‘The role of thought leader suits us’

The Gouden Giraffe Event Awards were recently presented live again. According to visitors, the award show was an unforgettable Oscar-worthy experience, in part thanks to the unique entourage at the TheaterHangaar in Katwijk. Postillion Hotels CEO Erik-Jan Ginjaar was also in attendance. “It was a great evening. The timeline film was particularly impressive. What an unbelievably beautiful transformation the event industry has gone through.”

During the Gouden Giraffe Event Awards ceremony on Monday, April 3, a film timeline of the event world’s journey over the past 40 years was shown. “That was nice to see because so much has changed! I recognised a lot of it”, says Ginjaar. “As a hotel chain, we’ve gone through this transformation as well. We started providing halls, chairs and catering, and now look at us: Postillion Hotels has grown into a committed party that helps clients think about all aspects of an event, from goal to follow-up.

We’ve evolved from a facility provider to a creative organisational partner and beyond. The Event Design Lab in-house at Postillion Hotel & Convention Centre Den Haag is a good example of this. The same goes for the surprising events, NXTMICE and NXTMICE * Re-Invent, that we held during the health crisis. We showed guts and proved that collaborating pays off.

Since 2010, we’ve gone from an underdog in the conference and event industry to the thought leader we are today. It’s a role that suits us and that we fulfil with passion.”

Event Design Lab

Conferences are about content. But according to Ginjaar, that doesn’t mean that the content always has to be conveyed in the same dull way. “On the contrary. There are countless inventive and creative ways to convey information so that it stays with participants more easily. That’s what the Event Design Lab is about: designing the perfect business event”, Ginjaar explains.

The Event Design Lab is a joint initiative of The Hague Convention Bureau, Event Design Collective and Postillion Hotels.

“Postillion Hotels wants to be a MICE industry forerunner, which means we sometimes have to stick our heads above the parapet and dare to experiment. Our goal is to help move the business event industry forward. The Event Design Lab certainly allows us to contribute to this”, Ginjaar adds.

The Event Design Collective is a worldwide organisation dedicated to designing impactful events. “The method they use for this is called the Event Canvas”, explains Ginjaar. “The event is seen as a blank canvas that can be filled with fantasy and creativity to become a unique, living artwork; an event that positively impacts the participants as well as all parties involved.

In the Event Design Lab, the Event Design Collective provides training to organisers. During the workshops, trainees learn all about organising effective events in the broadest sense of the word.”

Keep moving

The Event Design Lab has only been up and running for a year and has made huge strides in a short time. “The event industry is changing before our very eyes, and that’s good news. That’s how it should be. As the Dutch saying goes, ‘Standing still is moving backwards’, and that certainly applies to our industry. We have to keep moving.

The Event Design Lab runs very efficiently, and there is a huge demand. We greatly applaud that. In fact, we’ve decided to let the Event Design Collective train a number of colleagues, starting with Thijs Peters, our Sales & Marketing Director. In doing so, we want to better align ourselves with what event organisers will demand from a location in 2023”, explains Ginjaar. According to Ginjaar, the time that event organisers chose a venue purely based on location or as a logistics partner is over. “It’s also about the knowledge, service, experience, and total picture that we have to offer.

A good example is the large international conference that we are holding in April in Rotterdam. Every year, this organiser expects more. For example, the organiser asked our AV partner to help design the event because the former believes that the AV show plays an important role in achieving the conference’s goals.

I’d like to go a step further: every part of a conference contributes to achieving goals. However, for that to happen, everything has to be coordinated down to the smallest detail. Good collaboration is essential. We’re also intensively involved in all preparations for this conference. That’s fantastic and smart, because it makes a conference better.”

Conference wishes

Ginjaar also saw this development reflected at the Gouden Giraffes Event Awards. “The winners were more advanced than we were. It was great fun and very educational to see all these fantastic cases.

Unfortunately, we didn’t win a Gouden Giraffe, but that didn’t spoil the fun. We entered with NXTMICE * Re-Invent in the category Relatie Events & Community Events. We had a fantastic evening, and we’re full of inspiration to fulfil all our clients’ conference and event wishes.”