Don't Underestimate the Pre-Con!

President's Message

By Brian Stevens

 

Last week I had two poor service experiences – one at a premium hotel and another at a large convention hotel. Both occurrences would have been avoided if a thorough and rigorous pre-convention meeting had taken place between the hotel and meeting group.


The "Pre-Con" should be done on a weekday, not a weekend. Why? Because key department heads are not usually working on weekends. I know this can be an exception, but you'll often have a number two or number three person on a weekend. Perhaps your concerns and deliverables are important enough to warrant the department head's attention.


Good communication before a large meeting is imperative. Let me make a few suggestions on the pre-convention meeting:

  1. Set the meeting for the middle of the day. Some Food & Beverage department people arrive late and stay late. Other departments arrive early and leave early, such as Housekeeping.

  2. Be prepared to describe in two minutes what the purpose of the meeting is and your group's hot buttons. Example: "Half our attendees are here to improve the profession and the other half are trying to get better jobs. As a result, there are a lot of two-person coffee meetings for the interviews. As well as a lot of well-lit rooms for being able to take notes and hear speakers presentations." That sort of insight will be helpful to the hotel trying to serve you.

  3. Tell the hotel what's different about your group from every other group. One of our ConferenceDirect customers does not want a planned breakfast the first day of their meeting, and as a result, the hotel's Room Service system is overwhelmed by orders. To take the edge off, we remove the room service cards from the room and in their place advertise a cash and carry breakfast in a meeting room. Many groups advise hotels that their group features heavy bar usage. (But in this instance, what is "heavy"?) You need to quality this to the hotel so they can deploy enough bartenders and staff and the best way to do this is by pulling history from the year prior.

  4. Give your cell phone number to department heads. Ask each of them for their cell phone number. Ask them to call you if there are any questions or issues that you should know about. This will help people avoid making a mistake in mishandling an issue.

  5. If there are VIPs in your group, provide a photo to each department head. The phone system in most hotels can flag a VIP status for your group's key distinguished guests. When the designated person calls room service or the operator, the caller ID will indicate that this person is a VIP.

  6. Hotels staff and order for averages, not for peaks. One ConferenceDirect customer is an educational group that always exhausts the hotel's New York Times shipment by 7:00 a.m. each day. The solution? We alert the gift shop to order ten times the number of copies of the Times. They sell more product, and the customer's guest get the information they're looking for.

  7. Make sure the hotel staff understands the instructions and your expectations. The meeting is a time to make sure that people understand the work plan. Example: One of our customers had a two-day incentive meeting with room deliveries to be dropped each night when the group was at a dinner function. Misunderstanding its direction, the hotel placed both amenities on the first night. It is not a waste of time to reconfirm things the hotel needs to do, and in what sequence.

  8. Use the Pre-Con meeting as a way to introduce your leadership to the hotel team. If you have multiple people giving direction at your meeting or convention, make sure all those with responsibility and those giving direction attend the Pre-Con meeting.

  9. Review posting instructions to double check spelling and attendee times. Many times you block a room from 7:00 a.m. to noon for a meeting that will actually take place from from 8:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. To avoid attendee confusion, make sure the posting is your meeting time and not the time the whole period the room is reserved for.

  10. Establish each day when you will review the bills for that day and establish the time for a post-convention meeting. This is particularly helpful if you will return to that hotel or a hotel in the same chain.

Five hundred hotels will open in the next two years, and as a result, staffing at all hotels will be stretched thin. By using the Pre-Con meeting in a tactical and productive way, you'll ensure that your meeting reflects the high standards of your organization or company and is a good experience for attendees.

 

ON OUR RADAR

Upcoming Industry Events

 

Springtime in the Park
June 14, 2007
Washington, D.C.

 

HSMAI - Affordable Meetings West
June 19 - 20, 2007
San Jose, CA

 

NBTA Annual Convention
July 22 - 25, 2007
Boston, MA

 

MPI – WEC
July 29 - 31, 2007
Montreal

 

LOOKING AHEAD

The "Killer Apps" of the Meetings Industry

By Corbin Ball

 

A killer application (commonly shortened to killer app) refers to technology that is so useful or desirable that it proves the value of some underlying technology.

 

The VisiCalc spreadsheet was the first killer app – a program that, in the early 1980's, proved so successful for finance workers that it mushroomed early IBM PC sales. Electric lighting could be considered the "killer app" of electricity as the automobile was the "killer app" of the internal combustion engine.

 

There are many "killer apps" for the meetings industry – programs that are so useful, so cost-saving, so efficiency-increasing, or so service-improving that they have and continue to revolutionize the way that meeting professionals do business.

 

This article will cover some of the major meeting industry killer apps so far, and then highlight what I believe to be some of the ones to come.

 

Current Killer Apps

Online Registration and Attendee Management
The first online registration forms appeared in 1995 and have evolved to become robust attendee management and meeting promotion tools. Compared to the old paper-based methods of the last century (where meeting promotion was largely done by bulk mail; where registration forms were submitted on paper and entered by hand; where payments and confirmations were processed manually, and everything was laboriously reentered into a database if it existed), today's fully automated systems provide digital methods of doing this at a fraction of the cost. 90% savings or more can be yielded going from paper-based to automated web-based methods of attendee management.

 

In the evolution, a variety of related tools have emerged including housing/travel management, member management, communications management and more.

 

Site Selection
In the "olden days" (meaning just a few years ago) planners kept large file cabinets full of paper brochures and directories about meeting facilities. Substantial effort was spent to create/print/mail these materials and substantial time was spent to manage and date the information as it came in.

 

Nearly all of these brochures can be tossed into the recycle bin as far more complete (by a factor of 40) and more up-to-date online resources than any paper directory that has ever been printed are available for free – another killer app for the industry.

 

Procurement, Sourcing and RFPs
Procurement is working it way into the meetings industry. The ability to establish preferred vendors (especially hotels) in turn for discounts and the ability to streamline the request for proposal (RFP) process can reap very substantial saving – with estimates of 30-40% cost reductions.

 

Although online RFPs have been rejected by some planners as being cumbersome and too great a departure from their current methods, an argument can be made to reconsider. For example, when Carlson Hotels Worldwide recently rolled out its RFP automation system (MeetingBroker.com) to 933 properties around the world, it resulted in a reduction in their average response time to leads from 56 hours to 4 hours – a savings of 90% in time! Digitizing the business process leads to greatly increased efficiency. Fast response time alone may be a driver to change processes for many planners.

 

Abstract Management
Usually large, scientific associations deal with hundreds or even thousands of speaking proposals using abstracts (a synopsis of the author scientific research) as the method of selecting and scheduling speakers. For these groups, abstract management programs are definitely killer apps.

 

Corbin Ball is President of Corbin Ball Associates, a meetings technology consulting practice. Its website is www.corbinball.com. Used by permission of the author. Article ©2007 Corbin Ball Associates

 

BEDSIDE TABLE

 

What notable, luminary, and insightful hospitality industry leaders are reading and recommending.

 

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
"Journalist/philosopher Michael Pollan explores the origins of our meals, and how our choices affect our communities and the land. His insights will change the way you eat and the way you live."

 

Alice Waters
Owner of Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley, California

 

THE SECRET by Michael Nigohosian
CHOCOLATES ON THE PILLOW AREN'T ENOUGH by Jonathan Tisch

"The Secret is a philosophy I've had for many years but he's expressed the idea much better. It goes along with 'be careful what you wish for – it just might come true'. Of course with Jon's book (which has gotten great reviews I might add) I just love reading about theories I grew up within the hospitality business".
 
Charlotte St. Martin, Executive Director
League of American Theatres and Producers