonald MHCIMA, Managing Director of London-based Bankside Restaurants, who will be describing the benefits of using restaurant reservations technology and booking services, as well as giving a practical demonstration as to how on-line and real-2time booking services work. The seminar will conclude with a question-and-answer session.

This event will be free-of-charge to HCIMA members. For non-Association members, the price will be £35 plus VAT. Full details are available on the dedicated HCIMA Small Business Seminar website: where on-line bookings can also be made. For telephone bookings, please contact: Lindsay Watson, HCIMA Marketing and Communications Secretary, on the Association’s Event Hotline: +44 (0) 20 8661 4948.

The ‘HCIMA Small Business Seminars’, which will run from September 2005 to March 2007, will comprise a series of events backed-up with general guideline material, produced in collaboration with industry experts, in each of the subject areas under scrutiny. Future seminar topics will, amongst many others, include: ‘Setting up in Business’; ‘Current Legislation’; ‘Marketing Your Business’; and ‘Finance’. To keep abreast of details of the latest seminar topics, dates and venues, please visit the regularly up-dated HCIMA Small Business Seminar website on: .

Commenting on today’s HCIMA Small Business Seminar launch, Petra Clayton AHCIMA, HCIMA Director of Marketing and Communications, said: “Setting up a small hotel and catering business has become an appealing proposition for an ever increasing number of people – many of whom are totally new to the hospitality industry, and new to business, and are, as such, in need of help with gaining specific knowledge and skills for their chosen sectors. In 2003 alone, according to the Small Business Service, over 12,000 hotels, restaurants and catering companies were newly registered for VAT in the UK, indicating the vast number of hospitality business start-ups taking place across the nation. Since more than 99% of VAT registered operations employ fewer than 50 people, this statistic is also an excellent indicator as to the size of the small hospitality business population. Indeed, the UK hospitality industry is dominated by Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs), which constitute over two-thirds of the profession. Given such data, it is more vital than ever that standards within the UK hospitality industry are in no way compromised due to lack of professional support for newcomers to the industry. With this in mind, the HCIMA has launched the ‘HCIMA Small Business Seminars’.”

Why was ‘Web Marketing for Restaurants’ chosen as the topic for the first seminar? “Statistics reveal that whilst restaurants are the most popular sector for business-start-ups as illustrated by the 10,500 newly registered for VAT in 2003, they are also the most prone to closure – with 7,800 VAT de-registrations taking place in the same year,” explained Petra Clayton. “It is, therefore, appropriate that the first HCIMA Small Business Seminar will be aimed at the UK restaurant sector, examining ‘Web Marketing’.”

Petra Clayton
Director of Marketing and Communications
+44 20 8661 4906
Institute of Hospitality

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