"People are actually going to come and they are going to need to be fed and watered. Fact," says Mike Kershaw, chairman of the Concerto Group, a leading UK event business which offers a range of services including venue identification, catering and entertainment.

Many of the most prominent NOCs will choose a prestigious location and make it their "national house" for the duration of the Games.

Among London venues which have already been awarded NOC contracts include Somerset House (Brazil), Alexandra Palace (Netherlands), Old Billingsgate (France) and the Museum of London Docklands (Germany).

The home of the Royal Aeronautical Society at No 4 Hamilton Place will be the London 2012 base of the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC).

The Concerto Group introduced the JOC to this venue and Kershaw is hoping for more business from among the 30-40 NOCs which he estimates may take the option of setting up their own individual houses.

Kershaw dislikes the phrase, but the group he chairs can offer these bodies "a one-stop shop" for these requirements by drawing on the expertise of the 16 discrete companies in its stable.

As an organisation that runs more than 1,500 events a year - and claims to be London's largest party organiser – Concerto's knowledge of the UK capital's events market is not in doubt.

With the Games in mind, it has taken steps to marry this with detailed knowledge of the Olympic world's idiosyncracies by forging a two-year partnership with Jon Tibbs Associates (JTA), a brand building and communications consultancy well known in Olympic circles.

"By working alongside JTA, I think we have a very strong understanding of what the requirement is," Kershaw says.

Concerto is a £30 million ($49 million) annual turnover company, but its chairman estimates the overall UK events and hospitality market at a staggering £40-50 billion ($65-$81 billion) – though "it depends what you count".

The extra business flowing from London 2012 would thus only need to bump the market up by two percent to provide a £1 billion ($1.6 billion) boost to the UK economy.

Furthermore, Kershaw (pictured right with European Commissioner for Trade Peter Mandelson) argues that every £1 ($1.60) spent on an event gets re-spent on staff and supplies right the way down the line to businesses such as chicken farms and lighting specialists.

"It is hugely beneficial to the UK economy," he says.

It has to be said that the tonic provided by London 2012 comes at a welcome time for an industry that has been buffeted by the recession.

"There was probably a 20-25 per cent drop in overall business in the events and hospitality market in 2008-09," Kershaw says.

"It has picked up in the last year, but not by any means back to the levels before."

He says Concerto's broad base within the sector helped: conference business was "less badly hit"; catering was "reasonably OK".

"We came out of it reasonably well considering the drop in turnover, but it has certainly been very challenging."

The assortment of different brands – Create, Lola, Mask, Full Circle and many others – under the Concerto umbrella is partly the legacy of the way the group has come into being.

Its heritage dates back 25 years to the foundation by Sam Gill (now Concerto's Group Marketing Director) and Philip Milne (Group Operations Director) of Business Pursuits Event Management.

Three years later, Kershaw and Guy Rodger (a former futures trader now Concerto Deputy Chairman) started a business called The Ultimate Experience.

In 1999, these two companies came together, along with Richard Groves and Caroline Gardiner at Richard Groves Catering & Events, to form Concerto.

With Groves and Gardiner now Joint Managing Directors of Create, Concerto's food and party design arm, the company remains privately owned by the founders of the original businesses and, according to Kershaw, has "never had to borrow a bean".

He says the group's structure also reflects the fragmentation of the industry in which it operates.

"It is not one industry," he says. "It is made up of a whole series of other industries.

"We want to be the best in these individual areas and our view is that we have got very strong brands."

While he acknowledges that when it comes to the Olympic market, the ability to offer an integrated package of services is an important attribute, Kershaw asserts that there are "no plans to Concerto everything".

By contrast, there very much are plans to use London 2012 as a springboard to launch this essentially UK-only business into international markets.

"If all this effort was just for one month, I think it would be a great shame," Kershaw says.

"We think we have got something we can potentially take on...making it easy for people to find what they are looking for in an Olympic city."


He mentions Sochi, host of the 2014 Winter Olympics, Glasgow, the 2014 Commonwealth Games, and Rio, the 2016 Summer Olympics.

"It is not just about 2012 for us," he says.

"It is about really engaging with the Olympic family on a longer-term basis."

Given the number of specialists in various fields who now follow the Olympics around the world helping to ensure that each new host-city takes full advantage of the accumulated knowledge from past Games and doesn't end up reinventing the wheel, the idea seems in tune with the times.

London 2012 may be merely the first movement of this Olympic Concerto.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 World Cup. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938