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Tech Matters

Broadcasting LIVE Hybrid Sessions from EMA

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Participate in the EMA from Home! We’re here in the desert getting ready to kick off the January Elite Meetings Alliance at Rancho Las Palmas Resort & Spa and it’s shaping up to be an amazing event! For those of you who weren’t able to be here in person, you’re invited to join us for our Educational Sessions via a live webcast! This will not be your average webcast. Our [...]

by Alina Itkin on January 27, 2012

So Many Options – Which Event Tech Tools to Choose?

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Attendees arrive at our events with smart phones, laptops, tablets and other tech devices ready to tweet, blog, post and share. As event planners we need to embrace event technology tools as a means of enhancing the attendee experience and promoting the event. That said, amidst all this “socializing,” we mustn’t lose sight of our goal: bringing people together who share common interests and giving them a personal, face-to-face experience. [...]

by Kelly Morris on April 27, 2011

SpeedRFP Works for Weddings

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It was only a matter of time I guess that someone at a hotel figured out that they could use SpeedRFP to consolidate their wedding RFPs (Requests for Proposal) as well as their meeting RFPs. Now we’re seeing it happen on multiple hotel web sites. The most notable example so far can be seen on Paradise Point’s website. The San Diego resort has created a second SpeedRFP form just for [...]

by Brad Pirman on October 26, 2010

SpeedRFP Integrates with MeetingBroker & Delphi

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Deep within the SpeedRFP labs, we’ve been very busy behind the scenes with a few major enhancements. The biggest of which has been the completion of an integration with a few products from Newmarket International. Soon hotel’s utilizing MeetingBroker, Delphi, Delphi.net, and Daylight will be able to have all of their SpeedRFPs delivered to their preferred system. So what exactly does this mean to you? Well, for you hoteliers, it [...]

by Brad Pirman on October 25, 2010

Messaging Matters – FaceTime

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You may or may not know that Elite Meetings has a product called FaceTime Appointment Scheduler. We built FaceTime Scheduler to facilitate our own events and as attendees used it, they told us they wanted it for their own events. FaceTime’s been used in the travel market for a little more than a year now. If you attended The Motivation Show 2010 in Chicago or Meet Different this year in [...]

by Brad Pirman on October 22, 2010

Evernote is Noteworthy

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Have you ever been on a site visit and struggled with capturing the details of the property, your ideas for meeting setups, and wondered how you would find the time to incorporate your photos into your notes in an easy and meaningful way. Then read on to learn more about an invaluable tool that should immediately add to your arsenal. I’m lucky enough to play with lots of the news [...]

by Brad Pirman on August 16, 2010

An Evolution of Meetings

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“Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.” ~ Arnold Bennett (British novelist, playwright, critic, and essayist, 1867-1931) We’ve all experienced the evolution of meetings – from the development of registration tools to the progression of exhibition design (we no longer need an engineering degree to set-up a booth) as well as the maturation of contract concessions and negotiations (who doesn’t have an [...]

by Kelly Morris on August 13, 2010

Search on — EliteMeetings.com!

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We’re pretty sure that many of you already know what Elite Meetings does but here’s a little video created by our Marketing goddess, Amanda Smith, that should help clear up any confusion! Cheers Amanda!

by Brad Pirman on August 11, 2010

Is your RFP form APEX compliant?

For more than 10 years, the Convention Industry Council (CIC) has been encouraging adoption of standard terminology, forms, and other elements of the business process for meeting, event, and incentive travel through its Accepted Practices Exchange (APEX). The Accepted Practices are voluntary standards designed by the meetings, conventions and exhibitions industry with the goal of streamlining business processes and creating efficiencies. Did you know that by simply using a SpeedRFP [...]

by Kelly Foy on August 4, 2010

3 reasons to follow Elite Meetings on Facebook and Twitter

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The Social Media landscape is evolving everyday and an ever growing number of users are looking for relevance in the channels they choose to engage and follow. With new resources like FlipBoard and paper.li coming on board, it’s important to choose channels that provide you with value. Maybe it’s entertainment and maybe it’s information…we’re aiming for a little bit of both. Here are 3 reasons to follow Elite Meetings on [...]

by Mark Ley on July 26, 2010

What’s New With FaceTime 2.0?

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We’ve certainly come a long way… …since we first released the FaceTime Appointment Scheduler back in early 2009. I always have to remind myself that we built FaceTime for our Elite Meetings Alliances and never really planned on opening it up to the world. But the little “scheduler that could” has exceeded all of our expectations and has evolved into quite the robust scheduler that is now used to power [...]

by Brad Pirman on July 15, 2010

SpeedRFP Changes – ver. 0.5.1

SpeedRFP Overlay Web Form

Just recently we released an update to SpeedRFP.com. While there were lots of changes, some of the more notable ones are described below. Please remember, many of these changes are based on feedback that we get from our user community. Please don’t hesitate to use the “Feedback” tab on the right side of SpeedRFP.com to give us your ideas. We’ll probably incorporate them into future updates. Read more about the recent changes to SpeedRFP…

by Brad Pirman on June 14, 2010

Keeping your leads out of the SPAM box

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Occasionally our users don’t receive our system emails, and as I’m the technology “go-to guy,” I’m asked to troubleshoot the issue. Being the glory-hound that I am, I revel in such attention. If the prospect of spending time with both a stranger and a pompous I.T. personality doesn’t excite you, however, I‘ve created a checklist to ensure you get all the important emails from Elite Meetings. The first two items [...]

by Doug Frank on May 12, 2010

Top Four Reasons to Add SpeedRFP to Your Hotel Website

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The team here at Elite Meetings has spent the past year and a half building SpeedRFP, and now it’s here, ready to use! To make it the best it can be, we surveyed our community of meeting professionals for their challenges, spoke with industry experts to determine standards, and tested the program mercilessly to ensure SpeedRFP was intuitive and easy to use. What emerged is a tool that has been [...]

by Therese Adams on May 8, 2010

SpeedRFP to Integrate with MeetingBroker!

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Kelly Foy and Brad Pirman are in Las Vegas today at a very exciting event, making a very exciting announcement. Did I get your attention yet?? Newmarket International, Inc. (www.newmarketinc.com), the leader in sales and catering software solutions for the hospitality industry, and Elite Meetings International, a leading provider of integrated solutions that enhance the performance of meeting and hospitality professionals, announced the integration of their market-leading technologies at the [...]

by Mark Ley on May 7, 2010

It’s Alive

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Updated: Please check out the “SpeedRFP Launches” press release for more information. I’m like a proud, yet mad, scientist (picture Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein) who’s spent months in the laboratory with a team creating what will hopefully save people countless hours of wasted time. SpeedRFP.com was conceived about 15 months ago and it’s now public for you to use. The concept was born from our truest intentions to provide [...]

by Brad Pirman on April 1, 2010

It’s time for the next step…

What’s the big deal? Well, we truly believe that SpeedRFP will revolutionize the way that most meeting planners transact RFPs online. To understand why it can create such a change, you must first understand where the process is today. SpeedRFP isn’t a new idea. Rather, it’s the evolution of a system that we’ve had in place for a few years now on EliteMeetings.com. In that time, we’ve seen a lot [...]

by Brad Pirman on March 19, 2010

Grow Locally before Growing Globally

To often social media is looked at as solely as marketing and business development tool for growing your exposure among those who have never, ever, heard of a product. It is seen as an avenue that will cut down the all the noise and bring in the new. The same ideas have been applied to meetings, and tradeshows, with many organizations using these tools in an effort to boost the [...]

by Mark Ley on March 18, 2010

Beginners guide to Social Media

Are you unsure what do with social media? You’re not alone. Many meeting professionals feel overwhelmed by the idea of establishing a presence in the social media world. Social Media Marketing is on the tip of everyone’s tongue these days. Most though are unsure how to use these new mediums and struggle with understanding where to get started. Fortunately, it’s easier than you think. Meeting professionals that want to increase [...]

by Mark Ley on December 22, 2009

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