Women have fought long and hard for equality — deservedly so. But women are not equal in some critical ways, including size and strength typically, making them more vulnerable to certain crimes and other safety concerns during travel, here and abroad.

“I wish travel safety was gender neutral but it is not,” says Erin L. Wilk, global travel safety and security program manager for Facebook, where she is developing and implementing a comprehensive travel risk management program. “There are major differences between the risks a male traveler faces and those faced by women travelers.”

At the 2016 GBTA convention in Denver, a panel of experts tackled this issue in an education session, emphasizing that there are gender differences related to risk that corporate travel programs should address.

“In certain countries…reporting sexual assault to the police can actually make you guilty of a crime yourself.”
— Sophie Harwood 

“Travel managers need to be aware of risks that women face and book their travel accordingly,” says Wilk, part of the GBTA session panel. “Arriving during daylight hours, ensuring pre-arranged ground transportation and providing travelers with pre-trip information, both security and medical, are all best practices.”

Know Before You Go

Krissy Herman, another GBTA panelist and vice president, program management, at KesselRun Corporate Travel Solutions where she consults with clients on the strategic framework of their travel programs, vendor sourcing and more, stresses education of travel managers and employees.

“Education plays a major role in this process,” she says. “Work with your TMC to encourage agents to not book flights that arrive late in higher-risk areas. Set alerts to receive itineraries when employees are traveling to certain cities or regions so you can reach out and provide guidance. Encourage the use of scheduled, reputable ground transportation that doesn’t use traveler first names on signs at the airport.”

While scheduling arrivals only during daylight hours might add to flight costs, Wilk and Herman agree it makes no sense to compromise safety for cost. “In my professional opinion,” Wilk says, “the price paid if something bad happens will far outweigh the cost of any preventive measure.”

Benefits come in other ways, too. “If employees don’t feel safe when they’re on the road,” Herman says, “there’s more chance they won’t be as productive as you’d like them to be. By contrast, if they know they’re being looked after and that the company cares about their well-being while on the road, they’ll be able to focus on the work they need to do on behalf of their company.”

The task of understanding how and when risks differ for male and female travelers and how to mitigate those risks falls on the shoulders not just of corporate travel managers, but also of meeting planners and employees themselves.

So what types of risks are at issue? Sophie Harwood, specialist in travel risk mitigation strategies for women and LGBT travelers for beTravelwise, creator of online and face-to-face courses to educate corporations and individuals about the risks travelers may face and how to avoid them, says petty crime is the primary risk for male and female travelers, but perception changes the odds.

Soft Target

“Women are often perceived as an easier target for petty crime and are therefore at more risk of incidents such as pick-pocketing, handbag theft or mobile-phone theft,” Harwood says. “Women are also more likely than men to be victims of sexual harassment or violent sexual crimes, and men may be more likely to be involved in more violent crimes such as GBH (grievous bodily harm) or carjacking. These more violent incidents are quite rare and infrequent compared to petty crime.”

In addition to theft and sexual assault, Herman says, “Women are also targets of harassment, cultural discrimination, local regulations and bias in business settings.”

Sometimes, Wilk points out, an asset also can be a detriment. “Women are great at multitasking, yet when traveling this can make them a ‘soft target.’ Being unaware and unfamiliar with surroundings, being distracted (or focused on a mobile device), burdened with multiple bags, not speaking the local language, not looking confident and not blending in can create situations where women are at higher risk,” she says.

Joan Morgan, director of analytic personnel at iJET, which provides intelligence-driven, integrated risk-management solutions aimed at helping multinational organizations operate globally with confidence, also notes that petty crime is the greatest risk for travelers globally, but says, “Truly, the greatest risk begins before travel: being unprepared.”

According to Morgan, researching a destination before departure is the single most important thing a woman can do to mitigate risks. “Female travelers should know: What are the primary security risks in the country/city I will be visiting (petty crime, scams, kidnapping, sexual harassment/assault)? Are the police and security responders trustworthy? What are the health risks associated with the destination? What areas of the city should I avoid? Is my hotel in a safe location? Do I have safe transportation arranged in advance?”

Conferences and Conventions

When it comes to conventions and conferences, meeting planners have a role in mitigating safety risks for attendees. In addition to travel arrangements, there are issues related to the destination, convention facilities and host hotels that should be addressed on site visits and in hotel RFPs.

“Meeting planners should consider such things as where restrooms are located in relation to the conference facility, e.g. are they in a secluded area?” Herman says. “How frequently does security patrol the conference area, inside and out? If there’s an offsite contracted meeting hotel, are there free shuttles to and from the conference/meeting location and how often/late do they run? If the conference is held in the same hotel as guest stays, are guest floors only accessibly via room key?”

Wilk, like Morgan, emphasizes pre-trip education. “For any large event, pre-trip education is critical. Event organizers need to understand known risks in the destination area (areas to avoid, common crimes, cultural sensitivities) and adequately communicate advice and guidance to ALL attendees.”

Wilk also advises bringing women into the safety and security conversations “so they can provide specific observations and ask tailored questions pertaining to women’s safety concerns.”

While being part of a large conference group may offer some risk mitigation itself — the “safety in numbers” theory — it also can be a problem. “Large crowds are a challenge,” Morgan says. “Maintaining situational awareness is essential.”

Harwood says the makeup of the group matters. “If those you are with are all known and trusted colleagues, there is an additional layer of safety as you are able to look out for each other. However,” she adds, “if they are unknown to you, then there is still risk in terms of safety; instances of petty crime are known to occur at conventions and conferences, especially as delegates often carry high-worth items such as laptops and smartphones. Sexual harassment or assault can still happen at such events.”

Herman suggests having a conference buddy. “While there is generally safety in numbers, incidents can occur anywhere — when you’re alone or when you’re one of hundreds, especially if you’re just an anonymous face in the crowd,” she says. “If you’re at a convention, have a buddy or two whom you hang with. Make sure you have awareness of where that person is, and vice versa, and check in with each other throughout the day when you’re not physically together.”

Sometimes, Wilk says, the characteristics of a convention and the activities around it can add to risks. “At a convention with a large number of attendees, and where socializing, alcohol and late nights may be involved, it’s even more prudent for women to be aware of their surroundings and take appropriate precautions.”

Hotel Security

Nowhere is that more true than in hotels. “Top-tier managed travel programs will address both physical safety/security and fire safety/security in hotel RFPs,” Wilk says. “The current challenge with hotel security is that no industry-wide standard exists. Great progress has been made in a collaborative effort by the Overseas Advisory Council (OSAC) and the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA), yet there is still much work to accomplish. I am seeing a shift in the industry where companies are requiring more attention to this topic of hotel security, and hotel properties are adjusting their security offerings and standards accordingly.”

In the meantime, all parties should be aware of the options. Herman says hotel RFPs should address such things as:

• Are all parking areas patrolled?
• Is there video surveillance in all public areas?
• Do all the guest room entry doors have viewports?
• Is Identification or validation required for replacing a guest room key?
• Does your hotel have a secure floor only accessible via guest room key?
• Do health club facilities (pool/gym) require key access for entrance?

Morgan adds that security should be visible at the hotel door and in the lobby; hallways, elevators and parking areas should be well lit; and there should be concierge services to arrange for safe transportation and dining for travelers who don’t know the area.

Women-Only Floors

Some hotels offer women-only floors, which experts agree can provide added security — but don’t always. “Too often the execution needs improvement,” Herman says. “Rather than female-focused amenities or ‘touches,’ hotels should focus on the security aspect. Does that floor require key-access in the elevator? Is it always a female-only floor or just when the hotel isn’t at full capacity? Are doors, windows and locks strong? Perception is reality, and I’ve stayed in four- and five-star hotels where the doors seemed pretty flimsy.”

Harwood points out that some hotels, for example those in countries with high Muslim populations, have women-only floors not for additional security but for women who may be uncomfortable or unable to be in the presence of men alone. At other hotels the focus is security. “These floors may include enhanced safety and security features such as CCTV cameras, better locks on the doors and windows, and 24-hour security presence.” She advises travelers to check with individual hotels to learn details about women-only floors and what security measures are in place.

While Wilk believes the jury is still out on women-only floors, she says, “An increased industry-wide focus on hotel safety and security for all guests is encouraging.”

Taking Responsibility

When it comes to personal safety, the onus is to a large extent on female travelers themselves. One option is to take a safety or martial arts type course — not necessarily because it will turn students into Bruce Lee equivalents.

“It probably won’t make them less vulnerable to being targeted in the first place,” Harwood says, “but it may give them more options for dealing with a potential assailant. It may make them feel more confident in themselves, and this confidence may be transmitted in such a way as to make them appear less of an easy target.”

Morgan cautions that in most cases women should not fight back and should simply hand over their property. However, she adds, “Taking a physical safety class could help allay the potential to panic. Keeping one’s wits about them in the event of an emergency is key; training is always beneficial.”

Wilk believes in travel safety education and training. “I have seen the positive impact of travel safety training for our employees and have experienced it myself, most recently on a trip overseas when I was able to apply recent training to an unplanned situation that could have escalated quickly to be unsafe. Preparation pays for itself, and as my grandmother used to say, ‘An ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure.’ ”

Training on Cultural Norms

In the end, it comes down being well prepared before ever leaving home. “Female travelers need to know what the cultural norms are, especially if traveling for business,” Morgan says. “Is it appropriate to shake a man’s hand? Should she look a business contact in the eye? What hand do you eat with? These are all things that should be researched ahead of time to make the most of the business relationship.”

Harwood would like to see companies provide guidance for employees on local customs and the business environment, such as in pre-travel training sessions. “For example, are there specific dress requirements: do knees, shoulders, arms or hair have to be covered? Are there restrictions around working or interacting with members of the opposite sex, such as shaking hands or being alone in a car? Who can the employee contact in case of emergency or incident? In certain countries, for example, reporting sexual assault to the police can actually make you guilty of a crime yourself.”

Wilk advises making sure mobile phone and data plans are activated for international coverage, and pre-programming company resources for security and emergency medical assistance into mobile devices. “Over 50 percent of travelers will experience some type of illness or injury on an international business trip,” she notes. “Knowing in advance who to call for help is critical.” C&IT

Attendees gather around a conference table to assemble a “Cut & Create Salad” with local greens and more.

Toni Zoblotsky is director of B2B marketing at Hilton Worldwide, responsible for leading teams that deliver quality creative assets to elevate the client experience and perception of the Hilton portfolio. As part of this overall effort, Toni helped bring to life the Meet With Purpose program. Launched corporately in 2015, the program offers socially and environmentally responsible ways for meeting planners to reduce waste, improve efficiencies and incorporate healthy eating and well-being into their meetings to enhance the attendee experience and support their own corporate responsibility goals. Always one to stretch herself with new challenges, Toni enjoys participating in yoga several times a week and hopes to become teacher-certified in 2017.

As someone who has worked hard to lose 40 pounds over the last two years, I know it’s a struggle to eat well when traveling for business. It’s easy to deviate from a healthful regimen and resort to splurging and snacking when you’re tired and far from your kitchen. I’m sure you’ll likely agree!

In my role as director of B2B Marketing at Hilton, and as an attendee of many meetings throughout my career, I am especially attuned to the desire of business guests and meeting attendees to pay attention to their weight, exercise regimen and their overall stress levels. That proves especially true come new year when many of us make — and try hard not to break — our 2017 resolutions about exercise and diet habits.

“We made it our mission to define the key details that would make attendees happier, healthier and more productive.”

Of the most common New Year’s resolutions, the top is lose weight, with another popular goal to stay fit and healthy. But only 8 percent of people actually achieve and maintain these aspirations. Oftentimes it’s because routines become hectic, and business trips, conventions and corporate meetings can turn into the busiest of days.

A recent Hilton survey of meeting attendees underscores this challenge. Over half of our survey respondents said they pay attention to what they eat and make sure to exercise in their daily lives, but most were unsatisfied with the ability to maintain this lifestyle while attending meetings at hotels. In fact, 52 percent said they ate a meal or snack they didn’t want because a better option wasn’t available. Plus, 39 percent reported falling asleep or being drowsy during meetings.

Of course, meetings are vital for business success. And for attendees to contribute and collaborate in the most fruitful way, they need to be in their element, feeling comfortable and refreshed. With my own experiences in mind, we at Hilton made it a pet project to be the change that others desired to see in this industry. We launched Meet With Purpose.

It provides meeting and event professionals with ideas that pump up energy and boost creative thinking. They can make nutritious meals and snacks and exercise breaks as much of a priority as the meeting agenda. We made it our mission to define the key details that would make attendees happier, healthier and more productive while convening for their business conference or event at our properties.

In short, when it comes to food, we strive to instill a “quality over quantity” mindset. Teaming with meeting planners, our executive chefs source ingredients locally and seasonally. We fight food fatigue with items high in protein that keep attendees alert and able to concentrate. Then we team the nutritious and tasty meal offerings with common fitness activities that can be built into a meeting agenda, such as walking and gentle yoga.

One marquee offering embodying wellness and health is our Yoga & Yogurt menu item. It features a morning yoga session followed by a nutritious and delicious yogurt parfait bar. Our “Cut and Create Salad” menu item is another option that delivers nutrition-packed dishes. With scissors in hand, meeting attendees prepare their meal from a unique, custom-made display of local greens and accoutrements — items such as edamame, pickled papaya, jicama and polenta croutons — placed along the center of a conference table.

Reflecting on my own weight-loss pursuit, and based on the positive reception and feedback about Meet With Purpose we’ve heard from meeting planners and attendees, my team and I have seen a variety of ways meeting planners can help make meetings healthier, more active and productive.

Below are 10 simple, effective tips we encourage meeting planners to consider when mapping their next agenda:

1. Start early. Offer attendees an early hike or walk before the meeting begins — but build it into the agenda so they don’t feel like they have to set an extra alarm. Pair it with a nutritious offering of fruit, grain cereals and other healthful breakfast offerings including juices readily available in the meeting room.

2. Get outdoors. Provide convenient access to outdoor space. If attendees will be splitting into breakout groups, encourage them to meet outside. Mix meetings with outdoor activities — whether time for a swim, a tennis match or any walking paths developed and recommended by the hotel.

3. Take short breaks. Plan for opportunities where attendees can switch seats and walk around during meetings. Incorporate shorter breaks more often vs. a few longer breaks. Incorporate a stretching exercise mid-morning or afternoon.

4. Create a “fit” environment. Accessorize the meeting space with “fit” gear such as standing tables, exercise balls and yoga mats. Encourage attendees to sit on the floor, the chair-balls or stand so they’re more comfortable. Consider setting up a mindfulness booth, perhaps incorporating massage chairs or headsets with relaxing music at a busy convention or outside a packed ballroom space.

5. Choose comfy. Relax the dress code, allowing for more comfortable clothes and shoes so attendees can use down time to walk around.

6. Find fitness time. Allot time in the schedule for, perhaps, a 15-minute yoga class or light jog. Find a local fitness instructor to come and teach a class. If you’re in a big conference room or ballroom, lots of room exists for activity. Be sure to have lots of water on hand and some healthful snacks.

7. Make it a game. Since iPhones have a health app and other fitness-tracking devices are popular, plan a game or friendly competition among attendees to see who can accumulate the most steps during the meetings.

8. Treat the team. Consult with the hotel’s spa to see if you can get special promotions for attendees. Plan a game or two of bowling at a nearby facility.

9. Beautify the buffet. If you do opt into a buffet, make it colorful and healthful with different lettuces, vegetables and sides. Eat the rainbow as they say! Attendees can still make choices according to their liking, and they’ll feel satisfied but not stuffed. Plus, a beautiful spread or individual plate makes for a perfect Instagram about the meeting!

10. Support local purveyors. Attendees are always looking for a way to immerse themselves in a local city or region when traveling on business. Is there a local farm that makes great jam, or is the hotel near a fish market? Work with your venue to see what’s fresh and local to their community and how you can impress and nourish attendees with healthful, homegrown menus.

Good luck in reaching your 2017 resolutions as it applies to ensuring that your meetings keep participants engaged via action-packed meals and movement. And don’t forget to survey attendees after an event to gauge what they liked best and incorporate their satisfaction drivers into future meetings. C&IT

Cisco Live 2016, hosted by several MGM Resorts International properties, including T-Mobile Arena, attracted 28,000 attendees. Credits: Cisco Live

Catering to almost 22,000 meetings annually that draw anywhere from a few dozen attendees to the more than 165,000 that attend the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), it probably comes as no surprise that Las Vegas was recently named the World’s Leading Meetings & Conference Destination for 2016 by the World Travel Awards — for the fourth year in a row.

What’s more, for the third consecutive year, Las Vegas continued historic visitation growth, setting a new all-time record of 42.9 million visitors in 2016, surpassing 2015’s record-setting 42.3 million.

“Las Vegas continues to see increased interest in the destination, and we are excited to announce that once again we are celebrating record visitation,” said Rossi Ralenkotter, president/CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority in a statement. “Together with our resort partners, we look forward to aggressively marketing the destination around the world to continue attracting more visitors and break the record again this year.”

In 2017, the LVCVA is projecting another record, surpassing 43 million visitors for the first time.

Home to three of the country’s 10 largest convention venues, the city is built to host, offering almost 150,000 hotel rooms, and with 236,000 employees dedicated to the resort industry.

The Entertainment Capital of the World

But it’s also designed to entertain, and that’s one big reason Cisco Live, an education and training event for IT, networking and communications professionals, hosts its annual event in Las Vegas.

“No one does ‘over the top’ like Vegas — and they do this all the time,” says Heather Henderson Thomas, CSEP, senior manager, strategic operations for Cisco Live. While Las Vegas’ vast hotel inventory at various price points and ease of air travel were important factors for the July 2016 event, Thomas notes that the city is home to an extensive theatrical labor pool, which helps make big show/keynote productions easier to manage.

“Nobody puts on a show quite like Vegas,” explains Thomas. “There are limitless amounts of entertainment and resources in the area, and our partnership with MGM Resorts International allows us to showcase Cisco technology at work — not only in the Mandalay Bay Convention Center but also at the MGM Grand as well as the T-Mobile Arena. Plus, MGM has their own in-house events company with a stellar inventory of props and services. An in-house program can be very self-contained and offers pretty much one-stop shopping for all event services.”

Cisco Live has used Mandalay Bay Convention Center as its host venue since 2010. With 28,000 attending, the event uses six properties to house attendees — Mandalay Bay, Delano, Luxor, MGM Grand, Bellagio and the Cosmopolitan. But the venue is large enough to be able to handle a majority of the program. Thomas says this makes for a different attendee experience than in other cities where Cisco is required to create more of a campus atmosphere.

“The unique thing about Vegas is having large hotel blocks literally under the same roof as the convention space,” explains Thomas. “The upside is ease of access for those staying at the host properties. There’s hotel-caliber food and the efficiency of working with just one or two venues vs. multiple. The downside is you don’t really get to take people outside or be a part of a city takeover. In Vegas, we do take over two mega properties, but not the entire city center as we might in other destinations.

“I love the solution-finding approach that our venue team brings to the table. As I often say to my own internal and supplier partner teams, ‘there are no challenges in what we do, only opportunities to prove how darn good we are at our jobs.’ I think our local Mandalay Bay and MGM team epitomizes that. We’ve had the same POC in the 11-plus years I’ve been on the project. That consistency, dedication to our collective success, and an all-around spirit of hospitality is what sets them apart. Pretty much anything is possible in Vegas — when you need VIP experiences, they are the pros.”

Thomas cites two main hurdles she faces when setting her event in Las Vegas. “The main challenge we experience is in relation to fees. Vegas is a resort town and charges resort pricing. While it’s inexpensive for the attendees to travel there, it’s not the least expensive from a show management perspective due to the caliber of the food, exclusive providers in certain spaces for labor, exclusives on electrical, etc. It varies from venue to venue, but it’s something to be aware of.

“Another challenge is creating a community feeling in such a large environment. Typically, Cisco Live takes over an urban setting in our other host cities. In Vegas, we are one of many things happening at any given time, and there are also multiple entertainment options to distract attendees. It’s a balance.

“But overall Vegas is a preferred destination for our customers and that’s what matters most,” adds Thomas.

Banking on happy clients like Cisco, the city is laying the groundwork for continued tourism growth, particularly for the meetings and convention industry. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) says initial numbers show trade show attendance up 8.7 percent for 2016, and in October the Nevada legislature authorized a $1.4 billion expansion and improvement project for the Las Vegas Convention Center. An early 2018 groundbreaking for the new hall is anticipated, to add 600,000 sf of additional exhibit space.

But this year will see plenty of action as well. In December, Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Las Vegas added almost 18,000 sf of meeting and convention space, bringing the venue to nearly 110,000 sf total. The fully functional Business Center has been relocated, and the Artist Ballroom has been expanded to 28,000 sf with ceiling heights up to 22 feet, allowing for eight separate configurations. The resort has maximized its flexibility for meeting planners to customize events — from large, premium trade shows and corporate gatherings to intimate executive meetings and incentive experiences.

Hard Rock has just finished the first phase of a $13 million refresh inside its 640-room Casino Tower. Standard rooms were first in line for the facelift, while 65 luxury suites will get their due during a second phase of the remodel, which includes sleek new furnishings, quartz countertops, oversized bathrooms with marble flooring, lighted makeup mirrors and USB ports throughout. Standard amenities include a mini bar, 55-inch high-def TVs and exclusive bath products. Each room is also equipped with French doors that open to pool or city views.

Also in December, W Hotels Worldwide launched its first flag in Sin City, taking one tower of the three-year-old SLS Las Vegas to create a hotel-within-a-hotel experience, the W Las Vegas. The brand’s signature Living Room greets visitors with a nod to both the desert setting and the location’s historic original incarnation as the Sahara Hotel and Casino, while the 289 guest rooms received a refresh by Philippe Starck in collaboration with designer Gensler.

Of note for meeting planners, in March 15,000 sf of new, state-of-the-art meeting and event space will open at the W Las Vegas, supplementing the 80,000 sf of flexible meeting space at the adjacent SLS Las Vegas.  Guests at the W Las Vegas will enjoy full room charging privileges throughout the SLS property, which includes the casino, three nightclubs, and seven restaurants, including Bazaar Meat by José Andrés, an avant-garde interpretation of the classic Las Vegas steakhouse.

The Complete Package

For Mindy Fielman, vice president of trade shows and special events for diamond brand Hearts on Fire, Las Vegas is “all about the energy. Today, there is not another destination that offers the ‘complete’ package we are looking for.”

The package Fielman seeks includes an experienced staff, state-of-the-art meeting space, well-appointed guest rooms with current technology, amazing culinary options and a wide variety of entertainment options. And it was the Wynn/Encore complex that has delivered the sophisticated environment Hearts on Fire University seeks for its biennial corporate educational conference that draws up to 800 attendees. The company used Wynn/Encore for its October 2015 event and is set to return in 2017.

“We chose them because of the facility, staff, previous experience and the on-property options,” Fielman explains. “The ability to keep the group cohesive and on-property is a key factor for selecting a venue for this conference. Wynn/Encore offers a significant number of outstanding options for special events; the food (both banquet and restaurant) quality is top-notch. The property is elegant, well designed for good event flow.”

She has high praise for the sales and conference service team. “They treat you and your business with the utmost importance, and each site, each event or meeting as if they are earning that business every time you’re there. They are very collaborative.”

Fielman also cites the longevity and expertise of the Wynn team. “So many of the staff have been with the hotel since the opening — many have been with Mr. Wynn since the beginning. This commitment, background, training, etc. makes a big difference in the level of service. All of the teams and departments receive the same customer service and property training, and it clearly shows in their work product — they are interconnected and work for your success as an event or meeting planner.”

She provided several examples of management’s attention to detail, including a food issue that was swiftly ironed out. “Our banquet captain noticed that our vegetarian meals looked like they were potentially wrong for an important group of clients from India. By the time I was informed, the issue was already brought to the attention of the catering manager and the chef. Not only was it resolved in a minimal amount of time, but the management team was made aware and they came to follow up.”

Fielman notes that, in Las Vegas, there is competition among high-end properties where she can base a sophisticated meeting.

“But as a meeting planner, the things I consider important and unique to Wynn Las Vegas are how attendees can access the meeting and conference space without meandering through the casino or long shopping promenades. The guest room elevators are closely located to conference access, and the conference space is contiguous and easy for attendees to navigate.

“I love that each meeting room at Wynn has a patio with natural light and fresh air — this is unique for Vegas,” Fielman continues. “The larger meeting rooms have butlers’ pantries to facilitate food service. And the catering menus are unique and fun; food quality and presentation are excellent. Their menus offer quite a bit of flexibility as well as cost-effective pricing options such as Thai Thursdays or Falafel Fridays (certain menus come with a lower price on select days).”

North by Northwest

Affectionately called “the biggest little city in the world,” Reno, Nevada, is better known today for the region encompassing the peerless, alpine Lake Tahoe, which straddles the border of Nevada and California. Combined, Reno and Tahoe offer a one-two punch for meetings aiming to incorporate spectacular natural surroundings as a backdrop. Within a one-hour drive of Reno you’ll find 18 ski resorts, fishing and boating, mountain biking and hiking trails, and the Truckee River runs right through downtown Reno.

Plus, with 20,000 hotel rooms competing for your business, meeting costs average 30 percent below that of comparable destinations (one key to savings: complimentary airport shuttles serve many downtown Reno properties).

These were among the reasons Anastasia DeFrancesco, global account executive for ConferenceDirect, set her sights on Reno for a 370-person gathering of Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics in May. The meeting will be held at Peppermill Resort Spa Casino, a 1,623-room hotel that celebrated its 45th anniversary in 2016 with a redesign of its Edge Nightclub; other areas of the hotel also received a facelift, including its convention space.

“Reno is not Las Vegas’ baby sister but its own big brother in Nevada, with lots of Western culture and gold rush history,” says DeFrancesco. “It has a western Nevada feel with unique restaurants — we didn’t notice any chain restaurants, which we loved. Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics is looking for experiences and fun destinations that offer a great hotel but also activities for them to enjoy after each day of meetings. Plus, Lake Tahoe is 45 minutes away, offering a completely different landscape with even more culture and history. It’s a great option for attendee pre or post trips.”

Although DeFrancesco notes that airlift will be more challenging for those on the East Coast, this hassle is mitigated in part by the savings gained by holding the meeting during shoulder season.

“Guest room costs were very attractive. If you can go in an ‘off’ season, which is still warm, you will show tremendous cost savings on the guest room rate, which just allows more to be spent on experiences and food and beverage.”

Some groups head directly to Lake Tahoe, where additional meeting options are found, such as the 422-room Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe Resort, Spa and Casino. Here, the American Boiler Manufacturer’s Association (ABMA) held their annual meeting for 200 last June. It was a return visit for the group, which held a meeting here in 2012.

“We quickly knew we needed to rebook,” says Cheryl Jamall, director of meetings for the group. “Reno-Tahoe is one of the most beautiful places you will ever see. Our attendees are world travelers, and they are still talking about it. It’s an easy drive from the airport up to the lake and the scenic views will take your breath away.”

Jamall says the Hyatt Regency location — on the lake, with its own beach — is a big part of the attraction, but so is the creativity and teamwork of the staff at the resort. “The convention service staff felt like a part of the ABMA staff, providing flawless execution, and the AV went off without a hitch,” she adds. The conference center encompasses 65,000 sf of meeting space, almost a third of which is indoors, and the resort has a 55-foot catamaran, the Sierra Cloud — perfect for smaller groups.

“The food was just great every day, and they provided us real variety, even in the catered menus,” she adds. “On very short notice, the chef worked with us to design a variety of meal options for our vegan and gluten-free attendees who were last-minute registrants. And the pastry chef and their team did a bang-up job with our annual Dessert Social — so much so that I am full just thinking about it!”

Jamall provided a couple of minor cautions about planning a meeting at Lake Tahoe, starting with the Tahoe’s 6,224-foot elevation (“water is your best friend” for conquering the altitude). She also noted that there was no FedEx/Kinko’s at Tahoe, but Reno was just a 40-minute drive away. Nonetheless, Jamall provided perhaps the best kind of endorsement a meeting planner could ever share.

“If your attendees love being outdoors, Tahoe is the place for you. I’m thinking about vacationing here next summer so that I can fully enjoy it without working.”

New and Noteworthy Las Vegas

Wynn Las Vegas announced plans to equip all 4,748 hotel rooms with Echo, Amazon’s hands-free, voice-controlled speaker. The resort says installation of the technology, which began with suites in December, is a worldwide industry first, allowing guests to control various hotel room features with a series of voice commands via Alexa, the brain behind Echo.  Alexa will be fully operational in all guest rooms by summer 2017, and will initially control room lights, room temperature, drapery and the television. Wynn expects to add features such as personal assistant functions in the future.

Rí Rá Las Vegas, the Irish pub inside The Shoppes at Mandalay Place, has unveiled The Bordello, a new event space located at the back of the pub behind a secluded hallway. The space expands Rí Rá’s overall size to 11,000 sf and provides guests with a new option for private parties and events. The Bordello is suitably decorated with plush velvet curtains, chandeliers, Victorian red and gold interiors, lounge-style furniture and dim lighting. The room spans more than 1,400 sf, allowing seating for up to 64 guests dining or up to 100 reception-style, and catering options such as plated dinners, buffets and cocktail receptions are available.

While Las Vegas does its best to keep things fresh, the city is a return destination for many meeting attendees. Given the abundance of culinary hot spots, why not spice things up with a progressive dinner by Lip Smacking Foodie Tours? Groups of up to 100 are escorted on a custom tour to visit five of the top restaurants along The Strip or downtown. Three or four signature dishes are offered at each, leavened by a guided sightseeing tour on foot. It’s an evening away from the usual distractions of a convention setting, and the mix-and-mingle environment helps foster multiple interactions. Rates start at $125 per person; more information: www.vegasfoodietour.com.

Aria Resort & Casino is in the midst of a major expansion of its LEED Gold-certified convention center. The $154 million project will deliver an additional 200,000 sf of technologically advanced, flexible meeting space across four stories, highlighted by indoor/open-air spaces and a glass-enclosed venue with views of The Park and the new T-Mobile Arena. With the completion of the expansion, Aria will feature more than 500,000 sf of meeting space. Construction began in May 2016 with anticipated completion in February 2018. The resort also opened Burger Lounge, an eco-conscious burger chain from Southern California offering an elevated, fast-casual concept to the resort’s culinary portfolio. Jewel Nightclub, a 24,000-sf nightlife destination by global hospitality company Hakkasan Group, opened in May. The nightclub merges the intimate, exclusive atmosphere of the physical environment with state-of-the-art LED technology to deliver an immersive, dynamic and celebratory experience.

Topgolf International Inc. opened its state-of-the-art flagship location in May at MGM Grand on the Las Vegas Strip. Topgolf offering competitive golfing games for all ages and skill levels and advanced technology to track the accuracy and distance of players’ shots. The four-level, 105,000-sf Topgolf Las Vegas sits on eight acres and overlooks a 215-yard outfield.

Masaharu Morimoto, renowned Japanese chef and star of Food Network’s “Iron Chef America,” recently opened his contemporary Japanese restaurant at MGM Grand in fall 2016. Morimoto Las Vegas is only the second Morimoto in the world to offer Teppanyaki style dining (also known as Hibachi), a style of Japanese cuisine where guests are able to experience the chef create a tantalizing meal before their eyes on a hot iron plate.

Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino completed in April the final phase of its resort-wide remodel of more than 3,000 guest rooms and suites. Created by the MGM Resorts International Design Group, the redesigned rooms and suites feature refreshing color palettes and modern designs in three distinct collections: the Resort Collection, the Suite Collection and the Luxury Collection. This marks the conclusion of an approximately $100 million remodel that began in 2015.

Mandalay Bay last January expanded its convention center with the addition of more than 350,000 sf of exhibit space to the existing 1.7 million sf of space.

The Venetian, The Palazzo and Sands Expo, in partnership with Zappos, debuted a first-of-its-kind coworking space in the heart of The Venetian/The Palazzo Congress Center. The 1,170-sf pop-up lounge will offer space to recharge, huddle areas for collaboration and a conference room for small meetings. The space is enclosed for noise management, but also is transparent to invite guests to come inside and take advantage of the amenities. Amenities in the pop-up lounge include Wi-Fi, charging stations, four private phone rooms and a private conference room that seats six.

Sir Rod Stewart’s hit Las Vegas residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, added seven more performances scheduled March 15 through April 1, 2017 due to popular demand. Since its debut in 2011, “Rod Stewart: The Hits.” has been experienced by a half million fans and continues to be one of the best reviewed and must-see shows on the Las Vegas Strip.

Speedvegas is the new 100-acre motorsports complex in Las Vegas. Guests at Speedvegas experience the world’s most sought-after muscle cars and exotic supercars from Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Audi, Corvette and more. The $30 million Speedvegas experience features an impressive 1.5 mile (2.4 km) Formula One-inspired racetrack comparable to top circuits in the world and includes 12 sweeping turns, 20-degree banked turns, 60 feet of total elevation change and a half-mile straightaway. In addition, the 20,000-sf, two-story welcome center features indoor and outdoor observation decks, food and beverage selections at a café, meetings and event space, and much more.

The Mob Museum, The National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, will mark its fifth anniversary with a series of celebratory events in February. The Mob Museum welcomed more than 1.3 million visitors from all 50 states and 36 countries, injected more than $20.5 million annually into the downtown economy — all while accumulating numerous awards and accolades. The museum will unveil a new, permanent St. Valentine’s Day massacre exhibit that includes bullets removed from the bodies of the seven victims, bullet fragments and cartridge cases retrieved from the garage floor as well as test bullets fired from the Tommy guns, which later proved to have been used in the massacre. In addition, the display features original coroner’s documents concerning the victims and reports prepared by Dr. Calvin Goddard, a forensic scientist specializing in ballistics, who used pioneering ballistics testing techniques to identify the weapons used in the crime.

MEET Las Vegas, a one-of-a-kind venue for hosting dynamic events, features easy plug-and-work connectivity, color-changing lighting systems and gigabit-speed network capability with wireless connectivity for more than 2,000 devices, based on configuration. The unique venue is a 40,000-sf, three-story event and exhibition space in the heart of historic downtown Las Vegas, and is an ideal space for fully customized branding opportunities.

The technology includes AV TeleData tieline connectivity plates every 10 feet on the first floor and multiple plates in every other meeting space as well as universal plug-and-work capability, from computer to iPods to high-definition media to DVD and beyond. Fiber optics technology also is wired into the building and between floors, and customizable digital signage opportunities are available throughout the interior space. Custom lighting and much more is available.

New and Noteworthy in Reno-Tahoe

In Reno, the former Siena Hotel is being transformed into the 214-room Renaissance Reno Hotel, scheduled to open March 2017. Renaissance Reno will be the first non-gaming, branded full-service luxury hotel in Reno’s history. Following an extensive renovation inside and out, the hotel will be “classically styled with touches of whimsy in warm, vibrant colors,” and will feature upscale restaurants showcasing local flavors. Set alongside the Truckee River, the Renaissance Reno will offer 13,198 sf of event space, composed of eight rooms (the largest will have a capacity of 650).  A full-service spa, fitness center and pool will round out the facilities, targeting both business and leisure guests.

Following an expansion which doubled its room inventory, Reno’s Whitney Peak Hotel has now doubled its meeting space. The renovation project, which encompasses the entire third floor of the hotel, created nearly 12,000 sf of new event and meeting space, with air walls to subdivide the space into eight separate areas, ranging from 350 sf to a ballroom that is just under 5,000 sf. Whitney Peak also features Cargo Concert Hall, a state-of-the-art live music venue; and BaseCamp, a 7,000-sf indoor bouldering park that is home to the world’s tallest exterior climbing wall.

Impact Experiences are the latest addition to the meeting agenda at The Ritz-Carlton, Lake Tahoe. Designed as a way for groups to give back to the local community, the activities are social and environmental in nature — ideal for groups that want to support efforts in child well-being or environmental responsibility. Among the on-property activities that can be incorporated during lunch breaks or receptions are partnering with the resort’s culinary team to prepare a regional dish for a local hunger relief organization, or assembling school supplies in backpacks for donation to students threatened by poverty. Additionally, offsite Signature Impact Experiences are available for outdoor teambuilding, such as assisting in the reforestation of Lake Tahoe’s native sugar pine trees or helping to preserve the lake’s famed deep blue waters through invasive-species monitoring and trail restorations, and water-quality improvements. C&IT

Hilton Chicago executive chef Mario Garcia says more adventurous cuisine and presentations — for example, using whole animals like this whole pig at a taco action station — are trending. Credits: Hilton Chicago

One of the biggest trends in F&B these days is not actually about the food. It’s about how the food is presented and displayed.

“It’s about creating an experience,” says Mario Garcia, executive chef at Hilton Chicago. “The Food Network, Anthony Bourdain and social media have collectively changed the expectation for group meals.”

Naturally, the food also matters, and thanks to TV food shows and celebrity chefs, we’re all foodies now, and that dictates what we want. “Attendees want a foodie experience built around creativity, flavor, balance, health options and an ever-increasing number of dietary restrictions and personal preferences,” Garcia says.

Alexander deHilster, event design manager with Meetings & Incentives Worldwide Inc., set two events in the Conrad Suite at Hilton Chicago last fall, the first for a corporate real estate firm, the second for a global consulting firm. “The room itself was for me initially the biggest draw,” he says.

But in the end it was the innovative execution that wowed him. “From the gorgeous, artfully passed miniature hors d’oeuvres to the unusual serving dishes such as the tins, the bamboo steamer and the salad served in an acrylic ball, to the miniature pans with a nearly one-bite meal in each, the hotel went out of its way.”

The Wow Factor Challenge

It was all part of creating a full-on experience for clients who’ve been there, done that. “Those clients want more interesting flavors, more unusual dishes and more creative ways of displaying, plating and preparing dishes, and they’re willing to pay for it,” deHilster says. “Many of our clients have seen and done it all, so it’s a challenge to come up with the next wow factor. Hotels in general seem to have the least wow factor, possibly because they’re trying to keep it safe in order to please all.”

But the Hilton Chicago surpassed expectations, particularly for the second event. Clear communication was one key.

“(Clients who’ve been there done that) want more interesting flavors, more unusual dishes and more creative ways of displaying, plating and preparing dishes, and they’re willing to pay for it.”
— Alexander deHilster

“As I was adamant with the client that the dinner should be at the Conrad Suite,” deHilster says, “my instructions to the hotel were ‘think out-of-the-box.’ Originally the dinner was going to be a seated affair for 40, which changed just three to four days ahead to a buffet station for 60. The hotel staff had no time to provide us with menu suggestions so we didn’t know what we would be walking into. Needless to say, they pulled through and blew us away. We’re considering taking the 2018 holiday event from an offsite property with outside catering back to the hotel.”

While catering staff and chefs have become increasingly creative in presentation and execution, clients, too, have changed. In addition to a continued focus on sustainable and local sourcing, Garcia says, “Groups are now more open to experiencing alternatives in F&B — different cuts of meat, different types of fish, different veggies and more ethnic items.”

Some experts believe that new openness to unfamiliar tastes and cuisines can be attributed to millennials, with Generation Z right behind them. They appear more adventurous in terms of food than their older counterparts, and that’s driving American cuisine toward a new “melting pot” sensibility that embraces a multitude of cuisines. That trend also exists within a host of other trends.

At the Hilton Chicago, Garcia says action station variations are very popular, “such as Peking duck taco stations, made-to-order steam-bun stations and made-to-order pasta stations with made-to-order gnocchi or ravioli.” Also trending: presentation of whole animals such as whole pig, whole lamb or whole roasted groupers (20 lbs and up), along with small-plate variations and exotic fruit desserts made with passion fruit, quince, kiwi, guava and lychee.

The art of presentation and the ultimate experience is so integral to today’s corporate events that Rosewood Sand Hill in California’s Silicon Valley launched its own Event Studio, in collaboration with celebrity event planner Colin Cowie, to provide planners with one-stop shopping and design assistance for experiential, curated, bespoke events in the region. Hundreds of design elements are locally sourced, and planners can incorporate detailed branding options, such as personalized M&Ms in corporate colors, as well as local foods, into the mix to create exactly the right experience.

Locavore Trend

While the concept of focusing on local purveyors is hardly new, it continues to evolve, for example in combination with less familiar and ethnic foods. One ethnic food making a splash on the F&B scene is Caribbean Sea cuisine, local not just for island resorts but also for many Florida mainland hotels.

At St. Joe Club & Resorts on Florida’s northwest Emerald Coast, corporate executive chef Todd Rogers notes that all seafood is caught locally and stars in such (unusual or ethnic) dishes as grilled octopus with Cuban cooked plantains and Gulf-caught grilled cobia. Rogers says he even gets a call from the boat when a line-caught tuna is landed for the resort’s sushi bar.

St. Joe Club & Resorts also works with a local farmer who grows only for the property and only certified organic herbs and vegetables. These kinds of relationships go far beyond buyer and seller for many chefs and growers these days, another aspect of the evolving locavore trend. “We have been to his farm to help harvest. It is way out there in the middle of nowhere, and we get there by bumpy red-clay roads with no signs or a GPS, so it’s hard to find,” Rogers says.

Pick or Catch Your Own

More often these days, attendees also have direct access to the foods they will consume. For example, groups continue making an intimate, often hands-on connection to local foods as hotels provide programs connecting attendees with gardens and farms — often right on property. And that trend often combines with the ever-evolving craft cocktail movement as well as health and wellness at spas.

Attendees in Fort Lauderdale Marriott Harbor Beach Resort’s mojito mixology classes start in the hotel’s herb garden to handpick mint they’ll muddle into their mojitos. At the JW Marriott Grand Rapids in Michigan, groups pick pineapple sage from the resort’s outdoor garden and living wall to create a pineapple sage mojito. Both the Waldorf Astoria Orlando and nearby Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek give guests a chance to pick and create their own salads, while the Hilton West Palm Beach offers groups an experiential mason-jar class in which participants pick fruit from the hotel’s potted orange trees and create a citrus dressing.

That hands-on experience is sea worthy, too. Executive chef Pedro Abascal at Thompson Playa del Carmen in Mexico takes attendees on a “catch your own catch of the day” experience with local fishermen. Afterward, the catch can be grilled or made into ceviche or sushi for the group’s dinner.

At the Clift in San Francisco, combined trends includes bees, which made an entrée into corporate events in recent years as hotels began managing their own hives on rooftops across the country. That trend not only continues but thrives as awareness about the importance of bees and their dwindling numbers increases. The Clift’s Rooftop Bee Sanctuary originally housed 100,000 bees. Today, it’s home to 800,000, and the hotel continues to artfully introduce honey into menus that highlight several F&B trends, including creative craft cocktails.

The hotel’s mixologists experiment with intriguing flavor combinations for their cocktails, often using on-property ingredients including honey. The 49er Tea Time, for example, combines black-tea-infused whiskey with housemade honey syrup and lemon for a cocktail that melds local ingredients with a nod to another local element, history. Patrons also can try a housemade lavender-infused gin with the honey syrup, lemon juice and lavender bitters.

The small-plates trend also is alive and well, and the Clift uses its honey and cocktail herb garden to create dishes such as compressed watermelon salad with lavender-infused honey, and an ever-changing tapas platter served with house honey.

At Cedarbrook Lodge, located on 18 acres just a mile from the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the Copperleaf Restaurant and the hotel’s spa work together to offer Taste & Touch, a philosophy and program that combines health and wellness, and a focus on local foods and ingredients from the gardens, fields and forests of the Northwest for both F&B and spa patrons. “Taste & Touch is the pinnacle of the farm-to-table, farm-to-face and locavore movements,” says Copperleaf Culinary Director Roy Breiman. “We’re blessed with an incredible natural bounty here in the Pacific Northwest, and this series represents a lifetime of learning and a desire to see people fully immerse themselves in all things that nourish, both inside and out.”

Joan Higdon, spa director, agrees, referencing seasonal highlights. “Taste & Touch marries the senses to jointly experience the replenishing powers of our homegrown botanicals, juicy heirloom tomatoes, warming ginger root and spices of the holiday season.”

Taste & Touch can be customized for corporate meeting groups: Planners can choose to include parts of the program they like, such as set meals or jet-set therapies that incorporate the seasonal ingredients being featured.

Taking a cue from the wine industry, Cedarbrook Lodge points to the particular terroir from which its inventive cuisine and spa ingredients and treatments are derived, a terroir the lodge describes as “fueled by an enriched climate that creates a cohesive, artfully crafted experience unique to the region.” For both culinary and spa teams, it’s all about sourcing from small-scale, local artisans who produce sustainable, often organic products that help create that all-important experience.

Meet With Purpose

The trend toward healthful, more sustainable meetings also continues. In September, Hilton Worldwide launched the next iteration of its Meet With Purpose program. It was prompted in part by the results of a May global survey conducted by Hilton that found, not surprisingly, that attendees struggle to focus in the afternoons, often thanks to heavy lunches, no chance to exercise and a letdown after the high of sugary break foods.

One in three respondents said they’re drowsy in the afternoons during conferences, with 2–4 p.m. the least productive time period. Fully half of all respondents said they were not satisfied with their ability to stay on track with diets or normal eating and exercise during conferences and seven out of 10 said they consider good diet and exercise an important part of daily living. When asked how to promote a more satisfying meeting experience, 46 percent were in favor of fitness activities in the local area, such as guided walks or runs, and the same number thought spa promotions to unwind after meetings would be helpful. As for food, 52 percent voted for balanced menu options, including locally sourced and seasonal ingredients.

If these options are available, the survey found that four out of five attendees would be more likely to participate and to be attentive during sessions, which would increase overall meeting satisfaction and, as a result, ROI.

Hilton Worldwide took that information and created combination menus of healthful foods paired with activities, such as Yogurt & Yoga, a 50-minute, instructor-led yoga class paired with a menu featuring such items as watermelon, yuzu and mint salad with citrus-basil dressing; house-made granola with nuts; a chef’s choice of protein and savory; and seasonal fruit-infused yogurt. Other activities on offer: a one- or two-mile fun run or power walk and a 25-minute stretch session. Hilton’s Meditative Moment pairs a 10-minute meditation session with a customizable lean protein plus veggies or a fruit smoothie. Health and wellness menus are available at more than 40 Hilton hotels in the United States, a clear mandate for wellness and healthful food trends at meetings.

More Trends

When it comes to trends directly related to the dishes appearing on menus for 2017, Elizabeth Blau, James Beard semifinalist and investor on the “Restaurant Startup,” the CNBC television show, has an expert take on what we’re likely to see. The Las Vegas restaurateur and founder/CEO of Blau & Associates, a strategic restaurant planning and development company, is tuned into the foods American diners want as well as the innovations of the country’s most promising chefs. Among the trends on her list: ancient grains and seeds “introducing unique and deep flavors” in such dishes as savory granolas and alternative risottos.

Chef-focused delivery is another trend. “2016 was the year of the chef-driven, fast casual concept,” she says, “or fine casual, and that is a great thing — scaling high-quality food that is created with the consumer in mind but also our supply chains. This year I am excited about chefs moving their restaurants out of storefronts and onto apps. From home meal replacement options to the best lunch delivery in New York City, chefs are fighting back on some of the litany of operational challenges they face with exciting and innovative combinations of technology and limited-edition menu items.”

This delivery focus may allow planners more flexibility to bring the cuisine of top chefs into corporate boardrooms and other non-restaurant or hotel venues where meetings take place.

One Menu a Day

Rising rents and increased labor costs are driving additional restaurant trends. Solution: One Menu a Day. According to Blau, more and more chefs are offering a single menu every day and changing it every day. Whether that’s making chefs’ lives easier or harder is unclear. But either way, Blau says, “They are making ours more delicious.” She describes these menus as a “curated list of the best ingredients and the most inspired dishes that make these restaurants a joy to visit time after time. They also bridge the gap between the inherent trust in a chef and the (sometimes) perceived arrogance or restraint implied by a tasting menu. As more and more chefs continue to explore modes of expression that suit their voice, I think the short, constantly evolving, single menu will overtake the tasting menu as the vehicle of choice.”

Some of the other trends Blau sees coming: fewer meat burgers, lower-alcohol cocktails (e.g. session cocktails), breakfast grain bowls, Paleo 2.0 and more fermentation.

As for what she hopes to see in 2017, that list includes loaded sweet potatoes, veggie tartares and pokes, creative hybrid sprouts, next-level oatmeal and porridges, savory smoothies, dim sum carts at brunch, the rise of Filipino cuisine, organic artisan chicken nuggets and kelp as the new kale.

Dine & Recline

In the realm of out-of-the-box trends, there is now an interesting flip on the “unconstructed dining” at work in many hotels, which allows guests to eat where and when they want in the hotel, not just in traditional restaurants. In this newest version of that dining freedom, small groups can base their meeting location in a hot restaurant rather than a hotel as some savvy restaurateurs lead the way in adding hotel rooms to their dining establishments. With many of these restaurants in the highest echelons of upscale dining, this may prove especially alluring to high-end incentive groups and the planners tasked with not just satisfying but truly wowing this ultimate “been there, done that” clientele.

Among the restaurant-lodging combos is Brae, one of Australia’s most coveted restaurants but located 1.5 hours from Melbourne. It now features six uber luxurious hotel rooms on the farm property that currently sell out months in advance. Closer to home in West Texas, Rancho Loma, three hours from the nearest big city, opened five suites for its guests. As the Airbnb mentality fully permeates American culture, and as chefs and restaurateurs demand more control over the experience they create, this trend will likely grow — incentive planners take note!

Sustainability

In terms of trends that should not continue, there’s one high on the list of chef Garcia of Hilton Chicago: waste at conventions. “Many planners ask for a lot of food stations,” he says, “which results in heavy waste.” Good communication could help with this issue as chefs and catering staff understand group numbers and the appropriate amount of food for them; planners need only take their advice into consideration.

And there’s waste of time and energy, too, elements also lessened by good communication. The primary tip Garcia offers planners who are set to meet with chefs and caterers on F&B is simple: “Have a clear vision of what you want to offer to your conference attendees. It makes the planning and developing process much easier.” C&IT

As a meeting and incentive travel destination, Florida offers something for everyone. And Joanne Luce, meeting planner and vice president of marketing for Val-Test Distributors, can attest to the draw of “all things Florida.” Each year in January, Val-Test Distributors, a buying and marketing group of distributors servicing the hardware, sundries, plumbing and electrical industries based in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, hosts their annual show for their distributors and suppliers in Florida. The show allows the distributors to meet one-on-one with the suppliers whose products they house in their warehouses to discuss new products, discounts, marketing and promotions for the coming year.

A few years ago, Russ Meeks, president of Val-Test, along with Luce, found a unique resort located in Naples, Florida. They met with the management and decided to partner with The Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club for their annual event. And the rest, as they say, is history.

“We have tried to move the conference to another location and our folks don’t want us to have the conference anywhere else.”
— Anita A. Frase

“The resort is in a great location; since many of our distributors are located in colder climates, it gives them a nice break to enjoy some sun and warm weather,” Luce says. “And due to the size of the Val-Test show, the resort works really well as a Val-Test venue.” Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club offers 34,000 sf of indoor meeting space and spectacular outdoor and beachfront venues on the Gulf. The 319-room property is Southwest Florida’s only resort directly on the beach with an onsite championship golf course — which recently completed a comprehensive renovation of its championship golf course. The redesign of the AAA Four Diamond beachfront resort’s course was done with input from golf icon and acclaimed course designer Jack Nicklaus in collaboration with noted course architect John Sanford.

Mini Vacation

While the warm weather climes are a draw for many, other corporate meeting planners enjoy the consistency that holding an event in Florida brings. Crye-Leike Realtors has held their company’s annual conference at the Hilton Sandestin Beach Golf Resort & Spa every year since 2003.

“The resort is fantastic, our group loves the property from the ocean side to the bay side,” says Anita Frase, vice president of corporate projects at Crye-Leike Realtors. “It’s easy to get around on the property, and the staff at the Hilton are wonderful. We have tried to move the conference to another location and our folks don’t want us to have the conference anywhere else. They are used to making a mini vacation each year by bringing their families. The families get to have beach and shopping time while the agent attends the conference.”

Hilton Sandestin Beach Golf Resort & Spa can accommodate groups ranging from 10 to 2,000 attendees. They offer 40,000 sf of award-winning flexible meeting space, as well as cutting-edge technological capabilities. Options include opulent ballrooms, smaller breakout and prefunction spaces, an elegantly appointed boardroom, a theater and hospitality suites, all refurbished in 2013 with tasteful décor and fixtures, and colors and materials inspired by the resort’s beachfront setting.

Each year, Crye-Leike Realtors plans their conference with the agents’ families in mind — from their big welcome party and exhibit events to their activities and final night talent show. “Everyone has a blast,” Frase says. “The resort offers easy access for our nine regions to travel to, and the property has everything that you need without leaving the property. That’s why we keep coming back every year.”

Positive Feedback

Deanna Ricci, meeting and event planner with Liberty Mutual recently orchestrated an event at DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Orlando at SeaWorld. It was a training and information-based seminar for insurance investigators, law enforcement and defense attorneys.

“The organization that put the event together is based in Florida and 98 percent of our attendees are Florida based,” Ricci says. “DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Orlando at SeaWorld offers a magnitude of positive amenities. It’s easily accessible from the interstate, close to the theme parks and other exciting venues offered in Orlando. It’s spaced out beautifully, which enables our meeting guests to remain separated from the hotel guests and vacationers. The resort also offers large, comfortable meeting spaces and a wonderful menu from which to choose for our guests.”

But it’s the resort’s staff who have made the choice of hosting this event in Florida a good one. “Without them our event could not be a complete success, and for us that is very important and helps us to maintain retention of our repeated guests in attending the seminars we offer,” Ricci says. “We can put together an amazing day of presenters, but if the venue where the event is held is not top-notch, then that is what will be remembered by our guests. The relationship we have with DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Orlando at SeaWorld makes for an event that gets constant positive feedback all the way around.”

Clubs, Rods and Clays

Of course, pairing golf with a meeting or event is always a draw for attendees, especially at one of Florida’s many world-renowned golf courses. And it’s just about to get a whole lot better. Streamsong Resort, home to two critically acclaimed golf courses, has announced plans to build a third course, which will open in fall 2017 on its 16,000-acre property in Central Florida. This is wonderful news for meeting planners like Therese Bottino at William Automotive Group.

Williams Automotive Group operates just north of Tampa, Florida, and Bottino recently organized an event at Streamsong Resort for a group of the company’s top managers to get offsite and have meetings as well as provide some bonding time together.

“Streamsong was the perfect location for us,” Bottino says. “We operate just north of Tampa so the resort was far enough away without my team having to spend a ton of time traveling. I was very pleased with the wide variety of activities offered to my group. The bass fishing and the clay shooting were highlights, and of course the golf and steakhouse were wonderful. Streamsong really has an exclusive resort feel while being conveniently located to us. We hope to see them again for another function in 2017.”

Streamsong features a 216-room lodge, with three acclaimed casual and fine dining restaurants, conference and event facilities, a spa and infinity pool. Streamsong’s Clubhouse includes 12 guest rooms, a restaurant and bar, an award-winning golf shop and meeting space with breathtaking views. In addition to golf, guests can enjoy such activities as bass fishing, sporting clays, nature trails and tennis.

Streamsong Resort’s newest course, Streamsong Black, will be designed by Gil Hanse, architect of the Olympic Golf Course in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and co-designer of Castle Stuart Golf Links in Scotland. With the addition of Streamsong Black, the resort will become the only location in the world where guests can enjoy three distinct courses designed by four legendary architects, including Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw of Coore & Crenshaw and Tom Doak of Renaissance Golf Design. And the resort plans to add a second practice facility, clubhouse and restaurant to serve guests playing Streamsong Black.

Working With Planners

Many venues in Florida cater directly to corporate meeting professionals to make their meeting or event truly one to remember. The recently opened Hilton West Palm Beach, connected to the Palm Beach County Convention Center, has worked diligently to provide unique meeting opportunities for planners and attendees alike. The property boasts more than 24,000 sf of meeting space, including the 13,350-sf Oceana Ballroom and the 5,800-sf Coral Ballroom, which can be utilized as one entity, or separated into five individual meeting spaces. The hotel exterior includes two 2,400-sf expansive lawn spaces for meetings or special events.

Of course, if planners need more space, the convention center is directly accessible via a covered walkway from the hotel. An architectural masterpiece with state-of-the-art amenities, the 350,000-sf center features a 100,000-sf exhibit hall, a 22,000-sf ballroom and 21,000 sf of flexible breakout space divisible into 19 rooms.

As part of Hilton West Palm Beach’s group activity planning, meeting attendees can have hands-on, impactful experiences. For example, while ice sculptures are common at events, attendees can “cool off” by being challenged to create their own ice sculptures. The hotel provides tools and techniques, and then participants are divided into teams to sculpt a block of ice into a masterpiece.

The hotel’s music curator creates exercises for attendees to create their own mashups using DJ gear and remix software. Everyone gets their song recorded live and takes home a CD.

And for those groups struggling to get through obstacles on their road to success, Hilton West Palm Beach’s kickboxing instruction will teach a class to use wood as a metaphor for the obstacles in achieving goals. The group will write their barrier on the board and then break through with their hand or foot using traditional martial arts exercises.

Located directly across the street from CityPlace, meeting group attendees at Hilton West Palm Beach enjoy access to more than 60 specialty retail shops, a distinguished collection of restaurants and bars, and an open-air plaza with a distinctive dancing fountains water feature. Groups also experience entertainment, dining and attractions on Clematis Street, Norton Museum of Art and Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, which are all near the hotel.

Standout Service

Superlative staff service has defined the Florida-based meetings experienced by Pike Enterprises. The company recently held their annual supervisor’s meeting at Margaritaville Beach Resort in Hollywood, Florida. There were approximately 160 attendees from all over the U.S. at this event.

“This is a yearly meeting we have to gather all of our field supervisors along with management from our corporate office to do a recap, review and forecast of our business,” says Sandy King, meeting planner and director of executive support at Pike Enterprises LLC. “We have meetings where the entire group is together, and then we also break out into different meetings.”

As King explains, the most important aspect for her, as the meeting planner, was that every level of staff she encountered was very helpful and attentive to their needs.

“Each person, from the time we walked in, made it clear that they were there to help our meeting be a success,” King says. “I was given a name and contact information from the beginning that I could reach out to for any need that arose. For example, if there was an attendee that showed up that was not on our rooming list, I could call this person who would take care of getting a room. I could call this person if the temperature in the meeting room needed adjusting or to have boxes moved. It was such a convenience having one person to call for all the needs that always seem to arise during these meetings. The meeting spaces were awesome, the restroom facilities were immaculate, the food we had was the best ‘hotel’ food we have had in my 25 years of doing this.”

Another main contributor to Pike Enterprises’ decision to use this resort was that the attendees did not have to leave the facility. Once they arrived from the airport, they did not have to leave the resort until it was time to return to the airport.

“We know the majority of our attendees will try to find a bar to have drinks at the end of the evening and with this resort, there were plenty of bars within walking distance, and we did not have to worry about their safety or driving after drinking,” King says. “Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort is a gorgeous facility. In all my years of planning these events, this by far has been the best we have ever utilized, and we will go there again.”

FLORIDA UPDATE

Southeast Florida

With more than 30,000 sf of indoor/outdoor meeting and event space, the Forbes Five Star Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa accommodates groups from 10 to 1,000 and offers a wide variety of indoor and outdoor venues for private events. Eau Palm Beach Resort and Spa has four restaurants and is just minutes from the lively Palm Beach nightlife and shopping. As the preeminent “see and be seen” destination on the Palm Beach culinary scene, the Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa features Breeze Ocean Kitchen, a stunning, redesigned oceanfront restaurant concept led by executive chef Josh Thomsen. Awash in pale yellow and blue hues, the space is a subtle reflection of the recently reimagined guest room aesthetic. Airy and sophisticated furnishings seat up to 120 and are punctuated with striking design details such as a runway fire feature that lights up evening lounge areas. A “look out” bartop floats above the resort’s private beach to offer extraordinary views of the Atlantic Ocean. Situated on a private beach, the 309-room Eau Palm Beach’s spa also has earned a Forbes Five Star rating, making it a top pick for upscale meetings.

In Hollywood near Fort Lauderdale, the 1,000-room Diplomat Beach Resort is completing a $100 million transformation with reimagined guest rooms, indoor/outdoor event spaces, spa and more than 10 dining concepts. Among the culinary offerings are The Diplomat Prime steakhouse; Monkitail, featuring Japanese-inspired fare crafted by famed chef and restaurateur Michael Schulson; Point Royal, showcasing celebrity chef Geoffrey Zakarian’s coastal-American fare with modern seafood dishes and raw bar; and Playa, a beachfront nuevo-Latina restaurant and bar with an extensive selection of rum and tequila. The largest hotel in Broward County, the Diplomat also offers 209,000 sf of meeting and event space including a 50,000-sf Great Hall, outdoor special event areas including the pool deck and 33rd floor lounge space. The newly renovated guest rooms at the Diplomat, which feature ocean or Intracoastal views, fit one of two separate design schemes: Sunrise or Sunset. Sunrise rooms are modern, vibrant and refreshing with earthy tones that provide a soothing, calm atmosphere accented with blue ocean colors, with vintage artwork that harkens the region’s history. Sunset rooms reflect a more subtle, modern and organic design scheme.

Location, location, location is a hallmark of the Hilton Miami Downtown, situated in the vibrant heart of the Performing Arts District — a few minutes from The Adrienne Arsht Center for Performing Arts — and near trendy South Beach, three miles away. The hotel, which boasts views of Biscayne Bay and the Miami skyline, is next to the Metro Mover light rail system, 15 minutes from Miami International Airport and near the Port of Miami — the cruise capital of the world. For meetings, the hotel has 45,000 sf of flexible event space accommodating up to 2,000 attendees. There are 19 meeting rooms, including five boardrooms with floor-to-ceiling windows, and the largest ballroom in downtown Miami at 17,000 sf.

Northwest Florida

Located along one of America’s top beaches and adjacent to a 208-acre environmentally protected state park, The Henderson, a Salamander Beach & Spa Resort on Northwest Florida’s Gulf Coast in Destin, opened last November. Reminiscent of a grand seaside manor, The Henderson features traditional coastal architecture. The resort features 170 spacious guest rooms and suites, a nature-inspired spa, Gulf-to-table cuisine, an octagonal bar with panoramic Gulf views, a rooftop terrace, two outdoor swimming pools, 30,000 sf of flexible indoor and outdoor event space, and private beach access.

Central Florida

Following a $17 million renovation to its 146 guest rooms, the Villas of Grand Cypress has reconfigured its Mediterranean-style Executive Meeting Center, a standalone complex that houses 7,200 sf of flexible indoor/outdoor event space with four meeting rooms divisible into eight self-contained spaces. The four-star, four-diamond resort, which claims 1,500 acres in Lake Buena Vista, boasts 45 holes of Jack Nicklaus Signature-designed golf; a golf academy; an equestrian center with options for equestrian-themed shows to entertain reception or banquet guests; and the Nine 18 Restaurant, which doubles as a fully equipped meeting space for small groups.

Loews Sapphire Falls Resort, which opened at Universal Orlando last July, added 115,000 sf of meeting space last fall that includes a 41,000-sf ballroom, 30,000-sf hall and 16,000-sf outdoor event area. The space connects by air-conditioned bridge to Loews Royal Pacific Resort, providing a combined 247,000 sf of meeting space in the Loews Meeting Complex at Universal Orlando, which officially opened in October.

DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Orlando at SeaWorld is adding 40,000 sf of new indoor and outdoor conference and event space, scheduled to debut this summer. The hotel’s existing 60,000 sf of indoor/outdoor meeting space also will be upgraded.

In December, the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Hotel completed a $5 million renovation of its 329,000 sf of meeting space to refresh all the meeting rooms at both the Swan and Dolphin hotels. The renovation included updated carpet and paint, along with the installation of new technology in the meeting areas. The meeting space refresh is part of the hotel’s multiphase, multiyear $140 million redesign project, which also includes transformation of all 2,267 guest rooms. In 2015, the Swan guest rooms were completed; Dolphin Hotel guest room renovations will wrap up by the end of 2017. As the final stage of the largest makeover in the Orlando resort’s history, the Dolphin lobby will undergo a $12 million redesign beginning this spring and will be completed in the fall.

The former Buena Vista Palace Resort & Spa was recently reflagged as the Hilton Orlando Buena Vista Palace, located in the Disney Springs area. The 1,011-room hotel completed a major makeover featuring newly designed guest rooms, a new outside terrace and refreshed meeting spaces totaling 92,000 sf. As the hotel is an official Walt Disney World Hotel, groups are offered entertainment and event production services through the Disney Event Group as well as the Disney Institute’s educational programs.

The three Rosen Hotels convention properties — Rosen Plaza, Rosen Centre and Rosen Shingle Creek — are undergoing major renovations from guest rooms to restaurants. Rosen Plaza recently completed refurbishments in all 800 of its guest rooms and suites, and now features expanded flexible indoor/outdoor event space with 3NINE, the hotel’s 5,000-sf state-of-the-art entertainment venue. 3NINE can accommodate 500 people indoors or 1,500 guests when the event is extended to the patio and pool deck ‘39 Poolside Bar & Grill. The venue provides groups with a dedicated, onsite daytime or evening event space outfitted with all audio-visual needs and already fully decorated and themed.

Southwest Florida

The new 343-room Wyndham Grand Clearwater Beach is celebrating its debut on January 18 with 22,000 sf of elegant, flexible function space including the area’s largest ballroom. Flexible function space includes seven meeting rooms divisible into 12 breakout rooms, plus the 10,632-sf Dunes Ballroom, which can host up to 800 guests and boasts among its many features, $250,000 programmable chandeliers.

The Waldorf Astoria Naples on the Southwest Florida coast recently transitioned to the independently branded Naples Grande Beach Resort after completing $18 million in renovations. New guest room décor offers a soothing, coastal-inspired design and a new signature restaurant, Catch of the Pelican, featuring fresh Florida seafood. The resort recently completed $2 million worth of enhancements to the lobby lounge and Vista Ballroom, which received a décor refresh, modern fixtures, updated drapery, plush carpet and modern furniture. The lobby lounge and Spressi seating area feature new seating, lighting and a complete bar upgrade. The renovated spaces further enhance the property’s 83,000 sf of fully customizable indoor and outdoor function space. The property, which also boasts five onsite restaurants and bars, three heated pools, fitness center, tennis facility and luxury spa, is surrounded by 200 acres of a protected mangrove estuary intertwined with a system of bridges and elevated walking paths that afford access to three miles of beachfront on the Gulf of Mexico.

Guests dining at the restaurants at The Ritz-Carlton, Naples enjoy greens so fresh they appear on plates within just hours of being harvested from the resort’s onsite Grow House. The first of its kind in a resort setting, The Grow House is a repurposed shipping container with the capacity to grow one acre of produce.

Planners looking for fun, interactive activities for their groups can cross the bridge from Fort Myers to Sanibel Island, where Sundial Beach Resort & Spa recently added 12 regulation pickleball courts to its lineup of resort amenities and public offerings. The Plexicushion system courts will provide the area with state-of-the-art tournament-grade facilities in a beautiful, lakefront setting. Construction is underway with an anticipated early spring 2017 opening. A combination of tennis, badminton and table tennis, pickleball now claims the title of the fastest growing sport in North America. Lessons, round robins, and clinics for all ages will be available to both resort guests, residents and visitors. Sundial offers 198 guest rooms and 12,000 sf of indoor/outdoor meeting and event spaces.

The Keewaydin Express is a new water taxi providing service from a variety of Marco Island locations to Keewaydin Island’s expansive, deserted beaches, which are accessible only by boat.

Following an extensive $320 million renovation, the has converted to a JW Marriott luxury property. The JW Marriott Marco Island Beach Resort offers 100,000 sf of meeting space and 726 guest rooms. Scheduled to open at the resort in fall 2017 will be a 94-room, adults-only tower, with Gulf-view rooftop pool, restaurant and a 12,000-sf, state-of-the-art indoor entertainment center.

The 310-room Hilton Marco Island Beach Resort & Spa will debut this month, after a $40 million renovation, which features new luxury family suites, newly designed pool and the reimagined indoor/outdoor Deck at 560 Bar & Restaurant. A beachfront event lawn will make its appearance this fall as will a redesigned, 5,200-sf Grand Ballroom. C&IT

Hilton San Francisco Union Square has hosted OSIsoft’s Users Conference for 12 years.

Data management software company OSIsoft has held its annual OSIsoft Users Conference at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square for 12 years, most recently bringing in about 2,200 attendees in April 2016. That number has been increasing year-over-year, and the group has yet to outgrow the 1,919-room property, which houses 130,000 sf of meeting space. “The amount of meeting space and guest rooms as well as the location make it an ideal venue for us,” says Stefanie Ordoveza, global events manager. “And with our headquarters nearby in San Leandro, it is extremely convenient for us to have a venue so close to our home base in terms of both planning and execution.”

“What we value most is our relationship with the Hilton staff. They truly go above and beyond to make every event a success and adapt to our attendee needs as the event continues to grow.”
— Stefanie Ordoveza

But the reasons for the long partnership have as much to do with the advantages of the particular hotel as with the Hilton brand itself. “In general, Hilton properties bring a wide range of offerings, from technology to F&B options, that make our attendees’ stay and experience high class,” Ordoveza explains. “However, what we value most is our relationship with the Hilton staff. They truly go above and beyond to make every event a success and adapt to our attendee needs as the event continues to grow.” Even when OSIsoft met at the faraway Hilton Prague, the experience was a familiar one, she adds. “The staff was great to work with and very service-oriented, just what you would expect from a Hilton property.”

Predictability

While an individual property will always have its idiosyncrasies, a hotel will generally express its brand’s approach to group service, F&B, amenities, property design and so on. And it’s those recurring features that make planners brand loyalists. Dates, rates, space and location usually take precedence over brand in the process of site selection, but when two or more properties of different flags stack up similarly in those respects, brand preferences tend to weigh in. Eventually, such preferences lead to a history of usage with particular chains and more leverage in negotiations, lending further reason to continue partnering with that hotelier.

With the recent merger of Marriott and Starwood, planners who have a history with either company can now look forward to leveraging that business with a much broader scope of properties. “When we look at the overall (meetings) spend of our company, we’ll have an even stronger total annual spend (with one company) after the merger, which sometimes helps when booking future programs,” notes Kim Baker, CMP, CPCE, senior manager, events with Clearwater, Florida-based Tech Data Corporation.

“I do more with Marriott, says Beth Becker, global meeting services manager with Downers Grove, Illinois-based MicroTek, “but (the merger) gives me status with Starwood that I didn’t have before, because of my status with Marriott.”

Sales Service

Additionally, Marriott’s acquisition will afford planners a “centralized resource when it comes to sales and sourcing,” Baker says, and one that ranges over 5,700 properties representing 30 brands in more than 110 countries. A planner’s experience with great service, beginning at the sourcing stage, is indeed one of the main reasons a hotelier becomes preferred.

Tech Data’s top hotel partner in terms of usage is Marriott, with most of its nearly 300 annual offsite events being held at Marriott properties, from JW Marriotts to Autograph Collection hotels. “We’ve found that Marriott does a really nice job of everything customer service related. They’re great with follow-up. And I never feel like I’m inconveniencing them with questions,” Baker explains. “I have a corporate sales rep assigned to my company and then I also know my sales rep at each individual property. And I feel like they all work together. There is never an issue of going to one person over another to talk, whereas at other companies it can be a little confusing or almost like a little competition between (sales reps) to be the primary contact. So Marriott does an especially nice job of ensuring we’re covered from a sales/customer service perspective.”

Ideal sales reps also are knowledgeable and proactive with regard to the client’s meetings business. Jane Belli, director, meetings and events with Fort Worth, Texas-based Alcon, an eye care products developer, has found that Omni Hotels & Resorts’ sales reps exhibit this quality. “They have taken the time to understand our business,” says Belli. “We do national sales meetings every January, so if you’re a good partner you’re going to approach us and say, ‘I know in 2018, 2019 and 2020 you’re going to need to do these meetings, so how can we bundle and do a multiyear deal?’”

Onsite Service

All of the top brands excel in onsite group service, but there are those cases of “going the extra mile” that truly impress planners and lead them to become brand devotees. Rebecca Byrne, CMP, HMCC, senior manager events and trade shows with Pleasanton, California-based Zeltiq, cites Westin as among her preferred chains, and the service and flexibility of The Westin San Francisco Airport reaffirmed that choice. “We did one of our sales meetings at the hotel and it was phenomenal. They let us put a tent on an employee parking lot for a teambuilding with 60 of our sales directors, helping to get permits from the city so it was a quick turnaround. We had a graffiti artist come in and show them how to create graffiti. It was pouring rain and freezing, but the hotel staff made it really nice for us, providing heaters and making us hot chocolate and churros,” Byrne relates. That kind of special event coordination may be unsurprising at a resort, but for an airport hotel it’s rather remarkable and exemplifies The Westin brand’s commitment to group service.

On a much larger scale, MGM Resorts International offers groups a wealth of resources for special events at its Las Vegas properties, and IBM is among the major clients who have capitalized on that infrastructure. Colleen Bisconti, IBM vice president, global conferences and events, plans the company’s two largest client and business partner-facing events in Las Vegas, one in the spring and one in the fall. Each brings in a worldwide audience of well over 20,000. Next March, IBM InterConnect 2017 and IBM Amplify 2017 will utilize 100 percent of the meeting space at both the MGM Grand and Mandalay Bay, and hold activities at the new T-Mobile Arena, which opened in April.

“They are willing to be very flexible with us in terms of what our needs are, and creative for us when we hit a challenge,” Bisconti relates. “We have a very elaborate expo hall where we bring together business partners showcasing their solutions built on IBM, and then IBM itself coming in and showcasing our capabilities. In order to build this expo experience, because it’s not just about a bunch of booths anymore, we often need more move-in time than we had planned for, and MGM is very good about working with us.” She has one contact for MGM International and individual contacts at the properties. “On any given day I can call any one of them, and this (company unity) is something that (MGM Senior Vice President and Chief Sales Officer) Mike Dominguez has really driven. So as the client I have an expectation that if I’m doing something across two properties, we’re all going to work together. We’re one company, you’re one company.”

The opportunity to use T-Mobile Arena for a general session and concert was one of the motivations for partnering with MGM Resorts, Bisconti adds. “We’ve done many programs at the Grand Garden Arena and Events Center at Mandalay Bay. They’re big arenas and definitely impressive, but to walk into T-Mobile was a completely different experience. We turned the outdoor plaza area (The Park) into a festival with food trucks and some of our tech products, so it didn’t just feel like you were walking into an arena, but into an experience.”

Caesars Entertainment’s Las Vegas properties also are supplemented by an outdoor district, The Linq. A multitude of venues are available for group functions, from the Brooklyn Bowl live music venue to the 550-foot High Roller’s glass enclosed cabins. In November, Caesars reached a new height in another area that many planners look to when determining their preferred suppliers: sustainability. Ninety-seven percent of the company’s owned or managed North American hotel properties have achieved a 4 Key rating or higher, a metric established by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council’s Green Key. The program inspects hotels’ operations and ranks them from 1-5 Keys based on their commitment to sustainability. Reportedly, Caesars Entertainment now has more properties rated 4 Keys or higher than any other casino-entertainment company in the world.

F&B

Part of sustainability is a hotelier’s practice of using organic, locally sourced ingredients in its food service. Some properties even use ingredients sourced at their own gardens, and Baker has found the JW Marriott to be ahead of the curve in this regard. “I’ve always thought that JW Marriott has a heavier emphasis on culinary. Every one of their properties I’ve ever been to has a specialty such as making honey from their own beehive or curing their own meats to make their own jerky,” she relates. “They bring in guest chefs and go above and beyond with their menus.” Similarly, Byrne cites Westin’s menus as “very unique.” “I’ve taken some of those ideas from the Westin and request them when I’m working on menus at other properties,” she says. “For example, a green menu for breaks with broccoli, edamame, green shooters, etc. Using a different color scheme, you can do a yellow break or a red break. It makes the event memorable for attendees.”

Wellness

Both Byrne and Baker highlight Westin as among the industry leaders in not only healthful cuisine, but also guest wellness in general. The brand is known for its programs dubbed “Eat Well,” “Sleep Well,” “Move Well” and the like. Features include the Heavenly Bed, sleep balms with essential oils (introduced January 2017), RunWestin running routes with Run Concierge, Westin Gear Lending (workout gear delivered to guest rooms) and Westin Wellness Escapes (including fitness classes, healthy cooking courses, panel discussions), etc.

Omni Hotels & Resorts’ Stay Well program for Select Guest members also includes a variety of amenities, given that wellness is a multifaceted initiative: Get Fit Kits, healthy morning menu selections, specialty pillows, sleep kits, noise machines and fitness options such as yoga and spin classes. “Wellness is a huge part of our culture,” says Belli. “Omni properties have state-of-the-art fitness facilities, and weights, exercise bands, etc. in your room. We also do 5K runs and group yoga, and they will absolutely facilitate those kinds of things. For example, they send somebody with your group to go for a jog if it’s a city property.”

Wi-Fi

Sufficient bandwidth onsite is an ongoing concern for highly connected groups such as MicroTek’s. “The ability to dedicate bandwidth is very important to us,” says Becker. “It seems to vary property to property, but we have had some success with the DoubleTrees in that their bandwidth usually comes to be what they tell us it is; we have our tech people test it. But it really has more to do with the management company than the flag they’re flying.”

Nonetheless, many brands are ramping up bandwidth across their properties. Examples include IHG, whose cloud-based IHG Connect program has recently expanded to 1,500 hotels in the Americas; Wyndham, which is offering free expanded premium Wi-Fi at Wingate by Wyndham properties by next summer (100 mbps minimum); and Hyatt Hotels, which has reportedly made investments in Wi-Fi across nearly 90 percent of its properties in the past three years.

Style and Theme

The look and feel of a brand’s properties can be important to a planner, as it can fit with a certain group demographic, corporate culture or event theme. For example, Kimpton hotels tend to have a “very boutique feeling, very hip and unusual,” says Becker. “So if you have clients who like that, usually younger companies, they may work for you.” On the other hand, some groups will prefer a more standardized, traditional atmosphere. According to Byrne, a Marriott devotee, “I know that across the board in the brand if I look at a Marriott hotel in Chicago or in New Orleans it’s going to have the same look and feel: the same coffee pot, same bedding, etc. And I think (that makes attendees) feel comfortable who are on the road. I’ve seen that consistency with Starwood as well.”

Some brands are less standardized across properties in an effort to express their locale, a common theme at Destination Hotels. “Diverse by Design,” the brand’s more than 40 properties each strives to incorporate the cuisine and cultural elements of its surroundings. Perhaps less recognized in this effort is Omni: “All their hotels take on the local flavor of the city they’re in,” says Belli. “These days, experiential engagement is such a focus, and the great thing about Omni is that a lot of that is naturally built in. So the Omni Fort Worth when you walk in has that kind of upscale Western feel. They really research the city; for example, their new property in Louisville, Kentucky, will have a bourbon bar. The built-in experience takes some work off of me as a planner because I don’t have to create that experience.”

Similarly, Marriott’s Autograph Collection hotels are thematically “tied to the area,” Baker notes. For instance, the Epicurean Hotel, located in the Hyde Park historic district of South Tampa, Florida, “focuses on local bakers and wines and it’s all integrated into their menus. Even the look of the hotel ties into Tampa’s culture and history.”

Most planners agree that gathering points and perks via hotel reward programs is fairly low on the list of motivations for choosing a brand or individual property over another. But it can make a difference when other criteria are relatively comparable. “If two properties are perfectly similar sometimes the decision is based on points,” says Becker. “I do have one client that’s very much Marriott focused, and so if we have a Hilton and a Marriott that are head to head we certainly would take Marriott because of their points. But for the most part the points are not swaying the decision.” And in this market of escalating room rates, perks such as a complimentary reception or discounted AV when booking a certain amount of business do mean something. “You may have two properties with availability and you want to be able to talk to your executives and say this is where we’re getting the best value,” says Belli.

For example, Wyndham’s first formal rewards program catering to the meetings market — go meet — launched just over a year ago. The loyalty program allows members to earn one point for every dollar spent on qualifying revenue at participating hotels, regardless of billing method, with no minimum spend requirement and no maximum point limit.

Regarding the seller’s market, it is worth noting that PwC’s November 2016 Hospitality Directions U.S. report predicts that in 2017, supply growth will accelerate at a long-term average of 1.9 percent and, coupled with weakened demand, will result in the U.S. lodging industry’s first occupancy decline in eight years. This may improve negotiating conditions for planners, and what’s more, the new supply will include new options within their preferred brands.

Wyndham loyalists, for instance, can look forward to notable openings this year, including the 450-room Wyndham Grand Clearwater Beach in Florida (24,000 sf of meeting space) in January. Also this year, Dolce Hotels & Resorts, recently acquired by Wyndham, will open a 217-room Dolce hotel and conference center less than 10 miles from Cincinnati (offering 22,000 sf of function space). The Dolce Washington Dulles, a property ideal for training programs and executive retreats, will open in late 2018 with 243 guest rooms and more than 13,000 sf of meeting space.

Belli is anticipating the 612-room Omni Louisville’s opening in spring 2018. Located just one block from the Kentucky International Convention Center, the LEED Silver-certified hotel will offer 70,000 sf of meeting and event space, two full-service restaurants and a 20,000-sf fresh market and grocery.

And Bisconti hopes to utilize Maryland’s new MGM National Harbor for a future event. The 308-room resort includes 50,000 sf of meeting space, 3,000-seat Theater and open-air Potomac Plaza. “They already understand our brand,” she says, “so we’re not starting all over in terms of building a relationship.” C&IT

Atlantic City Boardwalk.

Diversity is the name of the game within the mid-Atlantic region. Along with a wealth of properties well-suited for events of all sizes, the region has much to offer meeting participants. Not only does it include some of the nation’s major population centers with their attendant cultural attractions, but it also features everything from popular oceanside casino resorts to historic sites going back to the Civil War, colonial times and more.

Atlantic City

Once known primarily for its gambling, Atlantic City now offers a more diversified profile. Today it boasts an attractive combination of casino hotels and non-gaming hotels, with an inventory of well more than 15,000 rooms.

“Atlantic City…has become one of the most popular destinations of the entire mid-Atlantic region. There is something here for…everyone.”
— Jim Wood

 “Atlantic City, with its world-famous boardwalk, gaming, fine dining and world-class entertainment has become one of the most popular destinations of the entire mid-Atlantic region,” says Jim Wood, president and CEO of Meet AC. “There is something here for just about everyone.”

For Judy Fishman, who plans conferences for owners and managers of dental laboratories in her capacity as president of LMT Communications, Atlantic City has proven itself a great option. She recently held a highly successful conference in Atlantic City for more than 900 people with connections to the dental lab industry. Having held previous meetings in New York City, she was pleasantly surprised with the new location.

“I was really reluctant to leave New York City, but when we got there I saw how nice it was,” she says. “It wasn’t as much of a gambling town as it has been, and there weren’t too many distractions from the conference. It’s an attractive seaside location with a nice kind of ambience.”

The purpose was to provide an opportunity for people to come to a trade show to see, touch and play with new dental equipment and materials that have been introduced. Educational seminars also were offered.

Fishman says that the goals for the meeting were fully met. Events were held at the conference center, and guests stayed at the Sheraton Atlantic City Convention Center Hotel.

“Everybody at the convention center was super professional,” she says. “They were attentive to our needs and diligent with follow-up — that’s rare.”

She adds that Meet AC contributed door prizes for attendees to add to those offered by her team. “They also provided staff with food while we were stuck in registration all day,” she says. ”We didn’t have to close down or lose setup time to go find food.”

Fishman says other details, most notably costs, also were positive.

“Pricing in Atlantic City is quite attractive and competitive,” she says. “It makes the whole experience a win-win.”

Of course, gaming is still a strong attraction for many, and properties such as the Resorts Casino Hotel offer exciting meeting options. The first Atlantic City resort to include gaming among its offerings almost 40 years ago, Resorts was updated in 2013 with the opening of Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville casino and entertainment complex.

Resorts has 64,000 sf of meeting space with 24 meeting and function rooms, and a 13,000-sf ballroom. There are two hotel towers with 942 guest rooms and suites, two theaters and an 80,000-sf casino.

Harrah’s Waterfront Conference Center turned out to be the right choice for the 2016 TSNN (Trade Show News Network) Awards Gala Celebration, which attracted trade show organizers from the country’s largest shows.

“The event celebrates the largest and fastest-growing trade shows in the U.S., and the attendees hold their own high-profile events and have a very discerning eye,” says Rachel Wimberly, president. “Harrah’s met all of our expectations of wowing this elite crowd.”

She recalls that during her site visit, Harrah’s reps readily understood the need for a high-end event desired for this particular audience.

“They pulled out all the stops, including an amazing four-course meal from their very talented executive chef, as well as a stunning awards production,” she says. “The entire team was extremely easy to work with.”

Harrah’s Atlantic City offers more than 2,500 guest rooms and 63 meeting rooms ranging from 506 sf to 13,475 sf. A total of 150,000 sf of event space includes two 50,000-sf ballrooms.

Among other hotel options, the 24 meeting rooms at Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa range from 550 to 4,500 sf, with capacities ranging from 10 to 3,500. Caesar’s Atlantic City has more than 1,100 guest rooms and 28,000 sf of meeting space. Its 12 meeting rooms include a 17,135-sf ballroom and 10 individual meeting rooms with 490 sf to 1,262 sf of space. At Bally’s Atlantic City, some 1,200 guest rooms are complemented by 28 meeting rooms and 80,000 sf of meeting space.

New York

Things are popping as usual in New York, which attracted a record 6.1 million meeting and convention delegates in 2015, according to NYC & Company, the city’s destination marketing organization. New York City not only boasts more than 110,000 hotel rooms, but the total is expected to grow to 135,000 by the end of 2019. In fact at least 17 hotels have opened in the past year, adding more than 4,100 guest rooms.

Also in the works is an expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, expected to bring an additional 1.2 million sf of event space and a 60,000-sf ballroom. The facility already has more than 100 function rooms for seminars and hospitality areas, and 65,000 sf of dedicated registration space.

Alexandra Murphy, director of site selection for Meeting Expectations in Atlanta, Georgia, coordinated a highly successful event in New York City in September. Held at the Conrad New York , the event attracted more than 300 people including customers, partners, industry analysts, media and financial analysts. The hotel is located in Manhattan’s Battery Park City, close to some of the city’s most well-known landmark neighborhoods. And The National September 11 Memorial & Museum is located within a 10-minute walk.

“We get wonderful feedback about New York City, specifically from our corporate events,” she says. “It’s the perfect city for a high-profile meeting or a product launch.” She says New York builds attendance and notes that its location is attractive due to close proximity to many first-tier cities via train or plane.

“Attendees are excited about New York,” she says. “It’s where life happens and great events are created.” Murphy also lauds the city’s CVB.

“NYC and Company has done a fantastic job marketing its city,” she says. “Our contact has gone above and beyond from the RFP process to putting a fantastic site experience together to providing helpful feedback.”

Recalling the September meeting, Murphy cites being in the Financial District as a plus. “It’s a quieter spot in New York City but still filled with plenty of restaurants, bars, shops and attractions in the area,” she says. “We also hosted offsite events at some nearby restaurants/venues that were a big hit.”

She says other planners might do well to consider the New York option.

“Count on great attendance, service and food but come with a healthy budget,” she says. “Be prepared to spend more than usual across the board — this is the Big Apple after all!”

One new offering is the Hyatt Centric Times Square New York, a 54-story Manhattan property previously known as Hyatt Times Square New York. The rebranded hotel has 487 guest rooms and more than 7,000 sf of indoor and outdoor meeting space accommodating up to 200 guests.

Another large hotel, the New York Marriott Marquis, offers 124,755 sf of event space, 48 meeting rooms and more than 1,900 guest rooms. For its part, the Grand Hyatt New York has 60,000 sf of meeting space. One ballroom accommodates 1,500–2,000 guests and another handles up to 500.

The Hilton New York Midtown has 1,929 guest rooms, and the 150,000 sf of exhibit and meeting space includes a 24,000-sf ballroom and 18 small venues.

At the classic Waldorf Astoria New York, major renovations are in the offing. As a result, the hotel has announced that no large groups are being accepted for March 2017 and beyond.

Richmond

Within a day’s drive of half of the U.S. population, Richmond offers an attractive combination of history and contemporary design.

“Richmond is a beautiful city,” says Michele Jacobson, CMP, senior meeting planner for Richmond-based Altria Client Services, the parent company of Philip Morris USA. “There is plenty to keep people entertained and happy as they experience another region of the country.”

She says the region’s rich history is a plus, along with assets ranging from great restaurants and wineries to nearby Busch Gardens.

“There’s also a really interesting arts scene,” she adds. And there is a nice urban feel along with attractions in the nearby countryside.

The premier venue for meetings is the Greater Richmond Convention Center. The state’s largest such facility, it has more than 200,000 sf of convention and ballroom space with 36 meeting and banquet rooms and a 258-seat lecture hall. Others include the Richmond Coliseum with 70,000 sf of space, the Richmond Raceway Complex with five buildings totaling more than 150,000 sf of space, and the Stuart C. Siegel Center at Virginia Commonwealth University with seating for up to 7,500 participants.

Several major projects are bringing enhancements to the region’s attractiveness for corporate events. Completion of a $92 million renovation of Main Street Station is slated for the summer of 2017. The historic downtown train station, originally constructed in 1901, has been upgraded through three phases initially begun in 1991, with the newest phase the restoration of a 100,000-sf train shed. The station currently has four Amtrak trains running daily and a Megabus station, and with the new space will have additional trains, incorporation of the Virginia Capital Trail, a bus rapid transit downtown hub and state/regional welcome center.

The station also boasts several event spaces. The Main Street Station train shed has 47,000 sf of event space with a capacity of more than 2,220 attendees and outstanding views of the city. Another section featuring a balcony and grand hall offers 10,000 sf of event space with capacities of 395 for seated dinners and 740 for receptions. And an outdoor space will open in fall 2017.

New event venues on the horizon include the Institute for Contemporary Art. Planned for an October 2017 opening, it will be a 41,000-sf non-collecting museum with exhibitions, performances, film and special programs, and including as yet unspecified event space. The recently re-opened Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia offers 12,000 sf of interactive exhibits and other space.

On the hotel front, early 2017 will see construction begin on a Marriott-branded Moxy Hotel, and The Graduate Hotel will open in summer 2017.

Four Points by Sheraton Richmond recently completed renovations of the hotel’s 194 guest rooms, ballrooms and 10,000 sf of meeting space. Homewood Suites by Hilton Richmond-Chester will be renovating the décor of the lobby, which has 2,300 sf of meeting space including three rooms that open into one and can hold up to 200 people. In addition, the Crowne Plaza Richmond Downtown is currently being renovated and will be reflagged as a Delta Hotel by Marriott. And the historic Jefferson Hotel is undergoing changes that include transforming what had been 262 guest rooms into 181 more spacious rooms and suites.

For a more rural Virginia experience, Primland combines the beauty of a mountaintop location in the Blue Ridge Mountains with meeting facilities accommodating up to 200 guests. The resort’s lodge features a 2,000-sf ballroom, breakout rooms, a private dining room, theater and executive boardroom.

Baltimore

Baltimore offers an especially convenient location, with the downtown area only a 20-minute ride from Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and its more than 600 flights per day to 75 cities. Amtrak’s Penn Station is a major stop on the Northeast corridor service, and the city is within easy driving distance of much of the Eastern U.S.

Headlining the city’s varied meeting locations is the Baltimore Convention Center, offering 300,000 sf of exhibit space, 85,000 sf of meeting space with 50 meeting rooms and a 36,672-sf ballroom. Recent upgrades include completion of an outdoor terrace and updates to Wi-Fi and audio systems.

More than 9,000 hotel rooms are located within walking distance of the convention center. What locals have dubbed the “convention campus” includes the well-known Inner Harbor, which features not only hotels, but also a variety of restaurants, museums and shopping options.

A popular food destination, which premiered in 2015, is Mount Vernon Marketplace. The indoor market features 14 purveyors of local offerings.

A number of hotels are benefiting from renovations.

The Hyatt Regency Baltimore at the Inner Harbor has new escalators, furniture, flooring and lighting, along with other improvements including upgrades to the hotel’s 488 guest rooms. It offers 20-plus meeting rooms totaling 35,000 sf.

The Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel, also located at the Inner Harbor, recently updated its 31,000 sf of meeting and event space, along with its harbor view restaurant, with an investment of $3.5 million.

The former Wyndham Baltimore Mt. Vernon Hotel is expected to reopen in early 2017 under a new name, Joie de Vivre.

On the horizon is Harbor Point, a downtown waterfront site that will have 3 million sf of office, retail, residential and hotel space on 27 acres. The development will include a 156-room boutique hotel from Hilton Worldwide slated for a 2018 opening.

The 32-story Baltimore Marriott Waterfront features 750 guest rooms and 80,000 sf of event space, with the largest room handling up to 1,600 guests.

Along with 757 guest rooms, the Hilton Baltimore offers 62,000 sf of meeting space and 34 meeting rooms.

Others recently opened or opening soon include a Delta Hotel, Sagamore Pendry Baltimore, Canopy Baltimore Harbor Point, Ivy Hotel and Hotel Indigo Baltimore.

Virginia Beach

One of the East Coast’s most popular destinations, Virginia Beach has more than 10,000 hotel rooms, about 2,500 of them within a three-mile radius of the Virginia Beach Convention Center. Along with its long-standing beachfront identity, Virginia Beach also offers the advantages of a diverse metropolitan region. The immediate area also includes Norfolk and Portsmouth, and Richmond is only two hours away.

The Virginia Beach Convention Center has more than 500,000 sf of total space. There is a 150,000-sf exhibit area, a 31,029-sf ballroom and a variety of meeting rooms totaling 28,929 sf. Smaller facilities include a boardroom, VIP lounge and observation deck. It’s less than a 20-minute drive from Norfolk International Airport, which services 200 flights daily.

Hotel options include the Hilton Virginia Beach Oceanfront, with 289 guest rooms and 12,000 sf of meeting space. Several smaller meeting rooms are complemented by a 7,100-sf oceanfront ballroom. Opened in 2014, Hilton Garden Inn Virginia Beach Oceanfront features 167 rooms and suites and 5,000 sf of oceanview meeting space

Other hotels include the Best Western Plus Oceanfront, with 214 guest rooms, four meeting rooms and 4,110 sf of meeting space; and the Wyndham Virginia Beach Oceanfront, with 16,000 sf of meeting space, 11 meeting rooms and 244 guest rooms.

The Crowne Plaza Virginia Beach has 149 guest rooms and nine meeting rooms totaling 12,000 sf. The DoubleTree by Hilton Virginia Beach offers 292 guest rooms and 12,000 sf of event space, including a 5,000-sf ballroom and nine meeting rooms.

The Sheraton Virginia Beach Oceanfront has 214 guest rooms and 10 meeting rooms with 12,000 sf of space. And the Founders Inn and Spa offers 25,000 sf of meeting space with 18 meeting rooms, a ballroom and a 78-seat amphitheater.

The Cavalier hotel, which was built in 1927, will reopen in spring 2017 as a member of Marriott’s distinguished Autograph Collection. The Cavalier Oceanfront tower will be demolished and replaced with a full-service upscale Marriott hotel featuring a host of amenities and world-class dining. The Cavalier Beach Club also will be reinvented to once again become the most desired event venue in the state of Virginia and beyond with stellar amenities, panoramic views and outstanding food and beverage offerings.

Washington, DC

Washington may be world famous as our nation’s capital, but it offers much more than political happenings. Meeting planners will find its many attractions an asset in holding memorable events.

Ami Mayfield, CMP, senior events manager with Austin, Texas-based real estate firm Keller Williams, sees the nation’s capital as an exciting destination.

“The convention center is one of the most modern and energy-efficient facilities we have seen,” she says. “We love that the city and its signature attractions are easily accessible from the facility. It will create an immersive destination experience for our participants.”

Mayfield notes that beyond meeting the goal of offering convention participants a meeting destination they have not yet experienced, DC is appealing for many reasons.

“The city’s package is very competitive,” she says. “They have fantastic domestic and international airlift, and an unrivaled selection of special event venues. And we were very surprised to find that such a popular city with must-see attractions was so competitively priced.”

The district’s many attractions have been enhanced with several new or recently opened hotels. Undoubtedly the biggest attention-getter is the Trump International Hotel, with 262 guest rooms and suites and 39,000-sf of event and meeting event space. Among other features, it boasts one of the largest ballrooms at a DC luxury hotel with more than 13,000 sf of space.

The Kimpton Mason & Rook Hotel offers 4,000 sf of meeting space including a 1,700-sf ballroom with two skylights. Located in the 14th Street corridor, it has 178 guest rooms and suites. A sister hotel, the Kimpton Glover Park, is a 154-room boutique hotel located outside of Georgetown. A ballroom on the main level offers 1,860 sf of meeting space.

Recently re-opened after a $125 million renovation, the well-known Watergate Hotel offers 337 luxury guest rooms and 27,000 sf of meeting space. Event space includes a 7,000-sf grand ballroom.

Long a fixture in the city, the Mayflower Hotel now features updated ballrooms and event spaces. Nearly 43,000 sf of event space is available, including 27 meeting rooms. Some 581 guest rooms include 64 suites.

Headlining the city’s new cultural attractions and meeting spaces is the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in September. Located on the National Mall, the already popular museum features 12 exhibitions across 400,000 sf documenting African American life, art, history and culture. Meeting space includes the 300-seat Oprah Winfrey Theater and an education and technology center.

Also at the Smithsonian, the Air & Space Museum’s recently reopened Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall has displays from early airplanes to space travel. The space can accommodate 350 seated guests or 700 for receptions.

After a three-year renovation, the East Building of the National Gallery of Art is now opened with more than 12,000 sf of additional exhibition space. A new rooftop sculpture garden holds up to 350 people, and several auditoriums are available. And the Renwick Gallery has more than 4,000 sf of event space for receptions or dinners.

The Salamander Resort and Spa, located in Middleburg, Virginia, has a variety of meeting facilities, many of which open to outdoor terraces. Indoor settings include meeting space within a world-class equestrian center, a century-old stone building and a cooking studio available for private events. A 5,000-sf ballroom, divisible into three sections, accommodates up to 280 guests with a dance floor and 320 guests for dinner. A smaller (1,800-sf) ballroom is suitable for up to 80 guests, and a foyer accommodates 60 for a dinner and 120 for a ceremony. Other facilities include a library, a private dining room and a meeting room for 60. C&IT

Kate Vasiloff is Research Manager at the GBTA Foundation, the research and education arm of the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA). As such, Kate is responsible for developing and managing partner research studies on a variety of business travel-related topics. Prior to working for GBTA, Kate conducted public opinion polling for political, non-profit organizations. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Survey Methodology from the University of Connecticut.

One-half (49 percent) of event planners report the marketing departments at their respective companies are always or often involved in the planning and execution of events, and an overwhelming majority find value in this type of partnership. This comes from new research from the GBTA Foundation, the education and research arm of the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), in partnership with Cvent.

The new research report explores the prevalence and types of collaboration between event planners and marketing departments in the planning and execution of company events. Where such collaboration exists, the study explores the origins, structure, benefits and best practices for this relationship. Where it does not exist, the research investigates reasons for not pursuing such a collaboration.

“Collaboration across departments…can help companies enhance the success of their meetings and events.”

The study is based on 10 one-on-one, in-depth, phone interviews with individuals with large-scale event-planning responsibilities who reside and work in North America. In addition, a supplemental online survey of 157 travel buyers in North America who have some level of involvement in planning or overseeing meetings or events for their organization was fielded in February.

Wearing Many Hats

Many organizations across all industries host large-scale events or meetings requiring hours of planning and coordination. While these responsibilities can fall on the shoulders of full-time event planners within a company, more often than not, an employee who wears many hats, such as a travel manager, may take this on. Because event planning is usually not a primary responsibility, stepping into such a role can be challenging and event planners are often forced to come up with creative solutions to close skill or knowledge gaps in order to plan and execute successful events.

Meetings and events usually have a number of objectives set by multiple people or departments within an organization, such as attendee or revenue goals, the number of leads generated or the amount of educational content delivered. It is the event planner’s goal to deliver an experience that satisfies all objectives, which takes careful planning and prioritization.

More than half (53 percent) of event planners feel setting objectives to support overall business goals is the most important factor to consider when planning a meeting or event. About one in five (19 percent) feel planning logistics or thinking about the ROI or event’s objectives is the most important aspect. Looking beyond logistics, only six percent of event planners feel the design and content of a meeting or event is the most important part of planning, but that does not make it any less vital to the success of an event. It is possible this area is less familiar to event planners, its value is not as readily understood or reported, leading them to look beyond themselves and their department to help close this gap.

Event planners and marketers have very specialized, but very different skill sets. While event planners excel at arranging logistics and many other areas of meetings and events, they may not be the best equipped to design email templates, registration pages and the like. Marketing team members may have a better handle on what messaging will attract attendee targets or what look and feel will support or perpetuate a company’s image and brand consistency. Grabbing the attention of potential attendees and ultimately converting that interest into registered attendees is a vital part of any event’s success. This is where collaboration across departments comes into play and can help companies enhance the success of their meetings and events.

Cross-Company Collaboration

Among those currently collaborating within their companies, event planning and marketing teams do so throughout the lifecycle of an event’s planning, execution and debrief. When you look at the opportunities for collaboration, currently the highest level of collaboration (59 percent) is around email communication. During the planning stages of the event, marketing teams and event planners frequently work together to determine the event’s theme (49 percent), logo (49 percent) and color scheme (37 percent). A majority continue to work together onsite with signage (54 percent), but collaboration drops off when it comes to post-event communications (41 percent) and the event debrief (33 percent), showing opportunities to continue collaboration to determine event success.

Like any cross-company collaboration, getting to a good working relationship often comes with challenges along the way including lack of communication, control issues, budget constraints, timeline delays and lack of alignment on marketing event goals with meetings program guidelines.

Communication issues can be resolved by identifying a person from each department to be the main point of contact to avoid any confusion. Securing buy-in from company leadership and formalizing partnerships can help avoid control issues. Tracking meeting and event spend, including marketing materials, allows for greater understanding of the volume of resources used in an event and can set a company up for more strategic budgeting in the future. Setting realistic timelines is vital to successful collaboration, and communicating the needs and expectations of the event early in the conceptualization phase of the event can maximize the use of each team’s expertise, as well as secure buy-in from all parties involved. If both teams do not fully understand the purpose and goals of the event from the start, timelines and communication — as well as the overall event — will suffer.

While there is no single roadmap to successful collaboration between marketing and event planning teams, establishing clear lines of communication, demonstrating an openness to fresh ideas and accounting for time and money spent is a good place to start. By having constant alignment across SMM (Strategic Meetings Management) programs, marketing and communications teams, companies can deliver consistent messaging and maintain the integrity of their brand across all platforms. Above all, team members should respect each other for their strengths and unique talents each brings to the collaboration table. C&IT

Blue Man Group fully engages audiences with innovative and interactive performances — a style they pioneered in 1991.

Many are the strategic elements to meeting planning, from site selection to budgeting to negotiation to marketing. But sourcing entertainment isn’t typically thought of as among those elements: Book a generally appealing musical act to complement your reception or closing night, no strategic thinking required. However, if a planner wants every facet of the program to be engaging and achieve the highest possible overall ROI, “entertainment should not be an afterthought,” as Jen Chauvin, CMP, puts it. “The success of entertainment has to come from a design perspective.”

“We’re always looking for the big-ticket items, someone who can possibly make a difference in our attendance.”
— Brad Bronenkamp

Chauvin, senior director, marketing strategy and event management with Interstate Hotels & Resorts, plans conferences for the company’s hotel leaders that feature experiential atmospheres showcasing the latest trends in the meetings market. Entertainment acts are carefully selected to complement differently themed settings within the conference venue. “Even for something as simple as a reception, we’re always going to have some kind of atmospheric element, so it may be a small-stage piece of entertainment, and there are some events that have a networking or coffee hour afterward with entertainment,” she explains. For instance, a recent conference in Orlando featured a high-tech sensory area complemented by an avant-garde pairing of a DJ and a live percussionist. Thought also goes into the pacing of the entertainment. “I work to crescendo the entertainment throughout the night,” says Chauvin. “From a multi-stimuli perspective, you’re engaging different physical senses throughout different areas of the event, so that way it’s an evolving event.”

A different kind of strategic approach expresses the local destination via the entertainment, as opposed to a theme of the meeting. That’s especially appropriate if the attendees have limited free time to explore the culture outside of the hotel walls. “I try to incorporate the culture of the destination in the entertainment,” says Miriam Davis, partner with Los Angeles, California-based EventPro Productions, a company she founded in 2000. “So if the corporate event is the South Pacific, for example, I’ll bring in a group that will sing, dance and do fire dances and get people up to do the dancing. That spans the generations; everybody likes it.”

Audience Demographics

Entertainment also should be selected with audience demographics in mind, particularly the varying musical tastes of different generations. When the event includes several entertainment components, as Chauvin’s programs do, “multiple generations can be represented in the entertainment,” she says. But when there is one main act, it can be difficult to please a multigenerational or multicultural audience. It’s often wise to select generic entertainment that will not alienate any segment. Things are different when the demographics are more homogenous: “If I have an audience that’s mostly in their 50s and 80 percent male, I’ll bring in a Foreigner, Styx, Boston or some rock band from the ‘80s, and they’re going to tear it up,” says Brad Bronenkamp, senior director of events for Dayton, Ohio-based Teradata. And while country is a hot genre today, Bronenkamp has found that with attendees over 50, “many times country is not going to resonate with them unless they grew up in the South.”

Bronenkamp has had success with acts such as Keith Urban and Imagine Dragons at Teradata’s incentive programs, and OneRepublic, The Band Perry, Dennis DeYoung (founding vocalist of Styx) and Foreigner at the annual convention. “We’re always looking for the big-ticket items, someone who can possibly make a difference in our attendance,” he explains.

More Interaction

But corporate audiences, especially in more recent times with the onset of the Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp, are looking for more than just a passive concertgoer’s experience. They want more interaction with the performers. A “meet and greet” before and/or after the performance is ideal, especially with big-name acts. “Some are really great about it,” says Bronenkamp. “We had Keith Urban in Paris for our incentive program this past year, and you talk about a down-to-earth, great guy. He was really interested in everybody that came in, talked to them for a few minutes about where they were from, what they liked and so on.”

The personal interaction even can happen during the performance. “At our partners conference we have sponsors for the band so they might get to do the introduction. Imagine Dragons brought many people from the audience up on stage — so you’re even worried about the weight on the stage,” Bronenkamp quips.

Of course, some corporate groups can afford to go far beyond these experiences for select attendees. Davis relates, “For one of my recent incentive clients, a star of a very large rock group met the top 10 salespeople in the group for dinner and then they flew on his private jet with another one of the band members cross country, where they did singing on the plane, etc. And then we got to the second city on the East Coast where they had a big party with the company executives, the rest of the sales teams and invited guests, and they played at the event.”

Being Part of the Act

A different kind of interaction has audience members involved in the performance itself. Circus acts, jugglers and magicians often are adept at using attendee volunteers, but the practice is less common with musicians.

One example is William Close, creator of the Earth Harp, an instrument whose strings extend throughout the performance venue. Interstate Hotels & Resorts featured Close at the company’s annual awards ceremony as part of a “futuristic farm-to-table event.” The theme was the future of locally sourced food, and “in that atmosphere, I needed to complement music that was divided among our courses of meals,” Chauvin explains. “In the ballroom, our attendees actually sat among the Earth Harp. It was performed from the base of the stage, but the strings went back 300 feet across the room. Each of our attendees was a part of that physical entertainment; the room wouldn’t sound the same without each of their contributions in the vibration of that music.”

Out-of-the-box acts like Close’s Earth Harp Collective are becoming more common in the corporate market these days, with highly innovative acts such as Cirque du Soleil and the Blue Man Group leading the way. Nicole Gallub, CEO of Washington, DC-based talent booking agency Pelonkey Inc., has provided her services to Interstate in the past. She observes, “People are really going more avant-garde today; they’re not afraid to push the envelope. There are so many different types of acts out there. Whereas a human lamp (a performer functioning as a lamp) may not have gotten any work in the past, they can now have it on their resume. Performers are getting a lot more creative; they want to stand out and be different.”

Among the acts on Pelonkey’s roster are several DJs, including Gallub herself, who performs as DJ Neekola. She shares some thoughts on how to decide between a live band and a DJ: “It can be better to have that personal touch with a band playing a specific genre, such as blues, jazz or 1930s orchestra, instead of having a DJ playing that genre. Of course, nothing is more flexible than a DJ if you have a wide (audience) demographic, whereas a band has a limited amount of music they can perform. A DJ can also include video mixing with videos of the guests, corporate logo, etc. And a DJ is less expensive than a band. So depending on what the client is looking for, booking a DJ may be better than spending $5,000 or more on a band.”

Keeping the Budget in Mind

A disc jockey is just one option for planners on tighter entertainment budgets. “In the corporate entertainment space there certainly are a lot of great resources,” Chauvin says. “For instance, I’ve hired talented bands that within an hour can take on two completely different looks,” thus delivering more bang for the buck. And sometimes the audience is aware it was the same group they saw and sometimes not. I’ve also worked in some markets with schools, bringing in a high school band that wants the exposure, for example. It’s an opportunity to give back to that market and also make a contribution to the school.”

For planners who need a good deal on a name act, there are several approaches to consider. One is to try to book an up-and-coming act while their price is still reasonable; a good booking agent can help to find these opportunities. Once the band hits the big time and starts winning awards, attendees will be pleased to have experienced the act when their star was still rising.

Many of Teradata’s meeting attendees had that experience with Imagine Dragons, One Republic and the Band Perry, all of whom now command much higher prices for corporate gigs, Bronenkamp notes. “Another key — and this is where your agent comes in — is if you can find a band that’s touring and is going to be in your event’s immediate vicinity. You can often get a better deal than what they usually offer because they’re there on a dark night anyway,” he explains. “When we had the Band Perry we were in Nashville, and they just happened to be home and did it for half of what they would charge anybody else.” Bronenkamp also suggests booking a band that a particular venue wants to promote “so they can do a public event one night and a private event the next, where your production costs are minimized.”

Establishing Expectations

Getting value from an entertainer isn’t just about bringing the price down, of course. It’s also about ensuring, to the greatest extent possible, that the act delivers on expectations. And so it’s crucial to clarify those expectations before contracting, particularly with acts that are first timers with the group. “I give a very detailed description of my audience and what my goals for the event are,” says Chauvin. “Because of the way I complement the theme of the night with the entertainment, I work diligently to tell them about that and let them creatively play on the theme to see what ideas they have to contribute to it. Then I’m very specific from a production standpoint. We’re very locked into timing and into exactly what they’re going to look like. So I approve attire before we go on by way of pictures and playlist long before the event.”

An act that is practiced in the corporate market should ask plenty of questions, in addition to being interviewed by the planner. “Definitely we ask, what are you trying to achieve with this event? What kind of atmosphere are you looking to create?” says Gallub. “Do you just want people to dance and have fun, or interact (with the performer) as well? Questions like that help us get a better understanding of what would work well for them.”

Comedians are especially important to “prep” as their material may or may not be appropriate for the audience, and if it isn’t, the results will be unpleasant at best. “You have to know your crowd and what they’ll tolerate and what they won’t tolerate,” says Davis. “You have your ‘clean’ comedians and your off-color comedians. If I get a brand-new client that asks me to get a comedian, I’ll discuss what they like and don’t like and who they’re bringing to the event. For example, I wouldn’t have Andrew Dice Clay at a family event or a religious event, but I might at some of my ‘all boys clubs.’ ”

When the Act Is a Mismatch

Bronenkamp prefers to steer clear of comedians in general. “I had a situation when I did events for Anheuser Busch where my people had to pull off stage a comedian that was too colorful,” he relates. “However, the past few years we have used what I would call a carpet MC that is also a comedian.” Such an individual is a known quantity, and certainly comedians who are a good match for a group can be found.

It also bears noting that musical acts can be off color, not just comedians. Bronenkamp had an unfortunate experience with such an act when a senior executive wanted the rock band Blink-182 for the company’s incentive program in Sydney, Australia. “We wrote in the contract a ‘PG event,’ but they used profanity and it didn’t go over well. We probably had 80 percent of the people leave right when they opened up.”

For various reasons, booking the wrong act, or one that isn’t the best fit, “happens to all of us no matter how professional we are,” Davis has found. “You learn and you deal with it when it happens, and you make it a better situation if possible.”

She relates an instructive case of an act that didn’t go over with a group due to a generational mismatch. “I had one corporate client that held an event in Las Vegas and the president said, ‘Miriam, we’re in Las Vegas, I want a Rat Pack group.’ I said, ‘I will find you the best Rat Pack imitators I can get you.’ This group was very well known, very hard to book and very expensive. The audience they were playing for were between the ages of 21 and 65. So we did the award ceremony and then we introduced the Rat Pack, beginning with Sammy Davis Jr.” Davis notes that when she overheard one of the guests commenting to another, “Who’s that?” she thought, “We’re in trouble.” Sure enough, she relates, “It did not go over well, because a lot of these young people had no idea who the performers were supposed to be.”

Davis addressed the situation by first being up front with the performers. “I feel honesty is the best policy. I said, ‘Guys, I’m sorry but half the kids here don’t know who you are,’ and they completely understood. ‘The senior executives know who you are, why don’t you go mingle with them in character?’ So they mingled and took pictures; they didn’t stay the whole time.”

She then had the DJ who was playing background music take over the entertainment, and the attendees ended up enjoying themselves. “So if you are leery of how an act will be received, have a backup in place, have a plan B,” Davis advises.

With a strategic approach to booking entertainment, a planner will seldom need to resort to a plan B. Occasionally a senior executive may call for an act that does not end up being appropriate, but apart from such scenarios, a planner can take confidence in an entertainer who has been matched to carefully considered audience demographics and event theme, and who delivers a personalized, interactive experience. The experience may well be memorable enough to market to potential attendees with photography or video. “We want to show it off and say, ‘Look what you missed,’ ” says Bronenkamp. “When they see an incentive trip where you have a Keith Urban and you’re in Paris, that’s a pretty good sell.”C&IT

Susan Magrino (l), chairman and CEO of Magrino Agency, and Allyn Magrino, president and COO of Magrino Agency. Magrino Agency, New York, NY, is an award-winning, pre-eminent lifestyle public relations and marketing agency with more than 20 years of experience and success. The agency specializes in public relations, marketing, and communications for luxury brands in travel, real estate, food, wine & spirits, and consumer goods. www.smapr.com

Leading industry experts gathered in mid-November at the Travel Trends Summit to discuss 2017 trends. Held at NeueHouse Madison Square in New York City and hosted by the Magrino Agency — a lifestyle public relations agency for brands in hospitality, consumer and luxury goods, and food, wine and spirits — the inaugural Travel Trends Summit issued its forecast for 2017 trends in luxury travel and hospitality.

“There is a megatrend with diners being more conscious of the ingredients on the menu. We now have a responsibility to nourish — not just feed — our guests.”

— Chef Matthew Kenney

The summit was moderated by Susan Magrino, chairman and CEO of Magrino Agency, and Allyn Magrino, president and COO of Magrino Agency. The event brought together the industry’s top leaders to discuss the factors that are shaping travel trends for the coming year, including millennial preferences, technology integration, social media and the luxury customer. The panels of experts included:

• Nikheel Advani, cofounder, COO and principal, Grace Bay Resorts
• Jack Ezon, president and partner, Ovation Travel
• Alex Glasscock, CEO and cofounder, The Ranch
• Matthew Kenney, chef and founder, Matthew Kenney Cuisine
• Peter Jon Lindberg, director of inspiration, Conrad Hotels & Resorts
• Judy Stein, co-president, Ovation Vacations
• Kat Tanita, blogger, With Love from Kat
• Charlotte Voisey, director of brand advocacy and portfolio mixologist, William Grant & Sons
• Alexandra Walterspiel, CEO and cofounder, Imprint Hospitality (management company for El San Juan Hotel)
• Brian Young, managing director, Castle Hill Inn

“This event came together in an effort to create an environment that invites influential leaders to engage in thought-provoking conversations,” says Allyn Magrino. “We wanted to fill a void by sourcing input on today’s trends from the experts in the industry who are actually on the front lines.”

The Millennial Mindset

According to Jack Ezon, head of the global travel agency Ovation in New York City, millennials can no longer be looked upon as young travelers between the ages of 18 and 24. In fact, he says, being a millennial is a much more diverse mindset. “We define that group by their behaviors,” Ezon adds. “For the first time, we’re seeing parents trying to act like kids rather than kids trying to act like their parents.” He says once businesses can move beyond the misconception of age, they will find a wide demographic of travelers who share similar interests and needs.

Wi-Fi Is King

In the world of ever-evolving technology, there is one belief that holds true, according to the panelists:

“Wi-Fi and bandwidth are like hot water and plumbing,” states Brian Young, managing director of the boutique Castle Hill Inn in Newport, Rhode Island. “Wi-Fi is a utility, and it’s basic to the guest experience.”

Beyond Wi-Fi, experts also note that simplicity is key when exploring new technologies. “If it’s just technology for technology’s sake it becomes a distraction,” says Alexandra Walterspiel, CEO and cofounder of the hotel management firm Imprint Hospitality, with offices in Denver and Chicago. To explain further, the panelists note the rise of certain off-brand options for luxury guests. “We are reading and hearing so much about the keyless entry. In the luxury segment, I think it’s a miss,” Ezon explains. “You need to make your staff more efficient to connect with guests.”

Young supported this sentiment, noting “remote check-in or mobile kiosks miss the basic human connection that anyone who is a traveling guest needs to have — and it’s just not luxury.”

Airbnb Is Here to Stay

Airbnb, the online house sharing network valued at $30 billion, is a hot topic within the travel industry and one that is not likely to fade away. For Nikheel Advani, COO of the luxury Grace Bay Resorts in Turks & Caicos, the competition from home rentals is a challenge hoteliers must embrace.

Noting that the company has filled an obvious void in the industry, Advani stresses that businesses need to study the behavior patterns of their guests to make themselves stronger. “We need to listen to our customers, and if we cannot satisfy them, someone else will.”

Food and Beverage Is Guiding Travel Plans

When choosing a destination that meets their needs, experts say food is the motivating factor. Guests are constantly researching notable restaurants, award-winning vineyards and trendsetting bars to experience during their travels.

“Food and beverage is the No. 1 priority in terms of every type of trip planned,” said Judy Stein, co-president of Ovation Vacations.

There also is an interactive, culturally immersive element to the food experience. Young says restaurants are flipping the table on the “farm-to-table” trend bringing guests directly to the farm, whether it is truffle hunting in Tuscany or catching your own clams off the coast of Newport.

Peter Jon Lindberg, an award-wining travel writer who has explored culinary destinations around the world, notes there also is a return to fine dining after years of casualization. “There’s a certain specialness that’s coming back.” This manifests equally in the storied hotel bar, which has seen a renaissance alongside the continued rise of cocktail culture. “The hotel bar is the pinnacle of our industry,” says Charlotte Voisey, director of brand advocacy and portfolio mixologist for William Grant & Sons. “There is a sense of occasion about them, which inspires the new generation.” The hotel minibar is another place where innovation is seen, containing a more discerning collection of offerings, since people are becoming more aware of what they are consuming.

To that end, wellness also has played a part in people’s culinary decisions. Today, guests are more informed than ever about the food they eat.

“There is a megatrend with diners being more conscious of the ingredients on the menu,” says chef Matthew Kenney, founder of Matthew Kenney Cuisine. “We now have a responsibility to nourish — not just feed — our guests.”

The Impact of Social Media

Experts agree word of mouth is one of the strongest promotional tools with social media networks giving a voice to the consumer, while also allowing brands to connect directly with their guests

“It’s a tremendous way of storytelling and sharing a brand ethos,” says Kenney. “Before companies could only rely on media to tell their story.”

But in the golden age of information, Lindberg stresses guests can sometimes become overwhelmed sifting through sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor to find the best recommendations. They struggle to find sources they can trust.

“There’s a part of me that misses this expert that was the conduit to your knowledge,” he says. “It’s mindboggling how much information we have to sort through.”

In regards to negative reviews, Alex Glasscock, who cofounded The Ranch, a healthy lifestyle brand, says social media allows companies to showcase their brand’s integrity in a genuine manner.

“Occasionally we have someone who writes something that is not favorable. We address those people by being authentic, and we are consistent in how we respond to those comments.”

But the industry also has had to adapt to a tech-savvy generation of travelers. Voisey notes a demand has been placed on the hospitality industry to provide products that are Instagram-ready. “It used to be favorable to have a drink consumed while it’s still live — meaning seconds after it’s freshly prepared — whereas now, we’re tasked with making sure it can withstand a full minute of perennial Instagramming.” C&IT