Confessions of an Event Planner: Case Studies From the Real World of Events--How to Handle the Unexpected and How to Be a Master of Discretion (8 page)

I’m enjoying my quiet flight home. After being away doing the pre-con and then being with a group for a number of days it will be so nice to come back home and just veg out. I crave silence—at least a couple of hours of it. I travel more than I am home and I’ll admit that I still haven’t gotten used to there being no turn-down service, chocolate on my pillow or room service to call when I arrive back at my place for what I call my stopover. This time I’ll have just enough days between trips to check in at the office, catch up on things that need my attention and pack for my next destination. Sunny Caribbean, here I come! White sandy beaches, turquoise oceans and palm trees swaying gently . . . just another day at the office. It’s the commute that’s the killer. Oh well. Someone has to do it.

MEETINGS, MAYHEM AND MARGARITAVILLE: Q&A

Group Arrival

Q:
Beyond having the group fly down in smaller numbers, what steps could be taken to bring a celebrating, high-energy group under control when they’re traveling to the event?

A:
It is always important to have staff fly down with the group as opposed to merely being on hand to check them in at the departure airport and then having advance staff meet them upon arrival. Staff can work with the flight crew to monitor the group. On one such flight, the pilot turned on the “return to your seat and fasten your seatbelt” sign for the duration of the trip because of “anticipated turbulence” when some individuals began opening and passing around bottles of duty-free liquor and giving the flight crew a difficult time. Things quieted down quickly and many participants, already the worse for wear with excess drinking, fell asleep to the relief of those sitting around them.

Another way would be to separate them upon arrival by not having one main motor coach pick them up and transfer them to the hotel. Having them split up into several motor coaches or using smaller minicoaches or vans gives event planning staff the opportunity to separate the main mayhem instigators from the rest of the group or from each other and stop their quest to outdo one another. With an all-male sales group, event planners can anticipate high energy and hijinks fueled by alcohol and competitive spirits. And if one individual is creating most of the disturbance, a staff member can quietly engage them by creating a reason that they need their assistance (such as with room assignment, etc.) and in that matter have them break away from the group.

Assignment

How did the Starr Productions event planning staff handle the flight, airport arrival and hotel transfer, and what further steps, if any, could have been or should have been taken for more control over group behavior? (Special note: In-depth information on airport transfers and guest arrivals is covered in
Event Planning: The Ultimate Guide
.)

Welcome Reception and Dinner

Q:
What kind of an event works best for a welcome reception and dinner?

A:
On arrival days, especially when air travel and time changes are involved, it is best to plan a light beginning to the group’s stay. The dollars spent doing a full-out theme event would be wasted, as the participants will be travel weary. What is strategically best is to have them go to bed early and get rested and ready for their stay. Dollars spent will have the most impact and event value on the second night.

Assignment

Discuss welcome reception and dinner event elements and design a welcome food and beverage menu, room layout, serving /presentation style, and entertainment and decor options that will work strategically to meet the event’s objective of getting guests mixing and mingling. Explain the reasons why your chosen design will work (e.g., a sit-down dinner with food stations to get people standing in line and talking to one another, or ice-breaking food stations such as a custom sushi bar, both of which have an educational and entertainment value to stimulate conversation). (Special note: In-depth information on strategic event design and strategic room layout is covered in
The Business of Event Planning
.)

Welcome Reception Refreshments

Q:
What type of food and beverage should be served at welcome receptions?

A:
As with any reception involving alcohol, it is always advisable to choose foods that are high in protein, such as meat and cheese, and to avoid offering too many dry snacks that are heavy on the salt as that only encourages more drinking. You want guests to have a great time but not to be rendered incapacitated for the rest of the day and evening. You can limit the welcome reception to an hour if you have a group arrival (or close it down and have the food and beverage refreshed to meet staggered group arrivals throughout the day) while private check-in is going on, and then leave the guests at leisure for the balance of the afternoon to relax, unpack, settle in and explore their new surroundings or simply take a nap.

You do not want to spend too much of your budget on an event element that is simply meant to be a warm and welcoming touch. If the restaurant has stopped serving at time of arrival, ensure the group has had the opportunity to get some food en route, especially if the group already has been drinking, Remember that the purpose is to make group check-in relaxing and enjoyable but not a main event.

Assignment

Plan a sample welcome reception food and beverage menu that is appealing after a long travel day, features local cuisine and beverages from the selected destination, is well balanced and designed to serve as a replacement meal and to act as an alcohol buffer, and is easy to eat standing up in a private check-in area. Focus on avoiding cutlery, messy sauces and large pieces of food. If possible, obtain a hotel’s food and beverage menu as well as a local restaurant’s to use as reference guides, remembering that it is possible to create custom menus. For example, a hotel in Tucson created cactus cookies for a dessert option at one welcome reception. (Special note: In-depth information on food and beverage is covered in
Event Planning: The Ultimate Guide
.)

Guestroom Assignment

Q:
How is guestroom assignment best done?

A:
When you are booking group space at a resort you will be given the opportunity to block and negotiate rates in several different categories. Traditionally, the less expensive way is to block run-of-the-house rooms, but for an incentive group that is not advisable as there will be a visible difference between rooms that could be allocated to you (e.g., some members of the group may end up with their desired ocean-, mountain- or city-view rooms, while the rest of the group ends up overlooking the parking lot; the room amenities can vary greatly as well with regard to room size and room inclusions). For an incentive program, it is imperative that all rooms be equal unless specific upgrades are requested for top performers who have earned a suite, etc. through their sales efforts. Participants will check out other guestrooms and compare what they were assigned to what others received, and if there is a great disparity, you can expect a flood of room request changes to start coming in.

For non-incentive groups, the recommended course of action is to block one room category for all, with the request for room category upgrades contractually negotiated as well as any suites for top VIPs, staff room rates, comp rooms, etc. In the contract and in your function sheets it must clearly state that the hotel cannot upgrade any rooms at their discretion without the approval of the event planner and their client. If for unforeseen reasons an upgrade has to take place at check-in, it is better to choose who the upgraded room is to go to as opposed to leaving it to chance. With one incentive group, the client made the decision to keep all of their rooms the same and give the upgraded room to an event planning staff member rather than run the risk of having any of their employees’ sales egos out of alignment.

With event planning staff rooms, budget permitting, it is always better to assign single rooms so that staff can be properly rested and not be woken up with early morning preparations by a roommate who may be working the pre-breakfast shift or coming home in the early morning hours after working the evening’s event. Having a single room also gives event planning staff the opportunity to escape being in a group setting and get some much needed quiet time during their off-duty hours to nap, work out in their room or just simply relax and enjoy a room service meal without people from the group around so that they can return to the job refreshed and ready to go.

Assignment

Investigate a sampling of the different types of room categories available at hotels and resorts and note the differences in room location, room size and room amenities. Discuss the advantages of each. Remember that rates shown are not group rates, which are negotiated based on group size, room count, food and beverage and space requirements, but will serve as a starting point for comparison. Pull up a selected hotel or resort on-line (the actual hotel or resort website—not the master chain reservation website) or obtain a hotel’s full presentation kit. (Special note: In-depth information on accommodation is covered in
Event Planning: The Ultimate Guide.
)

Group Breakfast

Q:
What is the best way to handle group breakfasts?

A:
Group breakfasts can be handled several ways and you can either use one way for the duration of the stay or mix them up as a fit for the day’s event. You want to create movement and energy in all of your event elements. For example, if you have a group holding intensive meetings in a ballroom, you may want to consider arranging through the hotel or facility to have participants dine in the facility’s restaurant and have the charges for breakfast posted to the master account for the group. This way the attendees would have breathing room from feeling herded as a group from breakfast to a meeting room, to lunch, to an afternoon meeting and then to dinner as a group on- or off-property. If guests spend most of their day in a function room setting, they’ll be left feeling as though they experienced too much group bonding time.

Group breakfasts can be held in a private setting both on-property and off-property (e.g., a cookout desert breakfast on a ranch in Texas, for example). They can take place in a private function room such as a ballroom, a garden courtyard closed exclusively for the group or other outdoor location that provides a touch more ambiance than a ballroom or a restaurant that may be closed to the public during the day (offering only dinner service), etc.

You can also arrange for breakfast to be enjoyed at their leisure by making preparations to have the participants eat breakfast in one of the hotel’s restaurants, with open or private seating arranged for the group. You can either order off the menu or take part in the hotel’s buffet (if applicable), and have all charges go to the group’s master account. Or, you could allow room service breakfast to be included and posted to the master account.

With breakfast, there is more flexibility and you can give the group a bit more freedom. You can accommodate the early risers and those who like to work out before having breakfast. With group lunches and dinners you need more time control; consequently, those meals work better in a private setting, unless you are doing a group meal as an evening dine-around program or privately taking over a section in an off-property restaurant or venue for the group.

There are other factors to consider when looking at how to stage meal functions and what style of seating would work best where and when. Table seating can be strategically and creatively arranged to help companies meet both internal and external company objectives. Remember that the corporate client may wish to have specific people spending quality time together for a variety of reasons.

Assignment

Using a selected hotel or resort’s function space, hotel blueprint and facilities (found in hotel group presentation kits or on-line under groups and meetings), discuss various breakfast options for different size groups and which would work best when and why.

Fictitious Meeting Space Request

Q:
What is the best procedure to follow if a client asks you to book a fictitious meeting for tax purposes?

A:
That is a matter that needs to be discussed with company owners and your company’s legal department. The hotel or venue will do as they are requested and paid for, as they will not know in advance that no meeting will take place, but if the event planning company is a knowing party to deception they put themselves and their company professionally and personally at legal risk. Event planning companies have been called in to testify when company heads have been taken to court for mishandling or misusing company funds.

Assignment

Read on-line newspaper accounts and allegations tied to Tyco ex-CEO Dennis Kozlowski and to Conrad Black and Livent (who are being charged with having duplicate sets of financial books and asking suppliers to submit invoices that would allow them to move expenses from one year to another to enhance the bottom line, with company principals maintaining that they were not informed of such practices). Discuss possible company policies, procedures and protocol in handling unethical event planning requests—financial, moral and otherwise. (Special note: Examples of other unethical event planning requests and how to handle them can be found in
Event Planning Ethics and Etiquette
.)