LONDON, England – Last week, London & Partners, the official promotional organisation for the city, launched a new convention bureau website for event planners. The website offers venue listing services, a search and shortlisting tool, as well as ‘Visualise’ 360 degree panoramas. We reached out to Chris Lynn (pictured right), VP sales & marketing North America & emerging markets at London & Partners, to see how the new site would help the agent community–and how London & Partners is working to attract large-scale events to city venues.

“There’s increased competition out there in the world,” Lynn said, noting that maintaining a physical presence to stay front-and-center in planners’ minds was simply not feasible. The website was developed to provide a 24-hour resource for planners with insights from the CVBs members, specifically for the U.S. market.

“The U.S. is really one of the most important regions in the world for us as far as business going into the city,” Lynn said, “For 2014 and beyond, the U.S. has been identified as our main focus as a destination from the local markets.” The next step for London & Partners will be to target its business practices by industry sectors. “Commerce is really quite central to everything,” he said, “so what we are looking at is which sectors are the most important to London. Currently, that represents technology and the creative industries.”