Her search started off innocently
enough. Judy Wander, director of conventions and
conferences for the New York City-based International Council of
Shopping Centers, had a 1,000-person conference she wanted to place
in Phoenix or Scottsdale, Ariz., next February. But her request for
proposal didn’t yield any results, so she expanded the search to
January and March. Then April. She still couldn’t find any
takers.
Part of the problem: Wander needed a
lot of exhibit space -- 10,000 square feet -- but just 75 guest
rooms, since most of the attendees were local and wouldn’t be
needing overnight accommodations. Additionally, her convention
committee wouldn’t let her schedule the meeting on a weekend or
consider dates that overlapped with any of the association’s 60
other regional meetings.
One hotel found dates in early June,
but ICSC’s convention committee deemed them too close to the
council’s annual national convention, which is held in May, and
directed Wander to find an alternative. She opened her search to
the fall. Then the winter. The hotel identified some dates in
December, but the committee exercised its veto again.
“I’ve been unable to place it, period,”
she said in late July, after searching for four months.
What Wander had on her hands is an
“ugly meeting,” a term some planners use to describe meetings that,
for one reason or another, are a tough sell to hotels. Any number
of factors can make a meeting ugly: The group has an undesirable
ratio of meeting space to guest rooms, for example, or can’t
guarantee any food and beverage revenue, or needs too many room
nights during peak dates. As a rule of thumb, if a meeting would
prevent a hotel from maximizing revenue, given the dates and the
amount of space being requested, it’s plain ugly.
So what’s a planner peddling such a
meeting to do? There aren’t any magical formulas. “It’s a
time-consuming business,” admits Mario Bass, director of sales for
the New York Marriott Marquis. “It’s not something you can solve in
one conversation.”
Nevertheless, planners with this
challenge have developed some useful strategies for finding the
ugly meeting a home.
The grim reality
Hotel salespeople pledge allegiance to
the maxim that no business is bad business. “There will always be a
time when the business is desirable to us,” says Lisa Maggiore,
director of sales for the Hilton New York.
Still, when confronted with an RFP
that’s less than desirable, some salespeople “hope to have the
fortitude to hold out for a better piece of business,” admits Jeff
Gloeb, vice president of hotel sales for Wynn Las Vegas. “But
you’re also potentially shooting yourself in the foot if nothing
comes up. It’s a juggling act,” he adds.
The good news for planners is that
ugliness isn’t immutable; a meeting that’s undesirable at the New
York Marriott Marquis, for example, might be a peach in Detroit or
Cincinnati, or even the New York LaGuardia Airport Marriott Ñ or
back at the Marriott Marquis the following week, depending on what
holes the hotel has to fill.
As it happens, hotels aren’t always the
bad guys. A group can hurt its own cause if it’s unwilling to
consider alternate dates, venues or destinations.
State or federal regulations also can
handcuff planners. Last summer, for instance, Carl Musson, program
coordinator for continuing education, conference management
services, at the University of Southern Florida in Tampa, had
trouble trying to place a meeting for the state’s Department of
Education. Florida guidelines stipulated that Musson couldn’t pay
for food and beverage, because the meeting was funded with grant
money.
“When you take out a big chunk of
business [such as F&B], it becomes increasingly harder to
negotiate,” notes Musson.
And, in some of today’s ultra-hot hotel
markets, groups are competing for a shrinking number of rooms Ñ
rooms that fetch higher rates with transient travelers. “What’s
happening in the market is hotels are limiting the number of rooms
allocated to group business,” says Katie Callahan-Giobbi, senior
vice president, sales, services and membership for L.A. Inc., the
Convention and Visitors Bureau in Los Angeles. “The market mix
changes as the economy changes.”
The industry, however, can be
pleasantly mercurial. There’s no telling which meetings will or
won’t be challenging to place. Sheri Clemmer, associate meeting
planner for the world headquarters of the Seventh-Day Adventist
Church, based in Silver Spring, Md., recently sent out an RFP for a
meeting that had all the trappings of a tough sell: a religious
gathering requiring 16 guest rooms during the first week of January
in Florida. But rather than dismissing the lead, hotels “were
jumping at the business,” reports Clemmer. One property, in St.
Petersburg, even waived the meeting space fee for her.
PLACING THE PIOUS
DeWayne Woodring“There’s a joke about religious conferences,” says Cindy Winter, conference director for the National Council on Family Relations in Minneapolis. “Attendees come with the 10 commandments and a $10 bill and don’t end up breaking either one.”
Both perceived and actual tendencies of religious organizations often give planners a built-in disadvantage when negotiating for hotel space. While it’s true that attendees of religious meetings tend not to run up bar tabs, “blessed are they who realize there is great diversity in the religious market,” says Dr. DeWayne Woodring, CMP, CEM, executive director and CEO of the Religious Conference Management Asso-ciation. “In many cases, sales of food go a long way to offset the loss of alcohol sales,” he adds.
The strong seller’s market has been particularly challenging for religious groups, who tend to require lower rates than corporate events, Woodring notes.
When placing religious meetings, planners should stress these points:
Long stays. Religious conferences can sometimes last up to 14 days, says Woodring. Sustained economic impact is a key selling point.
Family outings. The fact that spouses and children attend religious conferences generally means the city’s attractions can expect more revenue.
Community service. Religious groups often organize charitable projects to help leave the greater community better off than they found it.
Dependability.“When the corporate market shrivels, it’s the religious market that’s still going to be there,” Woodring says. Religious meetings are “recession-proof,” he adds, and tend to be reliable repeat business. -- T.I.
Get in line
The key to placing any meeting is
flexibility. But there are some preliminary steps planners can take
to help them when selling an ugly meeting.
“You need to know what the value of
this meeting is,” says Anne-Marie Laderoute, manager of facilities
and presentations for Toronto-based Canadian Institute of Chartered
Accountants. “A group might be a little light on rooms but spend a
ton on F&B.”
The name of the game, Laderoute
explains, is seeing “how many revenue buttons you can push.” If a
planner has comprehensive spend data at the ready, he or she can
present a meeting with undesirable physical specs as a vital piece
of business to a hotel, based on a group’s strong penchant for room
service, for example, or promises of high parking revenue.
The numbers only help, of course, if
they shed a positive light on the meeting. If not, other tactics
come into play.
Avoiding peak seasons in cities can at
least save some headaches, says David Horowitz, general manager of
the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Los Angeles. And, even within
sizzling markets, there will be pockets of properties that are less
popular, he says, perhaps near the airport or a nearby suburb.
If the prime properties and seasons
can’t be avoided, planners still can try to find a window for their
meetings. A group that needs a lot of meeting space but not a lot
of sleeping rooms should plan the meeting to coincide with a
citywide convention or incentive program, suggests Nancy Murphy,
vice president of sales for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors
Authority. In those cases, hotels will tend to have meeting space
available, but not many guest rooms. The ugly meeting can become a
perfect fit.
Cindy Winter, CMP, conference director
for Minneapolis-based National Council on Family Relations, says
earning her Certified Meeting Professional credential gave her an
unexpected edge in negotiations. “Suddenly hotels started looking
at the organization differently,” she says. Salespeople were more
accommodating when they knew they were dealing with a certified
professional, especially if they had been unfamiliar with her
group, Winter adds.
Be a salesperson
“See what other carrots you can
dangle,” urges Gregg H. Talley, CAE, president and CEO of Mt.
Royal, N.J.-based Talley Management Group Inc. If one piece of
business doesn’t appeal to hotels, try booking the meeting for
multiple years, or pair the ugly meeting with a more profitable
piece of business.
Judy Wander makes a habit of asking
questions after the initial “no” to discover where flexibility
exists. “Is it really that the time is completely sold out? Or is
the hotel just not accepting business of this type? That
information is very helpful to have,” she explains.
E-mail is an ugly-meeting killer, says
Laderoute. “If you fire off a request on
e-mail, it’s too easy for them to say, ‘sorry, no space.’ If you
call, at least you can get them to look at it,” she says.
Other times, simply framing the
conversation the right way can help. Laderoute will call
salespeople to say,
“‘I know you’ll groan when you see it, but I need you to take a
look at it.’ You have to bring it to a personal level,” she
advises.
Scott Gansl, conference liaison for the
World Congress of Gay, Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender Jews:
Keshet Ga’avah, also finds himself carefully couching his pitch
language to position the salesperson as a partner, challenging his
contact to help find a way to make the business fit.
Taking the time to educating sales
staff about the nature of the group and the attendees also can help
dispel fears, assumptions or prejudices that occasionally lead to
uncooperative salespeople, Gansl adds.
Forge
relationships
When typical tricks of the trade don’t
suffice, the result can be frustrating. “I feel like I’m nobody if
I don’t have 100 rooms,” protests Kristine Beal, meeting and
showroom supervisor for Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based Steris Corp., a
medical equipment company. “In Las Vegas, I’m nobody. If I call
Vegas and say I need 15 rooms, do you know what they tell me? ‘Call
reservations.’??”
Nancy Murphy of the Las Vegas CVA says
complaints like that underscore for her the need for planners to
develop stronger relationships with hotels as well as with
convention and visitor bureaus. “We have three dedicated staff
members for that size meeting,” she says, noting many Vegas hotels,
and CVBs in other cities, have dedicated salespeople for small
meetings, too. “Small meetings are our bread and butter.
Eighty-five percent of our meetings are for groups of less than 500
people.”
Callahan-Giobbi, whose bureau, L.A.
Inc., launched Direct Line Service, a program to help planners
place meetings requiring between 10 and 50 rooms per night last
year, touts the ability of CVB contacts to help planners, because
bureau salespeople tend to have more possible venues on their radar
screens than planners or hotel salespeople.
“What we need to do as a bureau is help
to make sure enough creativity is built into the conversation,”
Callahan-Giobbi says. “High-demand markets require extra
flexibility, extra communication and extra creativity.”
Building relationships with salespeople
benefits both the hotel sales staff, who stand to gain planner
loyalty, and the planners, who will find their hotel contacts “tend
to cut them some slack,” Gansl says.
Corporate hotel contacts also can help.
A strong relationship with a contact at Starwood Hotels &
Resorts saved Beal when she was trying to book meetings on New
York’s Long Island for five consecutive weeks. She needed 10 to 15
rooms and wanted to have fees waived for Internet access, parking
and breakfast. Thanks to an inside advocate, she got her wish. “I
never signed a contract faster in my life,” she says.
Expect to tweak
There are times when a meeting, as
initially conceived, just can’t be placed. In those cases, planners
and salespeople need to get creative.
Alterations can start small. Using a
hospitality suite for a breakout session or serving lunch in the
same room as the meeting can help lessen the demand for meeting
rooms, suggests the Hilton New York’s Maggiore.
Starting and ending early or late could
allow a second group to use the meeting space the same day. Cindy
Winter of the National Council on Family Relations says she’s often
willing to juggle her group’s schedule, especially around the
holidays, to allow a hotel to use a room for a profitable evening
Christmas party, for example.
Another time-saving trick is using the
same A/V company, and potentially the same equipment, as a
preceding or following group. That cuts down on set-up and
tear-down time, notes the New York Marriott Marquis’ Bass.
Hotels also appreciate willingness to
shift day patterns. “A Sunday arrival is much more valuable to us
than a Tuesday arrival,” says David Horowitz, of the Hyatt Regency
Century Plaza Los Angeles.
Still more drastic measures might be
required. Some hotels even are occasionally willing to split
meeting space or a room block with other nearby properties, Bass
says.
If a planner is forced to rule out his
or her top hotel choice, planner Gregg Talley says it’s time to
start “heading down the food chain,” adding, “Maybe
it’s a better Holiday Inn match than a Hilton match.”
Planners can escape brands completely,
opting instead for an independent hotel or a dedicated meeting
facility. “I will go to community colleges, and I have had
wonderful results there,” Beal says. Last year, she organized a
one-day training session for 130 people in a suburb of Seattle. The
meeting ended up costing just more than $20 per person, including
F&B. “I can’t feed someone continental breakfast at a hotel for
$20,” she says.
Planners with a lot of flexibility have
the option of waiting for off-seasons in top-tier cities -- or
moving elsewhere. “It’s not as sexy to move [a meeting] from New
York or San Diego to a Dayton or a Pittsburgh, but the economies
are favorable,” says Robert Mandelbaum, director of research
information services for Atlanta-based PKF Consulting.
Planners with ugly meetings also can be
well-served by CVBs that represent a greater metropolitan area and
can help place meetings in suburbs, adds Christopher Baum, senior
vice president of the Detroit Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau.
His region’s second largest hotel, the 772-room Hyatt Regency
Dearborn, isn’t in downtown Detroit, he notes.
Understand the
cycles
Perseverance eventually led Judy Wander
to place her 1,000-person conference at the Phoenix Convention
Center after an often frustrating six-month search for a hotel host
failed to produce results.
“When I first came on board here, I had
a lot of ugly baby meetings,” Wander says. “That shifted about five
years ago,” after Sept. 11, 2001, when hotels were desperate for
the business. Lately, she adds, meetings have again become more
difficult to place.
Of limited comfort to Wander is the
fact that the industry is cyclical.
“Just because we’re fat and happy now
doesn’t mean we’ll be fat and happy in 2009,” acknowledges Martha
Sheridan, president and CEO of the Providence (R.I.) Warwick
Convention and Visitors Bureau, voicing a widely felt sentiment
held by hoteliers and CVBs.
Therein lies the moral of the ugly-
meeting story, according to Wander. “I encourage suppliers not to
take advantage of us,” she implores. “It does swing back. It
absolutely swings back.”