Bournemouth International Centre

You can run a plenary, an exhibition and a gala dinner under one roof overlooking Bournemouth Bay, with 5,798 m² across four halls, 15 breakout and meeting spaces, and catering and AV teams in-house. The centre on Exeter Road opened in September 1984. BCP Council owns it and BH Live, a company limited by guarantee and a registered charity, operates it in partnership with the council. It also stages music, comedy and live entertainment.

Event spaces and capacities

You can seat up to 4,000 theatre style in the Windsor Hall and still keep three other halls for parallel sessions, stands or dinner. The venue says you can hire the whole building for up to 10,000 delegates. Its table below covers the four halls and 11 named breakout rooms, four of which split into two suites.

Capacities as published by the venue on its hall pages and in its 2025 brochure, checked 4 November 2026. A blank cell means the venue publishes no figure for that layout.

Boardroom layouts are published for the Purbeck Lounge (88), Tregonwell Seminar Suite (64), Bay View Suite (52), Meyrick Suite (44), Tregonwell Bar (40), Branksome Suite (38), Purbeck Bar (30), Durley Suite (26), Avon Room (22) and Westbourne Suite (20).

Exhibitors get practical access in the Purbeck Hall, which is circular and pillar-free, with two 4.5m x 4.2m roller doors on a private road and a floor rated to 1,020kg per square metre. The Windsor Hall has a vehicle loading bay, and its lower seating pushes back to free more floor. The Solent Hall has bay views, with blackout blinds when you need a dark room. The Tregonwell Hall has two floor levels and a fixed stage. Recent bookings the venue reports include the European Conference on Visual Perception, with more than 700 researchers from 41 countries in August 2026, and the Festival of Humanism, with more than 600 delegates in June 2026.

Getting there and parking

Your delegates can park on site, in an attached 644-space cashless multi-storey open 24 hours a day, with a 2 metre height limit. Charges start at £3.10 for up to an hour and reach £23.50 for up to 24 hours. On show nights a fixed £12 rate replaces the hourly tariff from 5pm.

Bournemouth railway station is 1.3 miles away, about a 28-minute walk, and the venue gives about 1 hour 45 minutes by rail from London. Bournemouth Pier bus stop is about a 2-minute walk, on Morebus routes. By road, the venue points you to the M3, M27, A31 and A338, then brown signs from Bournemouth West Roundabout.

Disabled delegates get step-free routes from the car park and pavement to power-assisted doors, 35 accessible parking bays on levels 1 to 3, seven accessible toilets, and a Changing Places facility with a hoist near Doors 3 and 4, where users bring their own sling. The lift to the upper level is 110cm wide. These details come from the venue’s access guide, written mainly for show audiences.

Catering, AV and accommodation

You deal with one team for food and production, since catering and AV are both in-house. The venue says caterers will plan a menu around your schedule and numbers, from coffee breaks to gala dinners for up to 1,000. Its AV team covers pre-production, sound, lighting, visuals and brand theming. Wi-Fi for browsing and email is free, with premium Wi-Fi and permanent connections on request. The Intershell Group is its recommended supplier for exhibition design, shell schemes and electrics.

Delegates have plenty of beds close by, as the venue counts more than 7,000 bedrooms in Bournemouth, thousands of them within a 10-minute walk. Business Events Bournemouth can match you with rooms. If you report on sustainability, the venue holds Green Mark Level 2, has solar panels on 50% of its roof, and reports CO2 of 553 tonnes for 2023 to 2024 against 801 tonnes for 2019 to 2020. It recycled 89.1% of catering waste and 87.5% of event and visitor waste between April 2023 and March 2024.

To talk to the sales team, call 01202 055557 or use the enquiry page.

What to ask before you book

• Which Tregonwell Hall theatre figure applies to your set-up, as its page table says 900, the same page’s text says 1,100 and the 2025 brochure says 1,000?
• Can the Purbeck Hall seat 680 for dinner, as its page text says, or 600, as its table says? Does the Bourne Lounge take 250 theatre, as in the brochure, or the 200 BH Live has quoted?
• Is a concert booked on your dates, and how would the £12 show rate from 5pm affect delegates still parked on site?
• Where is the nearest EV charging, given that the venue’s travel page lists no charging locations?
• Must exhibitors use The Intershell Group, and what are the size limits of the Windsor Hall loading bay, which the venue does not publish?

Related on Events Review

• Conference venues in Bournemouth
• Conference and exhibition venues
• Bournemouth Highcliff Marriott Hotel, a conference hotel in the same town
• Seventa Events, an event production agency listed in Bournemouth and London
• Conference venues in Southampton and in Brighton, if you are comparing the south coast
• Brighton Centre, a conference and exhibition venue on the same coast
• Choose the venue around the event, not the headline capacity
• Turn venue accessibility claims into a usable event plan
• Association congresses are won by host teams, not venues alone

Sources: bic.co.uk, conferencing, 2025 brochure, how to get here, parking, getting here, event services, food and drink, accommodation, sustainability, BH Live on the Bourne Lounge, checked 4 November 2026.