Why Parade?

Explore our video library where Anna and Andrew answer some frequently asked questions in their own words.

• Why did you set up Parade?

  Anna: We set up Parade because we saw a real need for a business that specialises in Event Concierge. During our previous lives working in events, in travel and in concierge, we saw that many agencies focused on other parts of the overall event experience, but very few specifically focus on the hospitality guest journey, which is what we do. So we saw a need for a business and we felt that it really truly aligned with our passion and our expertise as a team.

  Andrew: We set up Parade because we have a passion for delivering Event Concierge projects. Anna and I both love being front and centre, ensuring that the project is delivered to perfection and that the guests have everything they need at every step of their journey.

  Anna: Another reason we set up Parade is because as founders, we wanted to get back to managing projects ourselves, which is our true passion. We've both been in the events industry for a long time and we love being hands on, working with clients in the detail of projects. So one of our core principles of Parade is that as founders, we're able to manage projects ourselves, supported by a fantastic team.

• What is Event Concierge?

  Andrew: We often get asked what is Event Concierge and we see our role as really blending the world of events and the world of concierge. The role of the concierge is to offer their members a frictionless life, and that's exactly what we do for the guests of our clients when they come for a brand event. We ensure that every step of their journey is effortless for them and that they arrive to the event in the best possible frame of mind. As an Event Concierge business, we look after everything between the time the guests arrive in the city until the time they leave. This includes airport meet and greet, on ground transfers, restaurants, bars, nightlife, bookings, spa, hair and makeup reservations and creating bespoke experiences for them to enjoy outside of the main event.

  Anna: We think Event Concierge is a really great way of articulating what we do. The role of a concierge business is to deliver a frictionless life for their members, taking care of their every need, planning everything in advance to make sure everything is delivered seamlessly. We take this same approach and deliver it to an event setting for our clients and their guests in the same way a concierge company does for their members. We take care of our guests every need from the moment they arrive in a city to the moment they leave again. We generally look after; Airport Meet & Greet and arrival experience, all of guest ground transfers during the event, their hotel ensuring a really great check in process in a very smooth stay, Bespoke Experiences designed around clients passion points, hair and makeup, gifting, restaurants, bar reservations and essentially providing a team there to take care of every guest need when they're on site.

  As an Event Concierge agency, we're often asked to come in to support clients with a key brand moments throughout the year. That could be a fashion show, it could be a high jewellery collection, it could be a conference for senior delegates or stakeholders. But our role is often to look after the most valuable audience for that event, taking care of their every need, ensuring they get to the event in the best possible frame of mind, and ultimately giving our clients security that they know their guests are really well taken care of and they're going to arrive to that event feeling relaxed, feeling happy and ready to engage in the best way.Description text goes here

• What is the difference between an Event Concierge, travel and event production agency?

  Anna: Parade is an Event Concierge agency and as an Event Concierge agency we sit at the intersection between concierge, events and travel. Our background as a team is in all of these disciplines and we take the most relevant parts of all of those services and bring them together to deliver Event Concierge whereby we look after our guests every need. We tend to often only be bought in for clients most valuable audiences and we're not just for luxury brands, we're for any business that wants to take really great care of their audience and look after them around an event. The service that we provide ensures that we give great care and attention to each client individually and ensure they have the best possible experience.

  Andrew: Parades background is in 360 event production. We realised there was a gap around the guest logistics, so we set up Parade as an Event Concierge business specifically to look after those elements so that the production agency don't have to. We look after the on-ground logistics, we look after hotel reservations, ensuring that the guests get to the main event in the best possible frame of mind.

  From the moment guests arrive in a city to the moment they leave, we look after their every need, from airport meet and greet to on ground logistics, reservations at bars, restaurants or for nightlife and bookings for spa, hair and makeup or any other requirements that they might have. We design Bespoke Experiences to help get them in the mood for the main event and we deliver them to that event in the best possible frame of mind.

• How are you able to work in Paris as well as you're able to work in Los Angeles?

  Andrew: We take great pride in our approach of global expertise, local knowledge. Anna and I have an amazing global network that we've built up over the years and we're able to work internationally because of that network. We generally travel with a core team, but we have people in lots of different places who are able to help us to deliver the quality of event that our clients have come to expect from us. Before we take on any project, we make sure that we have the right local connections to ensure that we're negotiating in the right way for our clients, that we have the right access in that particular place, and that we're going to be able to deliver the project in exactly the right way.

  Anna: We often get asked if we only work in London or we only work in Paris, and if we're able to work in new cities all around the world. And the answer is absolutely yes. The way that we do that is firstly by having really robust operational practises that mean we approach every event in the same way, wherever we are. And those are practises that our team know really, really well, so are easily able to translate wherever we are in the world. It's really important on any event that some conversations happen in local language, that negotiations can happen in local currency, and ultimately that we're able to open the same doors in any city, anywhere in the world.

  We've spent many years as a team building up a trusted network of suppliers, local agencies and partners who support us with all of our events. We're really fortunate as an industry that we're so well supported by amazing freelancers and we take great pride in looking after those people really, really well.

  Ultimately, as Parade, we want to be somewhere that everyone wants to work. The way that we make sure that that's the case is by looking after our team too, by making sure that they're really well supported, that they're well briefed, that they have enough time to do their job properly and they have all the tools that they need to, to be able to do that successfully. Andrew and I particularly see our role as Founders of the company is to make sure that our team are happy so that we're able to deliver the best work for our clients.

• You are a small agency - how do you manage to look after hundreds of guests and give them all the same level of service?

  Anna: We take on projects of many different shapes and sizes, whether that be for a handful of guests or many hundreds of guests, and we're able to deliver the same service regardless of the size of the project. Even though we're a small core team, we have an amazing network of professionals that we have worked with for many, many years who we bring on to support us in various roles across these projects. Whether that be our guest managers who are the frontline of our projects, working on a small group of client itineraries ensuring that everyone is delivered to perfection, or our logistics team, or our hosting team.

  Andrew: We'd be nothing without our team and we take great pride in looking after them. We love to create a happy working environment and to ensure that everyone's really well supported.

• Why do you do consultancy work?

  Andrew: While the main focus of Parade is Event Concierge, we often get asked to take on consultancy projects and we love doing these because it gives us an opportunity to think about things that we wouldn't otherwise have thought about, engage with our network in ways that we wouldn't ordinarily, and do something that's interesting and fun between big projects. Anna and I have both worked in private members clubs, in hotels, restaurants and hospitality outlets. We've worked as catering managers, we've worked for event businesses, so we understand the luxury world from lots of different angles and we love sharing that knowledge with our clients through the consultancy projects that we work on.

  Anna: Parade delivers Event Concierge and Bespoke Experiences projects and we also work on consultancy projects for our clients. We've worked in the luxury industry as a team for many, many years in various aspects from agency side to hospitality brands, hotels, private members, clubs and importantly we've also worked with ultra high net worth clients directly through private projects. So we really understand this audience. We like to use that knowledge and flex our brains in different ways to benefit clients, guest experience strategies, to help them to shape programmes to engage those clients and ultimately to help them to deliver a better guest experience, which is something that at the core of Parade, is our real passion.

• What sort of training do you deliver?

  Andrew: Parade also offers training. The way we usually deliver this is through the form of workshops. We found that the best way to engage with teams is through a collaborative session where they're able to give their thoughts and ideas in an environment that is facilitated by us. We love to work with brands to help them get closer to their clients through building emotional connections. Every project starts with a brand immersion where we really get to understand our client, their needs and the way their business works. From there, we go into a development phase where we put together a structure that's going to really answer the challenge and ensure that at the end of the consultancy project we don't just submit a report, but we offer a solution that can be really put into practise on every event concierge project before we go on site, we offer extensive training to our team to be sure that they know how to deliver a great guest experience to our clients.

  Anna: So when we're not on event concierge projects, we also love to deliver this training to other businesses who also want to make sure that their teams, their frontline staff, are able to deliver a fantastic guest experience. Our training often takes the form of workshops whereby we facilitate conversations between stakeholders in a business, whether they be very senior or the most junior. Inspiring them to think about how they can deliver a better experience to their guests - how they can seek out those moments of connection, how they can help create an impact in each guest interaction and ultimately deliver a service that is above and beyond that of their competitors.

• Do you only offer full end-to-end Event Concierge?

  Anna: While we love taking care of the full end to end event concierge service, we're also really happy to take on smaller elements of a project. Whether that be providing a hosting team to look after the most important guests on an event, or organising just the guest logistics and managing traffic outside of a venue, making sure all guests get to and from an event really smoothly. It's a great way of building trust with clients and ultimately we bring the same level of passion and service to any project, large or small.

• What is a Bespoke Experience?

  Anna: As part of Event Concierge projects, we often create bespoke experiences for clients. These are experiences designed for small groups of individuals based around their passion points, so things that they enjoy that they wouldn't be able to get access to without the brand. We create these experiences as an opportunity for the brand to build a moment of emotional connection with their guests in a setting that isn't a retail or an event setting.

  These experiences give guests an opportunity for learning, connection, insights, insider access that they'd only be able to get through the brand, and ultimately something to brag about. It's a reason for them to keep coming back to the brand outside of the transaction because they're able to offer them a deeper level of connection.