The Eastside Rooms is a Finalist for Best MICE Venue UK at the
2026 Travelling for Business Awards, and it represents the newest thinking in this field: a conference venue purpose-built for how meetings now behave, rather than adapted from how they used to. Rising in Birmingham's regenerating Eastside district, the venue pairs a technology-first events estate with an attached hotel — delegates sleep upstairs from their sessions — and a design brief that took hybrid, wellbeing and accessibility seriously before most venues had finished spelling them.
The facilities pitch straight at the working organiser. A grand ballroom scales to more than a thousand delegates in a single, pillar-free sweep; a run of flexible suites and boardrooms handles the breakout architecture of association and corporate programmes alike; integrated production and streaming infrastructure treats the remote audience as a first-class citizen; and the attached hotel's bedrooms turn residential conferences into lift journeys. Catering is handled with modern range — dietary-complete, locally sourced where it matters — and the operations team has built a reputation for the flexibility bigger institutions struggle to match. Wellbeing thinking threads through the building — daylight, quiet rooms, accessible design as standard — reflecting a venue conceived after the industry learned what delegates actually need across a long conference day.
Position adds momentum. Eastside is Birmingham's growth quarter — the arrival point of the coming high-speed rail era — putting the venue at the leading edge of the city's connectivity while the established core sits minutes away for evening programmes. For organisers weighing the second city, the venue offers something distinct from the giant halls: contained, contemporary scale where a five-hundred-to-a-thousand-delegate event owns the building rather than sharing an aircraft hangar.
Travelling for Business tracks the regional venues challenging London's pull, and this is among the most convincing of the new generation. The nomination recognises confident, current design in a market that renews too rarely — Birmingham building for the next decade of meetings. Early bookings from associations and national brands suggest the market agrees.
Winners will be announced at the 2026 Travelling for Business Awards, and the Eastside Rooms would happily host the after-party, hybrid attendees included.
