Holiday Inn Northampton West
High Street,Flore Northampton
NN7 4LP
Our Northampton hotel is the perfect place to hold your next business meeting or conference. Plus, after a £2m refurbishment we’re pleased to offer 3 refreshed business spaces for all your meeting needs! We’re located just off the M1, Jct 16 and just 40-minutes from London Luton and Birmingham airports. We also offer a range of lunches to suit your delegates needs. Our Northampton hotel has pulled together a blog to help you get the most out of your next business meeting. Read on to find out more…
Any successful meeting needs to have a purpose, so have a think about what it is you want to achieve by the end of it. Is it an internal brainstorming session with your team? Or are you pitching a start-up to potential investors? Whatever it is, an objective will help you. Having an objective will also help you to set the tone of the meeting, so whether it can be formal or informal. The easiest way to do this is to answer this question in 5 words or less: ‘What exactly are we meeting about?’
31 hours per month are wasted in unproductive meetings. Can your business really afford to lose this many hours which could be spent on projects and other important work? If the answer is no, then make sure everyone who is invited into a meeting are the people needed to make it a success and achieve its initiatives and goals.
Founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos states you should ‘only invite the number of people to a meeting that two pizzas can feed.’ So, sorry to Sue in HR, you’re not needed this time!
Once you know who is coming to the meeting and the objectives that need to be achieved, you can begin to set and share the agenda.
An agenda should include:
Who will be attending as well as their roles and responsibilities for the meeting
Items to be discussed and action needed to achieve the goal
Amount of time to discuss each item, date and time for the meeting
Where the meeting will be located
Any pre-work needed for the meeting such as reading or assignments.
An agenda will help to keep your meeting organised and running on time, but be sure to send it to participants at least 24 hours beforehand. This way they will have time to prepare!
The room in which you hold your meeting is just as important as the meeting itself. For example, do you really think a meeting will be productive if you have 10 participants in a room that only holds 6 people? No, we didn’t think so either! Always take into account whether the room is large enough for the number of people attending, whether it comes equipped with all the ‘props’ you’ll need, whether they have the correct technology such as interactive whiteboards or screens and finally make sure it’s a suitable environment. Do you need lots of natural daylight for a brainstorming session to make sure the creative juices are flowing?!
Our Northampton hotel can cater for up to 50 delegates and we have a wide range of technologies and rooms with natural daylight available.
We live in a modern world and unfortunately, technology plays a big part in this, so it comes as no surprise that many people feel phones are a big distraction in meetings. So why not ask everyone to place their phones in a basket until the end of the meeting, hopefully removing some of the distraction! Surprisingly, office gossip and small talk is the other big distraction in a meeting. Therefore, make sure you know how to calmly move the situation along if office gossip does start. Simple things like asking people what they thought about the last topic discussed is a good way to steer the meeting back in the right direction.
If you’re in a meeting where everybody knows each other then this probably isn’t a necessary task, however, if they don’t know each other then use these easy icebreaking tasks.
Give everyone 15 seconds to introduce themselves, almost like speed dating!
Ditch the boring name tags and instead get people to draw something that best describes them
Play a game! ‘2 truths, 1 lie’ is a great way to get people guessing which statement they believe is a lie and why they think this
Be the host with the most and offer drinks and refreshments. Our Northampton hotel is on hand to help you with this and we offer a range of catering options to suit your budget. Make sure you follow up on the meeting a couple of days later and before your participants leave, make sure everyone knows who needs to do what, by when!
Holiday Inn Northampton West is an affordable hotel just two minutes from Junction 16 of the M1. To check availability, click here or call 0871 942 9033 or email us
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We stopped here on the way back from Silverstone to use the hotel's rapid charger and have a bite to eat.
Really impressed with the reception staff, hotel cleanliness in the lobby and the quality of food.
We enjoyed our brief 40 minute stay here so much we are considering staying here in the future for when we fly in and out of luton - which we do very often!
Can recommend the fish and chips and the lasagne.
Driver Friendly hotel too - serve becks blue behind the bar.
Im a lady on my own travelling from Spain to UK, hotel staff were exceptional I got back late last night so i had to use the carpark at the back and it was dark so the receptionist walked with me to my car shed only been working there a week so thank you so much ,the man on reception was really kind ,polite and helpful ,I would recommend to any ladies travelling alone it feels safe and clean loved it ,I'm also gluten and lactose intolerant and they even had gluten free food brilliant thank you and I will be defiantly be back.
Pleasant and efficient reception. It was a Sunday evening, and the hotel was very quiet with few fellow guests. Our twin room was on the ground floor. There were two comfortable chairs, a workbench, two very small bedside tables, and a wardrobe. The bathroom had a walk in shower. All quite compact.
The bar/restaurant was in the open lobby style. We had a good evening meal there.
Breakfast had a good choice, well maintained by a very cheerful chef. Fried or poached eggs were made to order, which helped keep things fresh.
Very good value for money.
Just an overnight stay for a wedding at nearby Dodmoor Barn. Hotel easy to find of M1, clean and tidy, staff friendly, large rooms well fitted with every thing you need. Breakfast excellent with options for all.
Stayed here for one night. Rooms comfortable and Clean. We were able to check in earlier to get ready without any fuss. Great Breakfast included. Hotel near M1 so very convenient but in a countryside location.
This is one of the nicest Holiday Inn's I've stayed at - can hardly fault it at all!
Special mention to the man who checked us in on Saturday evening, and the man serving in the restaurant that night. Both offered some of the nicest hotel service I've ever known. The receptionist took time to tell us a bit about things in the local area, and helped us make sure we get the best out of our stay. The waiter/bar man made the meal really special. There was a slight delay preparing some of the food, but the way he handled the situation was perfect. The food was all very tasty too - I had the Club Sandwich, and sticky toffee pudding for dessert. All tasted delicious.
The room and the whole hotel is clean, modern and comfortable. Felt very welcoming. The car park is big and free, and there was plenty of spaces available.
So happy I booked a couple of stays here, so am really looking forward to coming back in a few weeks' time. Thanks to all the staff for making it such a great weekend.
Lots of parking spaces neat to hotel and offered FCO. The welcome / meet and greet was good. Nice bar and bar meal offerings. Room clean and in good decorative order. Wifi good and intuitive to connect to. Lots of access to power points in room. Location of hotel good, very useful for an early train ride from Milton Keynes to London. Communal areas in good order, all in all, left refreshed and happy. Easy to find on Google maps. Will visit again.
Went here with a friend for a chill out. Staff were really friendly and helpful. Close to the M1 but lovely and quiet.
Rooms were lovely and clean. Ordered room service and this was brought up on time. Well worth a visit. Close to other towns and not far from Silverstone.