The last time we took our members to the stunning University Arms Hotel and Cambridge was in September 2019. You can read all about that trip here.
This time, we held our Fam on a Sunday afternoon, asking members to arrive by 2.00 pm. We intended for our members to spend our afternoon exploring Cambridge and the beautiful University Arms. It’s a property steeped in history and always a go-to for London-based event managers planning retreats, conferences and events in the area. It works for many event types (but we will get to that later).
On arrival at the property, we started the afternoon with a walk through the City (Cambridge became a city in 1951), and it really is THE quintessential English Town. We passed a couple of the colleges Cambridge is synonymous with (there are 31 in total) and loved our walk through the buzzy streets. We even took a tour through the bustling food market, which we were told was there seven days a week. Since our last Fam, the shops and restaurants in the centre of Cambridge have multiplied with everything from new fine dining restaurants to your usual outlets (Five Guys & Taco Bell) that have popped up.
Our endpoint on our walk was the Cambridge Gin Distillery, where we were fortunate to have our very own gin masterclass. We sampled four types of gins, learnt about the history of gin and the distillery itself, and learnt how to drink gin neat! This is such an excellent idea for your delegates; whilst the group size they can take tends to be quite intimate, you could easily have half on a punt and half in a masterclass and then swap them over—such a great option. The distillery also has an on-premise gift shop where you can pre-purchase gifts for your delegates to take with them.
After our gin experience, it was back to the hotel to enjoy a little downtime before our site visit and dinner later that evening.
The rooms at University Arms are special and have 189 luxury rooms and suites across four floors, with views over Parker’s Piece, historic Regent Street, and the hotel’s inner courtyard. They are stunning, and our pictures won’t do them justice. The bathrooms are something else, such a wonderful mix of glamour and comfort.
Next was a quick site visit of the hotel’s meeting and event spaces and then dinner. The property has one main meeting room/event space that can be broken down into three rooms. You can find further details on the ballroom here.
Dinner is always a fantastic focal point of our Fam trips; it’s an opportunity for our members to get to know the hotel and to get to know each other. Conversations centre around everything from career progression to getting to know our hosts better, and we love it. We are proud of the relaxed discussions, relationship-building these Fam trips evoke, and dinner in the hotels on property restaurants; Parkers was no different. The food was wonderful, and the dessert and ice cream station with old-school sweets offered to the top of your sundae was a hit.
The majority of our members choose to work from the property the following day before heading home back to work. It was an excellent way to start the week, and again, we highly recommend this property for any events you are considering in the region.
We LOVED our FAM to Cambridge, a huge thank you to Philip Green and Tracey Chatters, who hosted us,
For further information on The University Arms Cambridge or any of the activities we participated in, please get in touch with us.
