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DeSouza Associates are an established Venue Finding Agency with a solid reputation built over almost 24 years! Our core team has over 80 years’ experience of working in or with hotels and venues. Yes, this does rather age some of us (!!) but we like to think we can share this knowledge and expertise and add extensive value to our clients.

We have maintained very strong and respectful relationships with many venue contacts. As we all know, it’s such a small world and people pop up in all sorts of places! So even if people move from one venue to another or one hotel group to another, we know each other and due to our positive working relationship we will always try our very best to get the best for our clients in terms of rates, function space offered, minimum numbers etc.

As we are an independent, privately owned venue finding agency and not tied to any specific venue chains this can only be positive for our clients. We will select the venue that we believe will match our clients budget and brief.

As well as keeping up to date with refurbishments to existing venues ( and name changes of which there seems to be many!) We are also very active in maintaining our product knowledge and keeping up-to-date with new hotel openings as well as other unique venues. We go out and regularly visit venues, attend venue familiarisation visits and also join clients on site inspections.

Business, in some aspects, has become more informal and over recent years we have noticed more of a trend for our London clients booking their corporate events in bar-type venues (rather than your traditional corporate venues) We are now working with an increasing number of such venues plus those that offer something a little different such as shuffleboard, karaoke, ping pong, darts, bowling, crazy golf to name a few.

Learn a little more about our expert venue finding team at DeSouza Associates….

Lida DeSouza

My personal background began in the pharmaceutical industry and I’m still involved in finding venues specifically for medical meetings both in the UK and internationally. We obviously have to be mindful of industry regulations (The ABPI Code of Practice) for external medical meetings, involving customers.

Much of our venue finding business has come from referrals and we truly do value our client relationships and try and get to know our clients well, their likes and dislikes and a little bit about them outside of work too, as this helps the working relationship. As people buy people, this is imperative and lasting relationships need to be forged which inevitably results in clients taking our contact details with them as they move from one job to another.

Kate McSweeny

I love the Hospitality industry! I started my working life in the operational side of Hotels which I loved for many years and then moved to an agency which meant I still kept the hospitality link.
I draw on my hotel experience when booking venues for our clients corporate events which helps me to provide the right information & ideal venue for our clients. I put 100% into every enquiry I work on – whether large or smallOften the work is challenging but there is great satisfaction when the bookings convert & the client is delighted with the venue we have booked for them. I enjoy researching for those more unusual venues and tricky requests that we can receive.

We have a great team here who have one key goal – to give our clients the very best service so that they return time and time again – which they do!

Catherine Harding

Having worked in the hospitality industry for over 20 years, I have a wealth of experience and knowledge of the hotel industry. I have gained my experience working on both the operational side in hotels and restaurants, and venue finding within an agency environment.
Understanding clients requirements and budgets is key in sourcing the correct venue for a company event. I have built up this knowledge over the years and enjoy the satisfaction of booking new and exciting venues. I thrive on working to timescales and love the challenge of each event brief whether small or large.
I enjoy working within an experienced team, venue finding for our clients different event requests from; conferences, training, team building, meetings, Christmas or Summer parties. We attend industry events, visit venues during work or personal time and accompany clients on-site inspections to venues to build on our relationships with both clients and suppliers.

Laura Warner

There is nothing repetitive about being a Venue Search Coordinator, every day is different. One minute you can be working on a Private Dinner enquiry for 8 people, the next could be a conference for 1000, this gives us the opportunity to interact with venues of all styles, shapes and sizes. Because of this, we have to keep up to date with new openings and changes to properties; we welcome hotel groups and venues into our offices to update us on their offering and we also try to actively visit properties as often as we can. We visit a venue where we are given a tour of the conference spaces and bedrooms, we then enjoy Dinner in one of the restaurants or private dining spaces (it’s a tough job trying all this yummy food I promise).

I also am known as the ‘FAM Trip Queen’ as I often attend UK and International familiarisation trips where, along with a group of other agents, a hotel group will host a trip to some of their properties and we will experience the food, service and activities they offer over a couple of days. I have visited some amazing venues in exciting countries and use this experience to recommend options to my clients, pictures are great but there’s nothing like going to see a venue in person.