This valuable tip came to us from Laura at McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP. Thanks so much, Laura!

“Prepare an abbreviated agenda, on card stock, sized to fit in an attendee’s name-tag holder. Issue these with their name tags and they will be more likely to always have an agenda with them. Additionally, if you have breakout sessions, add a sticker on the back of each name tag with their breakout assignment. This has saved so much time–and paper (bonus!) for us this year.”

IMEX Frankfurt, May 22-24, 2012

This year marks the tenth anniversary for IMEX Frankfurt. Over the past decade, the show has honed its reputation as the place to do business. In terms of sheer numbers, the 2012 show will likely have about 14,000 senior decision makers and some 3,500 exhibitors, suppliers, and product experts from more than 150 countries. Thanks to the show’s preset appointments and social events, first-timers at the show will inevitably find how easy it is to meet people and develop industry knowledge and business.

Longtime attendees already appreciate the show’s high level of professionalism and enthusiasm. That includes Elite Meetings’ own Alda Egurrola-Wienke. As our Spain-based Regional Director for Europe, Alda has become a regular at the show. What does she like most about IMEX Frankfurt? Along with the gala dinners and events, she looks forward to catching up with her LinkedIn network—they make a point of getting together during the show. “Even though I know where and how to reach them virtually,” she said, “the personal handshake, hug, and quick cup of coffee refresh those connections all over again.”

“With a few connections,” she added, “we established a tradition to meet and assist each other while at the event. We find out where we are and what our schedules are like, then we make sure to bring each other a few good leads or connections throughout the event. Nothing beats the personal recommendation and introduction,” she adds.

In addition to relationship-building opportunities, this year’s show will have an impressive 120 learning opportunities lined up, categorized into eight tracks to make it easier. Those tracks include marketing and communication, personal development, HR and professional development, social media, sustainability, technology, and general education.

While you’re there, be sure to look for Alda. She’d love to meet you. But first things first….click here to register.

The Road to the EMA – Dallas

Planning is well under way for the April Elite Meetings Alliance (EMA) at the Omni Dallas Hotel. As we’re strapping our boots and fastening our stirrups, we wanted to give you a glimpse into the wild world of EMA creation.

Margaret Holsinger, our EMA event manager – and all around planning guru – has been busy booking speakers for the event. Speakers for the EMA are geared to educate, inform, and enlighten you to the ever changing world of meeting planning. Our sessions are CMP certified — meaning you’re enhancing your career and gaining personal knowledge at the same time. Killing two birds with one stone is just another reason the EMA is the best professional meeting planner event in the industry.

Margaret secures speakers through recommendations from the best in the industry and April is no exception. Our Keynote speaker, Jonathan Bradshaw, comes to us highly recommended as the Founder and CEO of the Meetology Group. If that doesn’t impress you, maybe the fact that he’s climbed Mt. Everest and Mt. Kilimanjaro will?

Also this April we have Betsy Bondurant joining us from Bondurant Consulting. Betsy is an industry favorite with her unique perspectives on all things meetings — in addition to 30 years of experience. She has been recognized as a Best Practitioner by Business Travel News and named one of the 25 Most Influential People in the Meetings Industry by Meeting News.

April’s EMA definitely has some hard hitters and you don’t want to miss out on an event like this. If you’d like to check out news from previous events, do so here and don’t forget to check out the photos from April’s event. To check out the rest of our phenomenal speakers, click here.

We look forward to seeing you at the next Elite Meetings Alliance April 22 – 24th at the brand new Omni Dallas Hotel!

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A few simple steps can help you save on the bottom line. —By Betsy Bondurant, CMM, CTE

We’ve heard the term strategic meetings management (SMM) for many years now, but what exactly is it? Simply put, SMM brings order and control to an organization’s meeting and event expenditures—what the industry calls spend. Knowing who is planning meetings throughout the company and what is being spent can lead to a significant reduction in inefficiencies, risk, and cost. In fact, typical cost savings during the first year of SMM implementation range from 10 to 20 percent.

WHO DOES WHAT?
Experience tells us that many different entities throughout an organization plan meetings and events. Most often, there’s a formal meeting-planning department. But a large volume of meetings is also handled by “occasional planners”—executive assistants, administrative coordinators, and project managers. In addition, many companies have “power planners,” people outside the official planning group who spend most of their time planning meetings and events. These multiple points of purchase raise some issues of concern:

• The organization’s limited insight into who is spending what leaves everyone unable to leverage the overall spend.
• Prices negotiated by anyone other than meeting specialists may result in higher costs than necessary.
• Terms of the contracts, such as a high attrition penalty or lack of a rebooking clause, may favor the hotels and other suppliers over the company or association.

MONEY IN MOTION
By developing an SMM program, organizations can see where the money goes and leverage the total while reducing risk. Historically, large companies (those with annual revenues of more than $1 billion) have been the first to embrace SMM, partly because these programs align so nicely with their procurement objectives.

However, SMM is currently gaining traction with associations and small- to medium-sized companies (those with annual revenues of less than $50 million and $1 billion respectively). They, too, see the benefit of instituting best practices to save money on meeting and event services.

Still, meetings and events remain one of the last areas of unmanaged cost in most organizations. Through strategic management, companies can realize significant savings. For example, depending on the size of the business, a company could save $4 to $14 million. Even if a company reduced the current cost by just ten percent through SMM, it would see a savings of $400,000 from a previous $4 million spend or $1.4 million from a previous $14 million.

Based on these potential savings, wouldn’t it be great if you were to suggest an SMM program for your organization? No doubt you would be seen as an even more valuable asset to your employer. In fact, I have seen many instances where the person who led the charge for SMM received a promotion because of their proactive approach to saving resources and reducing risk.

STATE YOUR CASE
With no centralized process in place for sourcing and contracting meetings, how can you quantify the potential meeting and event savings? Start by estimating the amount your company spends on meetings and events. Typically that means:

• 2% to 3% of total company revenue
• 25% to 30% of total travel and entertainment spend
• 60% of corporate air volume

Next, multiply this estimated total event expenditure by 10 to 20 percent to project potential savings in the first year. When presented with the facts, executives can’t help but acknowledge the value of SMM.

FULL STEAM AHEAD
Once you get approval to move forward, where do you start? For many small- and medium-sized companies and associations, hotels represent the largest portion of meeting and event expenditures (45 percent), which is why gaining visibility and control of hotel costs should be your first step. Of course, there are other elements to consider; but rooms for sleeping and meeting are some of the most common areas of launch for SMM.

If the project’s scope seems overwhelming at first, start by tracking the expenditures already under your control. Even having data on a limited number of meetings can begin to paint the picture of potential savings. Next, reach out to others in the organization, starting with those who are proven experts in hotel contracting. Ask them to support your SMM initiative by reviewing and negotiating a limited number of contracts for others in the organization.

If your company or association has a high volume of meeting and event contracts, it makes sense to tackle the riskiest first. You can do this by determining a dollar amount over which a specialist will step in. For some organizations, this might be anything over $25,000 or $50,000 for a single event. As the program matures, you can adjust the threshold to cover a higher or lower volume of contracts going to the experts.

Once you have your experts onboard, ask them to help you develop a standard checklist so that all negotiators will address the same requirements and possibilities for every contract. This should include a list of must-have concessions and nice-to-have concessions. A must-have concession might be a rebooking clause, one that allows the company to rebook within a specific time period, without penalty, if it has to cancel a meeting. A nice-to-have concession might be the presidential suite charged at the same block rate as the other rooms.

Finally, check with your legal department to ensure that terms used in the contracts—such as force majeure, cancellation, and arbitration—align with association or corporate requirements.

The data from this centralized process will easily reveal who is doing the planning within the organization, how many meetings are being planned overall, which hotels are getting the business, how much is being paid out, and eventually how much has been saved through leveraged purchases and expert contract negotiations.

FACTS ON FILE
From the first you need a system for organizing the data. Where to start? A standard practice for many companies utilizing SMM is to keep a savings sheet with each contract so the negotiator can track all concessions and the savings associated with them.

Be sure to fill in the worksheet during negotiations—why waste time having to go back and recreate the data? Soon you will have a nice collection of figures that shows the savings meeting-by-meeting, month-by-month, and quarter-by-quarter. Ultimately, you will end up with annual statistics that will boost enthusiasm for the project dramatically.

Keep it simple. Write down the first room rate quoted by a hotel and then compare that to the rate finally agreed upon. The difference between the two rates, multiplied by the number of room nights, is the total savings on accommodations. For example, if the original room rate was $200 a night, and you negotiated down to $175 for 100 rooms, the savings would be $25 a night, times 100 nights, equals $2,500.

On top of that, you may have reduced the meeting-room rental from $2,000 to $500 for each day of a two-day meeting. That would result in a savings of $1,500 a day, times two, equals $3,000. Maybe you got the presidential suite for your CEO for two nights at $450 a night rather than the usual rate of $900 a night, resulting in another $900 in savings. Just these three items add up to a savings of $6,400. More than likely you will have several more line items of concessions, which will compound the savings.

Remember to keep it simple. The less complex the savings sheet, the more likely you and others are to use it. And remember: As the program builds momentum, be sure to communicate the savings achieved and other successes throughout the organization; don’t hide the data in a drawer! When people see their changes actually making a difference, they will redouble their efforts to support the initiative and build compliance. After all, what’s good for the organization is good for everyone involved.

——————-
Betsy Bondurant, CMM, CTE, has more than 30 years of experience in hotel sales, meetings and events, and travel and trade show management, including 12 years of direct involvement in strategic meetings management. In 2007, she left the corporate meeting world to start Bondurant Consulting, a company that provides everything from educational content for client events to full design and implementation of SMM programs for corporations and associations. For more information, go to www.bondurantconsulting.com, or e-mail betsy@bondurantconsulting.com.

One of the many reasons we partner each year with HSMAI for the newly minted MEET shows is because we, like you, get a lot out of them. This year’s MEET Mid-America show will be held April 3-4, 2012, at Chicago’s Navy Pier. What are we most looking forward to? In particular, the educational component looks especially strong. They’re offering something for every learning style—from in-depth case studies to quick-burst coverage to moderated roundtable discussions. And the sum total clocks out to a very respectable 8.5 hours of continuing education for CMP certification or recertification. That’s time well spent.

We’re also looking forward to meeting a good many of the 1,200 meeting professionals expected to attend. We love the opportunity to learn about technologies and tools that make your jobs easier. (We might even provide one or two of them ourselves.) Plus, we’re eager to meet the 200 or so fellow exhibitors—hoteliers, convention and visitors bureaus, and equipment and service providers. We’ve met some of our best longstanding relationships—including those who regularly participate in our own Elite Meetings Alliances—at face-to-face shows like MEET.

In recent years, the new emphasis on one-on-one appointments gave us an opportunity to help hosted buyers and suppliers make connections via HSMAI’s TEEM UP program (perhaps you’ve heard of our FaceTime Appointment Scheduler?). At this year’s program, FaceTime and Elite Meetings is assisting in their One-to-One Program, too. Another of our products, SpeedRFP, plans to make an appearance as well. Plus, we’re very excited that we’ll be showing off the fancy new design and functionality of EliteMeetings.com, version 4.0. If you’re there, we hope you’ll stop by to say hello. We’ll let you know our booth number once it’s confirmed.

This just in: We’ll be at booth #701. We can’t wait to see you there!

Move over, London Eye: It’s official: the foundation has been set for Las Vegas’s new observation wheel, which promises to be the largest in the western hemisphere. The new addition to the Vegas skyline, SkyVue, will open to non-acrophobes on July 4, 2013. The “revolutionary” project boasts 32, 24-person, climate-controlled gondolas (after all, it gets cold 500 feet above The Strip); 200,000 square feet of retail space; and 20,000 square feet of meeting space. The ride will last a total of 30 scenic minutes… New Kid on the (Lower Manhattan) Block: Welcome to the Conrad New York, whose opening is set for today, March 19. Further congratulations on an inventive name for your seasonal rooftop lounge, The Loopy Doopy Bar… Fun in the Sun: Earlier this month, Hawk’s Cay Resort In the Florida Keys released its newest fledging, a program dubbed Island Exploration. Aiming to create unexpected (in a good way) and memorable moments for guests, the program will delight participants with festivals, events, and more. For groups, they’ll be developing new teambuilding opportunities, networking experiences, and brainstorming venues… That’s a Wrap: ITB Berlin, a travel-trade staple, seems to have had a rather good show this year (March 7-11). Although final numbers won’t be released until mid-April, they report a 20% bump in attendance and signs of a rosy future for international tourism. Nice!…Meet and Greet: The lovely and historic Corinthia Hotel Budapest named Thomas Fischer as their new general manager earlier this month. He’s literally bringing a world of experience to the position, most recently as the GM of Kempinski Hotel Gravenbruch Frankfurt, with previous stints in Moscow, China, and the UK. Gratulálok!

Joann from Gen Re shared this time-saving tip for events that involve international travel. Thank you, Joann!

“When bringing a group to a passport-required destination, I try to get my hands on customs and immigration forms and then pre-populate the fields for my attendees with such things as hotel name, address, dates, etc. On occasions when we have passport data for attendees, I am even able to add their name and passport ID information.”

Preferred Hotel Group has recently launched PHGmeetings.com, an online RFP system integrated through SpeedRFP 2.0. Read the entire press release below and check out the all new SpeedRFP 2.0 with new wedding, social and updated meeting forms.

Preferred Hotel Group™ launches PHG Meetings

Preferred Hotel Group™, a leading provider of sales and marketing support to independent hotels around the world, announced the launch of PHG Meetings (www.PHGMeetings.com). A comprehensive online RFP management system, PHG Meetings connects corporate sales managers, Global Sales Offices (GSOs), property level sales professionals and meeting planners with one convenient and powerful tool.

PHG Meetings, in partnership with and Elite Meetings International (EMI), creates a seamless 360-degree system that enables all potential meetings professionals involved in the booking process to interact quickly, efficiently and productively. This easy to use website utilizes EMI’s SpeedRFP™ RFP management system, and a search technology platform similar to the one that powers www.EliteMeetings.com.

The online portal also fully integrates more than 600 Preferred Hotel Group member hotels with EMI’s SpeedRFP system, which has already been adopted by more than 3,800 meeting professionals worldwide. SpeedRFP users can now simply point their browsers to PHG Meetings and submit their saved RFPs to any of the participating Preferred Hotel Group members in just a few clicks.

“We are excited to launch PHG Meetings, which provides our clients with a fast, efficient and seamless way to search, based on their specific needs and requirements, for the best independent hotels in the world. And, in turn, our member hotels benefit from the most sophisticated web-based sales technology available,” Said Craig Jacobs, Senior Vice President, Group Sales, of Preferred Hotel Group.

In addition to providing a search, refine and RFP tool for meeting professionals seeking to book groups with Preferred Hotel Group members, the functionality built into PHG Meetings was designed with the company’s sales team in mind. It provides game-changing operational efficiencies for the company’s global sales team and for Preferred Hotel Group members currently utilizing New market’s Meeting Broker sales and catering system. PHG Meetings will send RFP data directly into their systems, thus alleviating the need to rekey data.

PHG Meetings’ architecture and functionality is based on EliteMeetings.com, allowing users to search for properties by location, hotel name, number of guest rooms, meeting space, or amenities, with the system returning a narrowed number of meeting properties based on search criteria.