RHS Chelsea Flower Show Drinks Reception

My first event – all me, all mine, mine mine mine!

I am a tad excited, can you tell? Last night I hosted a fabulous event celebrating the Official Hospitality at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show (and for me, celebrating the fact that slowly but surely I have made this event my own within our department). 50 of Prestige’s top Hospitality clients joined the Prestige sales team at the L’Occitane boutique in Covent Garden for an evening of shopping, pampering and (lot’s of) champagne – and I am pleased to say that it was a great success.

Ok, so it is slightly remiss to say it was all me. I must thank the fantastic event team based at Cabinet War Rooms for operating the event, and our Event Manager for the Chelsea Flower Show who oversaw everything on the night; plus my colleagues here at Head Office and our new friends at L’Occitane. Overall, a great team effort.

L’Occitane is a fellow French company, and they will be exhibiting at the show for the first time this year. They are understandably excited and proud to have been selected from the hundreds of applicants who would like to exhibit at the show, and were delighted to have the chance to shout about it. They invited their garden designer, to speak to the guests and he gave a lovely speech about his Provence inspired garden. The RHS Show Director also joined us, and she too addressed our guests about the show and Hospitality.

Of course, it was expected that I would get up there and thank everyone for coming, talk a little about the Hospitality Village, describe what we do at Sodexo and announce the prize-winners. This was not an entirely thrilling prospect to me, (please note my aforementioned fear of public speaking), and during the weeks leading up to it I had been alternating between living in denial and not thinking about it, and waking up in the middle of night having just dreamt I’d lost the ability to speak any sense at all (although some will debate whether I have ever had this ability). In fact, before the guests arrived I tried to persuade David McCallum (Sales Director, The Open) to take the speech from me – threatening tears, tantrums, money – but to no avail: “This is all part of your development Lorraine. You can do it …. Etc etc”. Nor would Anna Fenten (Director of Marketing, Prestige) step in: a simple, “No daaaarling”. Thus the only road open to me was the Dutch one, and wonderfully, it did the trick …. I am very grateful to David for making me do it – it is such a great feeling to challenge yourself and win.

I absolutely love networking, and thoroughly enjoyed speaking with everyone there. I hadn’t intended it to be a ladies-only event, although it did end up being just us girls and this made for a lovely atmosphere. David and Stuart (fellow sales executive) were bitterly disappointed at being the only men amongst 50 women …..

Part of my approach to selling the Hospitality at Chelsea is advocating it as a truly exciting event for women. It is hard to do this without appearing to generalise, however traditionally, it is men who monopolise the hospitality calendar, mostly focussing on their male clients and sticking to the sporty-side of the industry. The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is a popular event which appeals to both men and women – but is a particular favourite with ladies.

Many of my guests on the evening thanked me profusely for putting on an event that they actually enjoyed and were pleased that female business needs were being taken into account. Personally, that is the aspect of the evening that makes me the most happy.