Meetings & Conventions: Newsline
HOTEL COMPANY UNVEILS NEW MEETINGS PROGRAM AT 81
PROPERTIES
Meetings by Starwood
Salt Lake City: Mountains vs. moguls might mean an OIA exodus.
After two years of research and six months of
testing, White Plains, N.Y.-based Starwood Hotels & Resorts
officially rolls out Starwood Meetings on Oct. 1, a standardized
event services program for its 81 largest meeting hotels.
Following are key elements of the program.
Forms have been standardized based on the ideas put forth by
the Accepted Practices Exchange, the Convention Industry Council’s
initiative to create accepted practices for meeting planning. These
include a uniform banquet event order that can be e-mailed, a
standardized postconvention report and universal use of Meeting
Matrix software to arrange room setups.Hotel staff is being shuffled, based on planner input. The
general manager and the director of sales will take a more active
role in meetings, and a convention services staff member with
decision-making power will be available at all times.A StarMeeting Concierge will have the sole purpose of roaming
the floor and fixing minor problems, such as a sweltering meeting
room or a broken projector bulb. Convention services staff and
planners will be able to communicate via walkie-talkie.A website, www.starwoodmeetings.com, allows planners to search for
the ideal hotel, examine meeting room layouts and submit requests
for proposal.Starwood Meetings is a major step for the chain, said Dave
Scypinski, senior vice president of industry relations. “In some
cases, these are not new concepts,” he admitted. “However, when you
apply them consistently across a large company, that’s when you
make the big change in perception with a customer.”
Starwood expects to add more of its 740 worldwide hotels to the
program this year.
• JONATHAN VATNER
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