In a role she has been preparing for since 2002, Sheri Clemmer took the lead planning the 59th Session of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, which drew more than 70,000 attendees to Atlanta June 23 to July 3.

“This job is not something that you just say, ‘OK, two weeks and you have the job,’” Clemmer says. “They actually brought me on board three years prior to the 2005 meeting so that I could shadow Linda deLeon [the current planner] and get a good handle on it several years in advance because it is such a complicated event.”

Delegates from more than 200 countries gather every five years to participate in the conference’s business sessions, elections and devotionals, but the most common description heard among attendees is that the widely anticipated event is a reunion.

After recovering from the 19-day adventure (including preparation and tear down for the 10-day event), and with fewer than 1,800 days to go until she does it all over again, Clemmer took a break to share how history, encouragement and a lot of adrenaline helped make the 2010 General Conference Session a success.

How would you sum up the experience at GC Session?

Adventist NewsLine, a nightly newscast, aired live each evening. Click on the picture for the story.

Lots of people speaking lots of different languages; lots of meetings; lots of music; lots of details. It is a business session of our church, which is a quinquennial event. Once every five years, we elect officers and administration leaders who will serve for that next five-year period, make changes to our church manual … and then there are many other business events that go on.

Who is represented at the meeting?

The World Church. We actually have 16.3 million members around the world. We have representation from more than 200 countries at this event; it’s a very international meeting. We had 2,800 delegates, who are part of the business session and the election process, and special guests from the varying countries. Many of them are church leaders, local pastors or a layperson. We had young people represented this time. It’s a huge mix. The decisions are made by a widespread part of the membership.

In addition to business meetings, what kind of programming is there?

We had an exhibit hall that had approximately 200,000 square feet of exhibits (more than 200 exhibitors). That was a very, very busy place. We had a Super Day Camp for children. We had women’s meetings that went on from Sunday through Friday, and included both morning and afternoon activities for those days. Our business session, devotionals, leadership training for pastors and division reports went on [in the auditorium] every day.

When do you start planning?

We actually begin nine years prior to the event. [We’ll] start planning now for 2020. It’s such a large event, and the venues are far and few between … there aren’t that many houses that can accommodate us.

How do you select a city?

The basic minimal package that we use for an RFP is a covered dome that seats 70,000. We also need a convention center with 200,000 square feet for exhibits and approximately the same for food service, about 60 breakout rooms of varying sizes and hotels within walking distance. We usually have blocked 6,000 rooms. We try to avoid shuttling if at all possible, so we try to make sure everything is within walking distance. Everything has to be pretty neat and tidy and close by each other, and that is just not available in a number of cities. They have the convention center space that we need and they have the dome, but they’re 30 minutes apart. Shuttling takes so much time out of the day and we pack our days so full. We start at 8 a.m. and don’t finish until 9 p.m. with programming.

What cities do work for your event?

In the U.S., Phoenix could do it. We’re going to be in San Antonio in 2015. New Orleans probably could do it … Atlanta … Toronto could do it, which is North America. Internationally, Melbourne, Australia, could do it, but that’s really about it. We were in Toronto in 2000 and we would have loved to look at Toronto for another year, but the Blue Jays don’t want to give up their playing field for the length of time required. And Melbourne, Australia, has a similar issue with their cricket field.

How big is your planning staff?

Our session planning committee has 23 sub-committees and I’ve never counted the sub-subs, but there are multiple. There are things like the music committee, the program committee, the communications committee, and each one has their terms of reference and their area of responsibility. Session management, the job that I play, is like an umbrella that knows what each of the groups are up to and how they interact. We sit on each one of these committees, so we attend a lot of meetings and that helps us to know that this one isn’t jumping over and doing the work of another one. We have 400 technical staff that worked this past session. The majority are paid personnel; many of those are workers in this building, some are volunteers, some are retirees, and some are contracted workers, especially in the audiovisual area — cameramen, technicians to work the audiovisual or the sound.

Do you rely on history while you are planning?

We do. Space assignment is a great example of why history is so valuable. We need about 60 breakout rooms. I have to have office space for some groups. We do a church magazine called the Adventist Review and during GC Session it comes out every day — a 40-plus page, full-color magazine with photos and proceedings that have gone on during session are all recorded there. So obviously they have to have a nice, big office to work. The procurement department has to know how many copiers and printers we need, and the computer department gets in on that.

What was new this year?

The Super Day Camp was new for the young people. We don’t have children’s events normally except for Sabbath School, but this time the Potomac Conference volunteered to do a day camp. They picked the kids up and took them off site where they had rented space, and I think a lot of parents and kids appreciated it a lot.

Did the day camp attract more families?

A lot of families come. They spend a lot of time in the exhibit halls and they go to city attractions, enjoy the hotel pool or whatever. [The day camp] was just something nice they could take advantage of, but attendance didn’t increase because of it.

You tried a new meal ticketing system. How did it work out?

In the past, we had a booklet of meal tickets that you would purchase or delegates received complimentary, but this time we had electronic tickets. It was kind of cool. The system itself went really well, but we did run into some challenges because paper tickets were easy to give away to people — like we give the interpreters meal tickets for each session that they worked. So that was a little more difficult, but nobody was able to duplicate these tickets, which was a problem in the past.

How do you attract and engage such a wide variety of ages, demographics and even ethnicities?

Parade of Nations

We don’t do a lot of marketing. We have a website, but it’s amazing how many people want to come and be a part of this event. It’s like a huge reunion, a huge camp meeting and a business session all rolled into one. We have what we call “pop-up meetings” and I usually assign [a variety of room styles and sizes] to the business center [for groups to use]. There could be a group of individuals who served at a particular part of the mission field at the same time and they decide that they want to have a little gathering. I think they love being there. I know I do. My first Session was 1995. I was an exhibitor up at Toronto with the department I was working for at that time. I love to sing — and when we’re all singing the theme song or a favorite hymn together and the rafters just ring … I mean, 70,000 voices singing together — it’s just an awesome experience. For me, it’s one of my favorite times … just being part of the crowd, the throng of people moving around in the city.

How do you keep from becoming overwhelmed?

I think that it’s really important that you spread this out across as many people’s shoulders as possible. I didn’t have to worry that the newsletter was coming out or the sound was going to work properly or the music people were going to be on stage. I didn’t have to worry about any of those details because these sub-committees were in place doing their jobs. As session management, when they had a problem, they would call me and I would get it fixed for them. On site that is my role.

Working nine years out to plan each meeting, how do you keep your team inspired and engaged?

Well, it does take some really good encouragement in those first few years. Like right now, people are in a really big slump; they’re tired. During a session, [we work] 19-hour days for 11 or 12 days straight. You run on adrenaline and when the meeting’s over you’re just plumb worn out.

Security is a big issue for your event. What advice do you have?

In every big city, you have to tell people to be careful and to go in groups. We actually lost a person for the first time [this year]. The city of Atlanta responded so efficiently; they were most helpful and we did reunite the family, but that was a very frightening experience. Build a relationship; go ahead and meet with the police chief and tell him, “We want to tell you about our group that’s coming in. We want to know how can we partner with you to be sure that we have a good, secure meeting.” And the selection of your security company is extremely critical. One thing that was new to this event was bag checking. We have never done that before, and it was done extremely efficiently by this group. They made it a very welcoming thing.

One of my jobs was to find out — especially with the evening meetings — how we were doing on time … [and] by radio we kept close contact with the security company… Keeping your meeting on time is so critical. Not just when it’s going to be televised or you’re buying airtime for satellite uplink, but just out of a courtesy. I mean you’ve set this program, you’ve worked on it, and these speakers that just ramble on and on and mess up your program, get a shepherd’s crook and pull them off stage.

What additional advice do you have for fellow meeting planners?

Rely on your CVB as much as possible. They have a wealth of information to share and services they can provide. For an event like this, you actually become really good friends because you’ve worked together for so many years. They really can put the world at your fingertips, and anything that you need in that city they can help you find.

By Monica Compton

Selecting the proper venue for your meeting can be a daunting task. While some meetings can be flexible to any type of property, others have specific requirements that only certain venues can provide. Location and accessibility can be the first barometers for narrowing down your choices. If your agenda is tight and there is little time to transfer attendees, an airport property or traditional hotel in a metropolitan area would work best. If your program allows for little leisure time, a conference center can provide the best focus for your educational agenda. Meetings that include off-site excursions might work best for a resort property. Tailoring your request for proposal to your program’s needs will further define the type of property that will give you the greatest success.

Traditional hotels

Often located in city centers or close to airports, traditional hotels are usually the most accessible to mass transit and provide the shortest commute for your attendees. Because they are often located in the heart of a metropolitan area, they allow your delegates to experience the destination and provide a myriad of off-site activity and group dining options.

“Traditional hotels often provide a true-life glimpse into the unique character of a destination,” says Steven Spivak, director of sales and marketing for the new Loews Atlanta Hotel. “Many traditional hotels are woven into the fiber of the great cities in which they operate, providing luxurious accommodations and amenities within walking distance of renowned museums and theatres, world-class shopping, and a wealth of dining options.”

While traditional hotels offer this direct access to activities and off-site functions, they are still focused on the meeting’s needs, providing flexible function space, complete audiovisual packaging and all the technology support you need to make your program run smoothly. And, while resort properties offer expanded off-site activities and leisure appeal, and conference centers provide a focused environment for the meeting, the traditional hotel can meet both needs.

“With a traditional hotel, you get the best of both worlds and more — a  flexible workspace for any type of function, access to recreational activities at the hotel or the surrounding area, and the opportunity to be within the heart of a downtown area,” says Jeff Webster with Charleston Place Hotel in Charleston, S.C.

While many planners feel a resort is better suited for meetings that include golfing and spa options, traditional hotels can offer the same team-building and group activities a resort can offer.

“We’ve been able to flip the mindset that you need to be based at a resort to enjoy the recreational activities of a destination,” Webster says. “The fact is that a golf outing, fishing excursion or other function makes up a very small portion of a meeting/conference agenda.”

When creating a request for proposal for a traditional hotel, Webster says it is important to communicate your specific needs beyond availability, rates and space requirements.

“It’s important for clients to outline any special needs upfront,” Webster says. “If a group is interested in a structured meeting with learning as the focus, we can provide that. Conversely, if there is a client that wants a healthier balance of meeting and free time, we can create a unique itinerary that will meet those needs.”

Since location is key to booking a traditional hotel, make sure your request for proposal asks how far the property is from the airport and the commute time from nearby cities. Include the off-site attractions you are considering, and ask for the driving and walking distance from the hotel.

“Traditional hotels are all about versatility and taking care of the customer’s specific and individual needs, thus allowing them to readily accommodate any type of meeting,” Spivak says. “Be it an intensive seminar, an intimate board meeting or a more elaborate trip, a traditional hotel in the perfect location truly has something for everyone.”

Conference Centers

Specializing in small- to medium-sized meetings, conference centers are often located in suburban areas and evolved from the need for distraction-free meeting and learning environments. The conference center meeting room is dedicated to meetings and only meetings. Rather than standard banquet chairs and tables, conference center furniture is ergonomically designed to be comfortable all day long. Tables have clean, hard surfaces to make writing easier as opposed to plywood banquet tables covered with linen that perform multiple duties at a traditional hotel or resort. Conference rooms are also soundproof to decrease distractions and maintain privacy of the meeting’s content.

“A conference center has a pure meeting focus, which means it is not trying to be all things to all people,” says Karen Pendleton, director of sales and marketing for Wyndham Peachtree Conference Center in Peachtree City, Ga.

The International Association of Conference Centers (IACC) certifies conference centers according to their ability to meet a set of standards including:  a minimum of 60 percent of meeting space is dedicated, single-purpose conference space; 60 percent of the meeting rooms must have ergonomically-designed chairs; lighting and climate levels must be controlled from within the meeting room; conference rooms must have acoustical privacy; and standard audiovisual services and support must be available onsite.

The IACC segments conference centers into five types: 1. Executive Conference Centers are designed to cater to executive-level meetings; 2. Resort Conference Centers must have at least one major amenity such as a golf course or ski area adjacent to the property; 3. Educational Conference Centers are located in a college or university and lease their facilities to private corporations; 4.  Nonresidential Centers are completely equipped for meetings, but do not offer sleeping rooms or leisure activities; and 5. Ancillary Conference Centers are part of a large hospitality complex such as a floor or a wing of a traditional hotel.

The Woodlands Resort and Conference Center in Houston, Texas, is an example of a property that provides a dedicated meeting environment as well as resort activities. Tory Enriquez, director of sales and marketing for The Woodlands Resort and Conference Center suggests that planners search for IACC-approved facilities.

“These facilities must follow the current practices and criteria of the conference center industry,” Enriquez says. “Dedicated meeting space separates living and leisure areas from conference rooms for a more private meeting environment.”

Conference centers typically offer the Complete Meeting Package (CMP), which provides a per person price for hotel accommodations, meals, meeting space and audiovisual services. The package pricing allows planners to know their complete costs upfront and reduces the amount of banquet event orders planners need to review and confirm. Because food and beverage breaks are continuous, agenda timing can be flexible.

“The simplicity of planning at a conference center is key to the overworked planner and also to the novice planner,” Pendleton says. “[There is] no nickel
and diming.”

Pendleton corrects the misconception that conference centers are not as strong in their food and beverage offerings as traditional hotels and resorts. She says breaks are actually more plentiful and complete than a la carte menus, and producing top-notch cuisine is a goal for all conference centers. The Wyndham Peachtree Conference Center’s chef was awarded the IACC Copper Skillet Competition National Championship title and placed third in the International Competition.

“His cuisine features farm to table menus as he purchases as much as possible from the local growers,” Pendleton says. “Our chef emphasizes healthy living with signage noting the best food for energy, brain foods, and foods to improve muscle and growth.”

When creating a request for proposal that includes both conference centers and traditional hotels, it is important to compare all pricing elements and equate the difference between the conference center’s CMP plan and the hotel’s total  à la carte items.

“Too many planners stop their comparison at room rate and end up spending much more when all the food and beverage and audiovisual comes into play,” Pendleton says. “Make an apples to apples comparison by comparing all elements of the meeting you will need.”

Resorts

Unique to their destination, resort properties are usually located outside of city centers, providing a full gamut of leisure activities and amenities. Ideal for retreats, resorts can offer a choice of sleeping room accommodations, from traditional hotel rooms to two- and three-bedroom villas or condominiums. Many resorts add a fee on top of the sleeping room rate that provides access to leisure activities, from the pool to the exercise room. Others include complimentary activities as part of the rate.

“Our complimentary amenities and free activities include bicycle rentals, tennis court time, the fitness center, and canoe and kayak rentals,” says Lela Coker, marketing and public relations for Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort in Destin, Fla. “This helps occupy free time without costing the group or attendee.”

Perhaps the greatest benefit of a resort is the outdoor space that can be booked for private functions, group dinners and team-building events. By the nature of their location, resorts often offer limited access and exclusive entrances for their guests. This creates an intimate, “VIP feel” for each and every attendee.

“A resort can be located on a beach, mountain or golf course [giving] a unique sense of place,” says Eric Kuester, director, national accounts for North Carolina’s Pinehurst. “Incorporating the indigenous surroundings to your outdoor function space can tap into the senses of an attendee and create a
memorable event.”

Although resorts are best known for attracting incentive events or meetings that require a leisure component, these properties have fully-equipped meeting space that can accommodate any type of program. On-site audiovisual and conference services support is available and flexible function space can accommodate everything from a 15-person board meeting to a sit-down dinner for 1,000 people.

“Traditionally, incentive-based events have been a great profile for resort properties because of the reward component,” Kuester says. “But we see a range in meeting DNA:  small executive leadership retreats … to large-scale national forums.”

When creating a request for proposal for a resort property, request dates that are outside of peak season to get the best rates. If your event leans more heavily towards the leisure component, try to negotiate the resort fee by adding or subtracting amenities depending on your group’s use of resort facilities.

Numbers are starting to turn around for hotel companies just as the meetings industry picks up. Here’s what some of the top hotels are doing to attract, impress and keep meeting planners coming back.

We’re lucky to live in a world with so many options. At the coffee shop, we can choose between a latte, macchiato or cappuccino, blended with heavy cream or low-fat soymilk. We go to the electronics store where LCD and plasma televisions stare back at us from the wall in a number of different sizes and at different price points. We can choose from millions of apps to customize our handheld smartphones. When we travel, we choose ocean-view or atrium-view rooms, queen or king beds, and soft or hard pillows.

The options for types of hotels seem endless, too. Boutique or big-city hotel? Resort property or small retreat? For meeting planners, size, meeting space and amenities weed out some of the options, but navigating the pool of full-service hotel properties can still seem like a daunting task. Despite the wealth of options among hotels, a few multi-brand companies continue to book the majority of the country’s meetings and conferences year in and year out. Five companies — InterContinental, Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott and Starwood — keep giving planners reasons to book their next big meetings with them.

That’s no accident. These companies spend millions of dollars advertising and marketing to faith-based organizations and planners. They hire consultants to tell them how to best configure a property to optimize space for meetings. They invest in renovations and repairs, keeping guest rooms updated and meeting space equipped with the latest technologies. They garner feedback from planners and guests in virtual online prototypes. They make the food tastier, the beds softer and the incentives juicier in an effort to get a slice of the $122 billion meetings and events industry.

Like other segments of the nation’s business economy, the hospitality industry took a big hit the past few years. Annual conferences were cancelled. Large meetings at resort properties were scaled down. The words “practical” and “sustainable” took the place of “luxurious” and “high-end.” The AIG effect took a big toll on hotel ledger books and occupancy rates hovered around 55 percent in 2009, according to Smith Travel Research. That number is expected to grow a few percentage points this year. “Demand is improving,” says Mark Lomanno, president of STR, but room rates are not. “That means there is an extremely fragile recovery. With occupancy being the driver, that’s the most tenuous of recoveries to have.”

For large hotel companies, meetings and events are instrumental to their recoveries this year. In tough economic times, recognizable names matter, which helps to explain why major multi-brand hotel companies are trucking along, slowly seeing upticks in occupancy and demand. But it takes more than a good name to get business in a competitive market. It takes a strategic plan, good leadership and smart incentives to keep planners coming back year after year. We looked at five of the nation’s major hotel companies to find out what’s new in meetings, what they’re doing to improve the process for planners, and where these companies are headed as they emerge from a difficult 2009 into a more promising 2010 and 2011.

INTERCONTINENTAL HOTELS GROUP

Quick: Name the hotel company with the largest number of guest rooms in the world. It probably wasn’t your first or second guess, and it may not have landed in your top five, but the answer is InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), which has more than 650,000 hotel rooms worldwide. Surprised? That’s probably because the IHG company as it exists today didn’t form until 2003, even though two of its brands are some of the most recognized hotel names in the world. IHG’s InterContinental hotel brand was founded in the 1940s; Holiday Inn, now its largest brand, was created by American hotelier Kemmons Wilson in the 1950s.

Today, the company is mostly a hotel franchise and management company, controlling seven hotel brands. Its big full-service meetings brand is Crowne Plaza, with more than 350 properties globally. The same year that IHG formed, executives launched “The Place to Meet” program, which positioned Crowne Plaza hotels in the competitive meetings market. That program requires that Crowne Plaza hotels do three things: respond to an RFP within two hours and provide a full proposal by the next business day; assign a meetings director to each individual event; and give planners an itemized expenditure list at the end of each day to more easily track budgets. The brand ranked first in this year’s U.S. Hotel Chain survey among upscale/select-service properties, largely in response to several years of expansions and renovations.

IHG’s InterContinental Hotels and Resorts brand is also doing what it can to attract group business. “We’re committed to providing meeting planners and attendees with even more value during this tough economic time,” says Gina LaBarre, vice president, brand delivery, the Americas, at IHG. As a result, she said, the brand is extending its current meetings promotions through the end of the year at its 55 InterContinental brand hotels in North and South America. That includes the “Up to a Million Bonus Points” promotion offered to Priority Club Meetings Rewards members who book a meeting by Sept. 30 and hold it before Dec. 30. Depending on the size and scale of the meeting, the planner receives up to a million bonus points, which can be used for meeting credits, airline miles, charity donations and more. The other promotion, “10% Off Your Master Bill,” gives planners a 10 percent discount for qualified meetings booked in the same time frame.

IHG’s first-quarter numbers were up globally in 2010, despite less-than-stellar results in America. The company saw strong returns in Asia, though, especially among the Holiday Inn brand, which continues to expand during its $1 billion rebranding campaign. Andy Cosslett, IHG chief executive, appeared cautiously optimistic at this year’s New York University International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference. “We know how fast things can turn,” he said. In response to first-quarter numbers, he said, “Business travel is returning, although at this stage mainly to the luxury end of the market, which was most affected by the recession. We expect the more resilient mid-scale sector to benefit from this trend as the year progresses and market norms are reset.”

HILTON WORLDWIDE

If Hilton Worldwide executives were looking for a little optimism, they got it when they saw group business numbers early in the year. By the end of April, those numbers were up 7 percent, climbing steadily out of a rut that had year-over-year numbers down 15 percent in November and December 2009. That jump in group business is enough to give the 90-year-old hotel company optimism for the year ahead.

“It’s not the kind of group we’re necessarily used to,” said Hilton Worldwide CEO Christopher Nassetta at the NYU hospitality conference in June. “And it’s not necessarily altogether the groups we want longer-term: very short-window, small- and medium-sized groups. But that’s where we’re seeing the most momentum.”

The good news comes on the heels of a big move the company made late last year when it changed its name from Hilton Hotels Corp. to Hilton Worldwide after packing up its offices and moving its global headquarters from Beverly Hills, Calif., to McLean, Va., near Washington, D.C. And while that corporate transformation is admittedly to appeal to a growing international market, nobody is disappointed to see group business picking up in the United States and abroad.

Hilton offers three types of properties fit for meetings: convention properties, located in major cities like Houston, San Francisco and Baltimore; resorts, located in ski towns and beach cities in the United States and Mexico; and airport properties near major travel hubs like Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. Most of these hotels are part of the flagship Hilton brand, but a few fall under the Doubletree, Conrad and luxury Waldorf Astoria umbrellas. For citywide events, the Hilton Garden Inn brand is gaining popularity and was recently named the top mid-scale full-service hotel in a J.D. Power and Associates guest satisfaction survey.

One of the advantages of planning events with a large hotel company is consistency in services. Hilton always offers group value rates of up to 30 percent off when booking off-season events. The company’s website has online planning tools and personalized group web pages, which allow planners to manage the guest list and see when attendees book their rooms. Hilton Worldwide incorporated LightStay, a sustainability measurement system, in 1,300 properties worldwide. LightStay helped the company cut its energy use by 5 percent, waste by 10 percent and water by 2.4 percent in 2009 compared to the previous year. The system also uses a meeting impact calculator, which measures the environmental impact of meetings and conferences. It can help planners determine if a meeting at the Hilton Atlanta, for example, would have a greater environmental impact than a meeting at the Hilton Nashville Downtown.

Hilton is one of America’s oldest hotel companies, and news of growth in group business is encouraging to its executives and its investors. But Nassetta recognizes that it’s still a very fragile period in hotel recovery, especially as it relates to group bookings. “A couple of bad comments can destroy that piece of business pretty rapidly,” he said.

HYATT HOTELS CORPORATION

Every year, Executive Travel Magazine releases its Leading Edge Award winners as voted by its readers. This year, readers chose Hyatt as the best hotel for meetings, edging out Hilton and Marriott, which settled second and third, respectively. It’s a nice designation but not exactly a shock to a company that has consistently targeted group and business travel.

“Meetings are a big part of what we do,” says Gus Vonderheide, vice president of group sales for Hyatt Hotels Corporation, which manages, franchises, owns and develops properties in seven Hyatt brands. He says that meetings are “extremely important” to the company as it emerges from the recession. “We continue to believe that we can make a lot more happen in face-to-face interactions.” Hyatt is starting to see a renewed interest in meetings, says Vonderheide, which is good news for a company whose majority of business comes from groups. “There’s a light at the end of the tunnel,” he says.

The light started to shine a little brighter in May as Hyatt released its first-quarter numbers for 2010. Occupancy rose year over year by 5.8 percent to 64.4 percent. “We have begun to see greater group booking activity,” says CEO Mark Hoplamazian. But, he notes, the company is still seeing short lead times on bookings and smaller-sized groups. Still, the numbers are encouraging for the hotel company, which went public less than nine months ago.

Vonderheide says that meetings will play a big role for Hyatt’s bounce back, and the company has instituted a number of new incentives for planners. Hyatt Regency, Grand Hyatt, and Park Hyatt hotels and resorts have added Passkey’s GroupMAX online reservation systems as a standard tool. With GroupMAX, a hotel can create a customized booking website for any event in about five minutes, setting up a site where planners can put information for guests to access. It also lets the planner know about event updates and inventory conditions. For guests, the event-specific booking page allows them to browse through various guest room options and pick the room type of their choice, still at the group rate.

Hyatt also recently introduced “Meeting Promise,” a program that promises to refund any part of a meeting that’s not up to a planner’s expectations and wasn’t resolved during the event, and “Meet and Be Green,” which encourages and rewards planners who make green choices for their events. “We stay loyal to our customers and they stay loyal to us,” says Vonderheide.

Hyatt continues to expand and now has 459 properties worldwide. “As long as we’re putting our best foot forward and showing our customers that we’re committed to them, we’re moving in the right direction,” Vonderheide says. The company’s newest hotel brand, Andaz, adds to the meetings inventory with recent hotel openings in San Diego and New York City, but Hyatt books groups at all property levels. “The groups segment is a very important segment for all of our brands,” says Vonderheide. “We do a good amount of our meetings even at our select-service hotels, Hyatt Place, and from Hyatt Regency to resorts to our Park Hyatt properties. We target our message a little differently for each brand. But we’re out there, talking to customers. We’re trying to give them what they need.”

MARRIOTT INTERNATIONAL

“The numbers are pretty stunning.” Those were the words of Marriott International President and CEO Arne Sorenson at the NYU hospitality conference in June. He was referring to first-quarter occupancy numbers for the global hotel company, which operates or manages 3,400 hotels worldwide among 18 different brands. Group travel numbers were up 1 percent compared to the same quarter last year, but it was association group business that led the occupancy resurgence. “Association meeting attendance took off,” said Sorenson. Room nights for association meetings and events rose 15 percent in that quarter and, as, Sorenson put it, a stunning 50 percent in the final third of the quarter. Second-quarter numbers are equally encouraging. In North American company-operated properties, revenue per available room increased 7.9 percent in the quarter.

“We truly rely on our brand, our culture and our delivery of services,” says Luis Lamar, vice president of sales, convention and resort hotels, the Americas. In terms of space, Marriott is the largest company in group travel and offers the most meeting and convention space in the United States. “We always maintain a focus on the meetings market,” Lamar adds.

Last year, Marriott underwent a corporate restructuring in an effort to improve regional knowledge and markets. Leadership became decentralized, dividing the company into four continental regions — U.K./Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East/Africa and the Americas. Each has its own president and operates independent of the others. What that’s done, says Lamar, is allowed each division to focus more on its regional product, responding to market conditions and adding more structure in each segment.

Under the restructuring, Marriott also assumed more control of the luxury Ritz-Carlton brand, which topped the U.S. Hotel Chain Survey for deluxe properties. JW Marriott properties ranked highest in that survey for group travel arrangements and facilities for resort meetings in the upper upscale segment, followed closely by Marriott’s Renaissance brand.

At the hospitality conference in June, Sorenson said he remembered the conference following 9/11 when CEOs thought it would never get worse than it was then. They were wrong. Numbers in 2009 were worse. But, he added, “Occupancy and demand are coming back and that bodes well for the next couple of years.” Rates are slowly coming back, especially at full-service Marriott hotels that cater to large groups and events.

Marriott recently launched the Innovention Network, a collection of about 60 convention properties that adopted a new streamlined billing system and meetings website. The website allows planners to search for properties by amenities rather than location. For example, a planner may not know if he wants to take his group to Seattle or to San Antonio; instead, he can search for properties by the amount of meeting space he needs, peak rooms required or largest ballroom necessary. The planner can further narrow the search by selecting golf or spa amenities. “Our customers have told us they really want anything that will save them time. They want easy-to-understand billing and someone to support them through the process; they don’t want to repeat themselves year after year,” says Lamar.

In an effort to maintain that repeat business, all hotels in the Innovention Network have access to past records so event management representatives at new properties aren’t starting from scratch — and neither are planners. More than 50,000 rooms are part of the network, totaling more than 4.5 million square feet of meeting space worldwide.

STARWOOD HOTELS AND RESORTS WORLDWIDE

What’s the price tag attached to overhauling one of the world’s powerhouse hotel brands? For Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, it’s $6 billion. That’s how much the global hotel company invested in revitalizing the Sheraton Hotels and Resorts brand. Sheraton makes up close to 50 percent of Starwood’s total rooms, so the improvement campaign is important to the growth of the company as it emerges from a sluggish 2009.
In May, Starwood announced it would get rid of eight properties that do not meet the new Sheraton brand standards. Those hotels are in addition to the 36 properties the company already removed from its register. The revitalization effort, which started before the economic downturn, is yielding some positive results for Starwood. Customer satisfaction is up, as is satisfaction among meeting planners. “The brand’s all-time high guest satisfaction scores is a direct result of the extraordinary work we’ve invested in rebuilding Starwood’s most global and storied brand,” says Hoyt Harper, global brand leader for Sheraton Hotels.

Sheraton Dallas opened last September following a $90 million renovation, and Sheraton Denver Downtown followed suit two months later after owners invested $70 million in its renovation. New brand standards include Wi-Fi-enabled lobbies and lounges, flat-panel televisions and modern design. Some of these Sheraton properties are part of the Starwood Convention Collection, which includes 32 of Starwood’s biggest and best convention center or meeting properties in North America. Following the release of second-quarter numbers, Frits van Paasschen, CEO said, “Starwood’s global footprint and strong brands drove the company’s second-quarter revenues and earnings above expectations. Average daily rates are back into positive territory as occupancy levels continue their steady ascent towards pre-crisis levels. The relaunch of Sheraton is enjoying a terrific response with strong increases in North American market share during the first six months of 2010.” In the first quarter of 2010 alone, occupancy at Starwood properties increased 6 percent.

While the company invests in renovations and improvements at some of its largest properties, it’s also investing in a greener culture. It has created a Sustainable Meetings Initiative for North American properties. All sales proposals, room lists and reservation cross-check documents have gone paperless. Hotels are using LED signage and white boards. Recycling bins are in all meeting spaces. Leftover food and drinks from events are donated to local groups. Attendees can take part in volunteer opportunities with Starwood’s help. The practices will extend to global meeting properties next year.

“Developing sustainable meeting practices was a year-long process to determine how to meaningfully incorporate sustainability into our meeting practices while maintaining a superior guest experience and keeping costs low for hotels, meeting planners and clients,” says David Dvorak, vice president of catering and convention services.

Starwood owns and manages properties in its nine hotel brands, which include Le Méridien, Westin, St. Regis and W Hotels, in addition to its Sheraton and Four Points by Sheraton properties. It also has expanded its reach into the boutique hotel industry with new brands such as Element and Aloft. With its revitalization efforts in the Sheraton brand and a focused commitment to green practices, Starwood is betting that the meetings industry continues to grow this year and moves in a greener direction.

By Scott Reagles

Contacts

Have a list of those people you will be dealing with on site and their phone numbers. Make sure those people know how to contact you or those working for you. Also, make it clear to everyone involved who is in charge and who has authority over what.

Schedule

Make sure your AV provider has a detailed schedule, including times for the following: start and end of each session; when doors are open for the audience; meetings, rehearsals and walk-throughs; and any other times that AV crew or equipment will be needed. Also helpful are schedules of other vendors or crews that might cause any conflicts.

Load In and Load Out

Conditions for loading in and out are
important, especially when it comes to dock space and traffic. Too many companies on the dock at one time can lead to chaos. Also, room availability, amount of time required for set-up and strike, and the availability of in-house personnel
such as electricians and technical people
is important.

Room Dimensions and Details

Make sure the room where your event is going to be held is big enough for the attendees and all the equipment. AV gear takes up space, not just on the floor, but also in the air. Make sure you account for ceiling obstructions such as chandeliers, ceiling coves, air ducts and so on. How and where the audience is seated will also make a difference in what kind of AV gear should be used.

Power

Check to see if arrangements have been made for needed power drops and electrical service, keeping in mind that they are rarely free.

Facility Requirements

Many facilities have special requirements, such as putting covering over carpets, use of hallways and elevators, or hiring security personnel. Ask a venue if they have any such requirements and get them in writing.

Union Requirements

Find out if your event is in a union-contracted facility. If so, take time to know the rules and budget accordingly.

Speaker and Talent Requirements

Ask talent and presenters for their needs and requirements well in advance. This may include Internet accessibility, specific types of microphones to use, someone to operate a PowerPoint presentation and so on. Oh, and pass that information along to your AV provider.

Changes, Add-ons

Changes and add-ons are inevitable. Keep a detailed record and, if possible, get sign-off when it comes to changes. Confusion later just costs money and causes headaches.

Contract and Payment

This may sound trivial, but make sure you have a contract, that you know what the payment terms are, and that you understand what is included and what is not. Ask questions and get answers before your event.

Scott Reagles is a production manager and video director for IPG (Initial Production Group), based in Denver. He focuses on bridging the gap between clients and technology. You can reach him at scott@initialpro.com. IPG is a full-service production company that has been serving the faith-based market for more than 20 years.

By Don Sadler

As a meeting planning professional, do you consider yourself to be in sales? Most planners don’t think about their jobs in these terms, but the job of a meeting planner is very much a sales job.

To some degree, many professional jobs have a sales component and presentation skills are critical. “Meeting planners are constantly selling: ideas, locations, venues, events and, most importantly, themselves,” says Craig Harrison, a speaker, trainer and founder of Expressions of Excellence!, a speaker and sales consulting service.

“Strong presentation skills are vital for establishing credibility and professionalism, and building trust,” adds Harrison. “They enable planners to persuade, negotiate, promote and sell. If you can put on a good show in a presentation, it stands to reason that you can help plan a great event.”

Selling Yourself
Meetings industry consultant Corbin Ball, CSP, CMP, agrees with Harrison about the importance of presentation skills for meeting planners. “We are selling ourselves and promoting our ideas. There are many situations where strong presentation skills will help meeting planners, like pre-conference meetings, on-site staff meetings, group announcements at events and in volunteer roles for professional associations. It can’t hurt to feel comfortable with public speaking.”

Ball says it was his election as president of the Washington State Chapter of Meeting Professionals International that made him get serious about public speaking. “At the time, I didn’t feel very comfortable in front of an audience. With my year as president coming up, in which I would speak before 150 people and conduct a board meeting each month, I knew I needed to do something about it, so I joined Toastmasters,” he says. Toastmasters International remains one of the popular organizations offering speaking and leadership skills training. “This gave me the practice and the feedback to grow greatly as a speaker. Three years later, I started my own business as a professional speaker,” says Ball.

Bonnie Wallsh, CMP, CMM, chief strategist with Bonnie Wallsh Associates, LLC, a meeting management consulting and training firm, says, “Outstanding presentation and communication skills are crucial for success as a meeting professional. Planners communicate with their staff, suppliers and internal clients, so it is imperative that their presentations be concise and anticipate any possible misunderstandings.”

After 32 years as a full-service meeting professional, Wallsh says her business is shifting to speaking, facilitating and teaching. “Most of my business comes from people who have attended my sessions and webinars,” she notes. For example, she was invited to present workshops and a boot camp at Rejuvenate Marketplace and Connect Marketplace after conference manager Dean Jones attended one of her sessions.

LoriAnn K. Harnish, CMP, CMM, CTA, is president and CEO of Speaking of Meetings and the past president of Meeting Professionals International, Arizona Sunbelt. She says speaking skills are vital to client relations and retention. “Whether you’re an independent,
association or corporate meeting planner, you need to be able to present yourself well to clients and stakeholders,” says Harnish. “For years, we’ve been trying to elevate the position of meeting and event planning so that planners are highly regarded. All planners want a ‘seat at the table,’ so to speak, and this requires strong presentation skills.”

Beth Hecquet, CMP, the director of meetings and events for the National Association of Sports Commissions, says that she is often called upon to speak on behalf of her association to promote meetings and talk about her industry. “If I am not able to give an appealing presentation with confidence and ease, this reflects badly on me and my association,” she says. “First impressions are very hard to reverse, and if the first time you hear about a meeting is from someone who can’t communicate effectively, that can result in a potential lost attendee, sponsor or partner.”

Hecquet says she didn’t start her career with strong presentation skills, but has acquired them over the years by taking advantage of every opportunity she has to speak. “Being a good presenter is not something that comes naturally for most people; rather, it’s a skill that has to be learned through experience.”

After years working at various nonprofit organizations, MaryAnne P. Bobrow, CAE, CMP, CMM, president of Bobrow & Associates, an association and meetings management consulting firm, felt drawn to share her ideas and experience with others in order to give something back. One of her first steps was to take a public speaking class.

“I’ll never forget it. I held onto the lectern for dear life and stared like a deer in headlights at the back of the room for fear I might actually make eye contact with someone,” she says. “I now share my knowledge at industry conferences, use it for my clients and teach in the university environment so that those just entering the industry will have the tools they need to become successful.”

Confidence and Credibility
Bobrow points to two key benefits of strong presentation skills for meeting planners: They help increase the planner’s credibility and self-confidence, and they help planners articulate their wants and needs to C-level executives they work with.

Carole B. Rosenblat, an independent on-site meeting and tour manager, echoes Bobrow’s thoughts about self-confidence. “As a meeting planner, you’re selling your services, and 90 percent of this involves your presentation skills. Having strong skills will convey that you have a sense of confidence in what you’re doing, which will give clients more confidence in you.

“Presentation skills have been very beneficial as I sell myself to potential clients,” she adds. “They help me think fast on my feet, stay calm, speak slowly and enunciate clearly, so that I can communicate my expertise to clients and prospects.”

Also, if your event’s speaker is late or doesn’t show up, you’ll be better prepared to deal with the situation. This doesn’t necessarily mean giving the presentation yourself, but you can at least address the group or facilitate a meeting, Rosenblat points out. “I’ve done this many times before simply because nobody else was prepared.”

Improving Your Skills
The most common presentation mistake is talking too fast, says Rosenblat, who now helps train planners on speaking and making presentations. “You really have to concentrate on slowing down. If you’re timing your presentation, keep in mind that it will probably be shorter than when you practice because you’ll probably talk faster than you realize.”

Here are some more tips from the experts for improving presentation skills:

Know your audience. “Research the profile of attendees and their objectives and know what their hot buttons are,” says Wallsh. “Customize your presentation to them as much as possible, rather than using a cookie-cutter approach.”

Be confident and enthusiastic. You’ll have a hard time conveying your message convincingly if your listeners sense that you don’t have confidence in yourself. Don’t be tentative or apologetic, and if you make a mistake, remember that your listeners probably won’t even notice. Just move on to your next point without stammering or apologizing.

Don’t use language crutches. Harrison urges speakers and presenters to use what he calls power language. “Avoid qualifiers, hedges and other figures of speech that dilute your message and diminish your impact and expertise.” Examples are words like maybe, if, possibly, perhaps and consider.

Learn from others. Identify people whose communication and presentation style you like and become a student of their success. This can be famous people on TV or videos, or simply others in your office or industry. “Listen carefully to these speakers and critique them to learn what techniques they use to engage the audience,” says Wallsh.

Join professional speaking organizations. Experts are unanimous in their praise of Toastmasters for anyone who’s serious about becoming a better presenter and speaker. Harrison has been in Toastmasters for 18 years and considers himself an evangelist for the organization. In “The Professional Toastmaster,” a quick-start guide he has written, he states, “Through Toastmasters, you can get mentoring, coaching, evaluations, feedback, support and lots of practice.”

Include examples and personal experiences. “This is the best way to really engage the audience,” says Wallsh. “People like hearing stories sprinkled in with facts, figures and statistics.”

Maintain strong eye contact. The natural tendency is to focus on just one or two people, but try to maintain eye contact with everyone in the room. Also, don’t be over-reliant on presentation materials and spend too much time looking up at a screen with your back to your audience.

Have a strong conclusion. Otherwise, it’s easy to ramble on and not know when or how to wrap things up. You want to leave listeners with a powerful idea or thought. Ask yourself: If they forget everything else you’ve said, what’s the most important thing you want listeners to remember? Then craft your conclusion around this.

Don Sadler is a freelance business writer, based in Atlanta, and a regular contributor to Rejuvenate.

By Larry Bleiberg

There’s something undeniably magical about sitting by the ocean or a lake. “It’s very soothing. When you’re literally at the water’s edge, you breathe easier,” says Dave Scott, director of sales and marketing at Marina Del Rey Hotel, which overlooks the Pacific near Los Angeles. “It’s very, very peaceful.”

As meeting planners have discovered, if you put a group in a waterfront setting, attendees are happy. Tensions start to melt away and ideas flow. Gazing at the horizon helps open the mind.

Hotels and resorts line the coast from Maine to Miami and San Diego to Seattle, and ring the Great Lakes. In addition, cruise ships offer a novel (and cost-efficient) opportunity to literally take a meeting to sea. The Gulf of Mexico also has scores of meeting options. And although some are suffering now due to fear of oil contamination from the Deepwater Horizon leak, venues are eager for business and willing to cut deals — including dropping cancellation penalties.

Some sites, like the Marina del Rey Hotel, are near major transport hubs. Although only 20 minutes from Los Angeles International Airport, the setting feels far from L.A.’s snarled freeways. As with most waterfront settings, the hotel puts guests close to nature, including pelicans, gulls, sea lions and occasionally whales. The inn has traditional meeting space and some surprising venues. A poolside gazebo, for example, can accommodate a small gathering, or a working lunch. “You’re 10 feet from the water’s edge,” says Scott. “If you’re going to have a meeting here, you’re going to see the ocean.”

Even riverfront cities can offer an escape. Christy Stacey, CMP, says she was amazed when she saw dolphins frolicking in the St. Johns River during a meeting in Jacksonville, Fla., co-sponsored by her employer, the Florida Alcohol and Drug Abuse Association. “Even though we’re based in Florida, the water’s still a draw,” she says.

But if gathering by the water is enticing, so is getting out on it. Hornblower Cruises and Events offers meetings on yachts in the San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles and San Francisco areas. While a boat slowly cruises sheltered waters, attendees can get down to work. Anytime you meet on a boat, you can expect RSVPs to be higher, says Mia Falkenstein of Hornblower. And she says such cruises literally get attendees thinking outside the box. “People seem to think and learn better when they’re in a relaxed and open environment.” For example, she says Mattel Inc. sometimes charters a boat for design sessions to dream up new Barbies.

Further up the coast, Argosy Lines operates Tillicum Village, a Native American attraction on an island near Seattle. Groups can meet aboard ship or on the island. The visit can be combined with a salmon bake or an Indian cultural show. “Groups can choose their own cruising route,” says Maureen Black, the line’s marketing director. “If people want narration we can do that, or we can sit back and be quiet.”

Perhaps the most grand waterfront setting is on the classic cruise ship, the Queen Mary. Docked now, it serves as a floating hotel and tourist attraction in Long Beach, Calif., and has 80,000 square feet of meeting space. Justine Bellock of the University of California, Long Beach, held a national educators conference with 200 attendees aboard the vessel. “Once we got aboard ship, there was no reason to leave,” she says. “We had every amenity available to us.” The ship is a floating museum, not only of history (it transported troops during World War II and counted Winston Churchill among its guests), but also of art. The Queen Mary is one of the best preserved examples of art deco design.

On the other side of the country, the appeal’s similar at Wentworth-by-the-Sea, a grand hotel on the New Hampshire coast. Just a few miles from historic Portsmouth, the ship-shaped hotel includes a solarium with a water view. “The whole length of the meeting space, you look out to the ocean and yachts,” says sales director Diane Dow. “It’s a different atmosphere, a different feeling. You can get a lot accomplished.” The hotel can also arrange for water-based team-building classes on kayaks, and lobster bakes on the pool deck, with easy access to shelter. (The hotel stopped holding bakes on the shoreline in 1944, when a meeting of the National Governors’ Conference was hit by a sudden storm, leaving the nation’s leaders soaked.)

Other waterfront venues have revitalized once tired industrial areas. One of the first was Baltimore, where the Rouse Co. created a festival marketplace on the once derelict Inner Harbor. The Harborplace development spawned a science center, aquarium, hotels and the nearby Camden Yards baseball park. Similar developments have occurred in Tacoma, Wash.; Milwaukee, Wis.; and Duluth, Minn., all now home to vibrant new tourism and meeting venues.

In Tacoma, groups are drawn to the Museum of Glass. The building sits on the city’s waterfront, adjacent to a marina, and offers indoor meeting space and three outdoor plazas. “In the last 10 years there has been a turnaround. It’s a transformed waterway,” says the museum’s Julie Pisto.

It’s much the same in Milwaukee, where a stunning museum addition by superstar architect Santiago Calatrava created the city’s signature Quadracci Pavilion at the Milwaukee Art Museum. It too offers a lovely venue, right on Lake Michigan. Meetings are often held in the building’s conference rooms, while galas and receptions in the main Windhover Hall wow guests with views. Receptions also can be held on the lakeside patio. Unlike other waterfront settings, which play up nature, this one has an urban vibe. “It automatically gives an event an upscale feel,” says Anne Radtke, sales and events manager. “You’re right in the center of the action and you have a view not everyone has.”

Further north, the new Duluth Entertainment Convention Center has played a key role in the redevelopment of the Minnesota city, which sits on the shores of Lake Superior. It can handle big meetings, and is just a short walk from shops and waterside restaurants. All overlook the world’s largest freshwater lake by surface area. “It’s vast and it can be very calming. It can also be very fierce, and a lot of people are drawn to that,” says Julie Johnson, of Visit Duluth. “We have meetings that come here for that view.”

Some groups have even taken to the rails for an unexpected waterside perspective. The Lake Superior Railroad Museum runs an excursion train 28 miles north of the city to the town of Twin Harbors. Along the way, it skirts Superior’s shore, and passes by waterfalls. Groups can meet in private cars, or have receptions along the route. “We use the train as social mixers,” says David Schauer, publications chairman of the Missabe Railroad Historical Society, which holds meetings in Duluth. “It’s very relaxing and inviting for conversation, plus you can get up and move around.”

The Minnesota Council of Teachers of Mathematics are also big Duluth fans. The group of more than 1,000 has come to the city for 11 consecutive years. “Part of it is price, but a piece of it is the atmosphere,” says executive director Tom Muchlinski. “When people are coming out of sessions and looking out at the water, many times there’s just a huge ore boat coming into the harbor and that just stops everyone. It really is one of my favorite cities.”

This is no ordinary newsroom. Yes, seasoned veterans operate high-tech cameras and production equipment. Men and women whiz by as they prepare for the live 6 p.m. broadcast. Editors and reporters turn around stories in hours as a full production staff gets graphics and packages ready. And make-up artists touch up anchors and panelists.

This impressive newsroom was a temporary setup for Adventist NewsLine, a half-hour live news show reporting daily from the 10-day Session of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists in Atlanta. A staff of producers, anchors, reporters, news directors, photographers and behind-the-scenes staff with decades of commercial broadcast experience moved into the Georgia Dome, bringing with them a shared sense of purpose.

“This is an every five-year reunion for all of us,” says David Brillhart, Adventist NewsLine producer. “We get to train young people who want to be in this business for 18-hour days, and we enjoy it. It’s different working with a great group of believers. There are tensions but we care for each other.”

David Brillhart and his team

From June 23 to July 3, Willa Sandmeyer, the broadcast’s news director, ran the show from the press level of the Georgia Dome as business meetings, elections, musical performances and division reports took place on the other side of the wall in the main auditorium from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sandmeyer approached the job no differently than any of the commercial news broadcasts she has directed during her 30-year career.

Sandmeyer began preparing for NewsLine almost a year before the event. She brainstormed possible stories and interviews that might occur at the session so the entire staff could hit the ground running in Atlanta. She used the denomination’s wide network of international missionaries and video footage from around the world, and researched inspirational stories that could be developed on site.

“To make something like this successful, it takes careful planning ahead of time,” Sandmeyer says. “You can’t walk in wondering what you are going to do. You have to know what you are going to cover on a daily basis.”

Each morning began with a devotional followed by a news meeting, and then reporters collected stories on the session floor in time for their noon deadlines to fill the 30-minute newscast, which featured two- to three-minute news stories, sidebar stories, panel discussions, world division reports and musical performances. Sandmeyer’s hard and fast deadlines ensured the broadcast ran smoothly each night.

Willa Sandmeyer edits scripts before showtime.

“We didn’t want delegates just sitting in a chair and internal shots of the Dome,” Sandmeyer explains. “We wanted to connect to the World Church members with the actions taken outside the Dome, committee events, the fun run, and share with them a rich variety of stories.”

Rajmund Dabrowski, communications director for the General Conference World Headquarters, spearheaded the production by the Adventist News Network (ANN), the denomination’s official year-round news service, which also provided articles, photos and a daily podcast covering the conference on its website.

“We wanted to do this with a journalistic foundation without it being propaganda,” he says. “We wanted to provide a realistic picture of the event. Naturally, as a church we are interested in projecting a positive image about ourselves, but if you read our stories there is plenty of controversy; [we] reported on varied opinions that the delegates had.”

The high-quality broadcast operated like a commercial broadcast from all angles, but it wasn’t just professionals like Brillhart and Sandmeyer putting it together. Aspiring journalists manned the cameras and collected stories out on the floor.

“We wanted to involve young people in this because they are Seventh-day Adventists so they care about the church, but at the same time they get training,” he says. “They get a chance in a 10-day period that they would not experience — the tension, the intensity.”

Full coverage of the General Conference Session, including webcasts of NewsLine, articles, photo galleries, podcasts and more are at news.adventist.org.

— Jennifer Garrett

Related story: Adventist on Adrenaline, a Q&A with GC Session planner Sheri Clemmer

By Sally Dubroc

For most people, the BP oil spill is something happening “over there,” but for others, this event has been life changing. My job as conference coordinator for the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux in Louisiana places me at the heart of the oil spill. Our largest event, Steubenville on the Bayou, brought 3,200 participants to Houma, La., June 18-20, 2010. Housing has never been an issue because of the large amount of hotel rooms in the city as well as dorm rooms at a university in neighboring Thibodaux.

About four weeks before this year’s conference, the Office of Homeland security, along with officials from BP, informed local hotels that, regardless of any prior bookings, the rooms in Houma were now reserved for the BP cleanup crew and others affiliated with the oil spill. The Houma-Terrebonne CVB, along with several hoteliers, called to inform us of the development immediately.

While the news was somewhat surprising, we focused on the fact that God had ordained this event and wanted it to happen. The area would benefit in many ways, especially spiritually. He had a plan and our role was to listen and adhere to it.

Our amazing staff was ready to serve: our bishop, a man with a heart for evangelism and an unfailing faith; the priests and conference staff, a hardworking, faithful group who readily accepted any challenge; and the chairpersons committee of 42 individuals granted my requests with ease. In addition, the 250 volunteers registered to help with the conference were willing to serve regardless of the task. The local tourism bureau worked with bureaus in the surrounding area to help us. Most importantly, a large group of intercessors committed to daily prayer for our staff, volunteers and our events.

Within two days, the potential crisis was averted. An e-mail was sent to local pastors, and churches quickly offered to house youth groups. Some of the local youth groups who originally planned to stay in hotels canceled their reservations so that groups coming from farther away could have the rooms. Calls were made to tourism bureaus up to 50 miles away. In no time, we received names of available hotels eager to help. Some of the local hoteliers worked diligently to free as many rooms as possible. Although an extra strain was put on some attendees, we did not have one cancellation.

God also reminded me of a few other things:

This was not happening to us. Perhaps things seemed stressful for a day or two, but this crisis happened to the families who lost loved ones, those who are now jobless, to the businesses that have fewer customers, and to people who have lived and worked along the gulf for generations. Losing our hotel rooms meant that the people helping in the oil spill had a place to stay, not that the people coming to our conference were “kicked out.”

The lesson of perseverance as a key to coordinating any event was also reinforced. There will always be things that block us from doing what we feel called to do but if we push through, we get to that light at the end of the tunnel. (Hebrews 12:1)

Finally, I was reminded that I don’t have all of the answers and I am not supposed to. As conference coordinator, my job is to bring all the parts together so that the participants experience a dynamic, spirit-filled event. Thankfully, God has placed people in key positions who know much more than I do about the various elements and I am happy to defer to them when necessary. The answers lie in Him and not in us. We are all instruments.

By Monica Compton, CMP

We’ve all heard the term “meeting planner perks.” It can refer to the non-event industry’s view of a planner’s life: luxurious stays in posh settings, business class airline seats and hard-to-secure reservations at a celebrity chef’s restaurant. In reality we know that those perks, if ever received, are rarely used, turned over to VIPs or often wasted. After all, do event planners in a fast-paced industry with an expected 24-hour availability to their organizations’ needs really have time to take a vacation?

For those who do, complimentary hotel stays and airline upgrades seem to be a well-deserved reward for spending 12 hours on the trade-show floor, lifting heavy boxes and not having enough time to eat. While hotel loyalty programs were created more than 25 years ago for frequent travelers, the concept of tailoring a program to target meeting planners is at an all-time high. In a lumbering economy, hotels are looking to entice planners with complimentary hotel nights, discounts on group meals and credits to their meetings’ overall bills.

Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide customized its Starwood Preferred Guest program, the hotel group’s original rewards program for frequent travelers, and created a Starwood Preferred Planner program. Planners just don’t get points; they get Starpoints, implying a higher level of benefits for meeting planners over leisure or business travelers. The program is further expanded to offer Instant Meeting Awards, the ability to get up to a $1,500 credit on your group bill as long as you are a Starwood Preferred Planner with 15,000 Starpoints (and, of course, a signed hotel contract must be in place). But there’s a terms and conditions catch to get meeting planners to book with Starwood again. Starpoints earned for the group’s current meeting may not be redeemed toward that meeting. So if you haven’t reached 15,000 points, you’ll have to wait until your next meeting to earn the group bill credit.

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), the first company to introduce hotel points with its Priority Club Rewards for Holiday Inn in 1983, has also created a planner niche for its program. With the addition of one word to its title, the Priority Club Meeting Rewards becomes a program that awards planners for “qualified” meetings. Reading the fine print is also essential here. Planners must have a minimum of 10 rooms occupied in their block from a minimum of one night up to five consecutive nights depending on the brand in IHG’s portfolio of hotels. InterContinental and Crowne Plaza have an additional requirement that meeting-related food and beverage charges must be applied to the master bill.

IHG further adds the perk of giving planners different status levels depending on how many meetings they book. Similar to an airline’s status ranking, IHG bestows Gold Elite status to planners who host one qualified meeting in a calendar year and Platinum Elite status to those hosting two meetings per year. The benefits of status range from the gold level’s 10 percent bonus in points and priority check-in, ensuring your room and keys are ready upon arrival, to complimentary room upgrades and a 50 percent boost in bonus points at the platinum level.

Marriott’s Rewarding Events program also offers levels of elite status and allows planners to choose between hotel points and airline miles. For every $1 in total meeting charges, planners can earn three hotel points up to a maximum of 50,000 or 1 mile up to a maximum of 15,000.

Marriott’s limited-time Meetings Matter group promotion adds contract incentives and bonus points to its base
rewards program. For each meeting with at least 50 cumulative room nights booked and held by Dec. 31, 2010, a group will receive: 35 percent allowable attrition, one complimentary room night for every 35 paid rooms, and a 2 percent rebate off the master bill for each qualified meeting exceeding 100 cumulative room nights. This promotion also adds triple points for master bills paid with any Visa credit card up to a maximum of 150,000 total points.

Marriott, IHG and Starwood have all received Freddie Awards, honoring the best frequent traveler programs throughout the world for the last 20 years. Receiving an award by giving travelers rewards confirms the industry’s intense focus on points. But for meeting planners who are bound by industry guidelines and organizational policies, does redeeming points for personal gain step dangerously close to the edge of ethics?

Many of these points programs focus their advertising on the individual benefits rather than what the group receives. Marriott’s Rewarding Events section of its website sympathizes with planners that “times are tight, and budgets are tighter,” but it can be “business as usual for you,” urging planners to earn points toward free nights for “your ultimate getaway.” Starwood’s site tells planners that earning Starpoints will “bring you one step closer to your dream vacation.”

IHG ran a 2008 campaign for Holiday Inn Hotels and Resorts that masked the individual benefits by calling its promotion the M.B.A. (Masters in Business Accommodations), designed to engage the traveler and educate them “in the personality of the brand and our latest promotional offerings.”

So when do rewards points move from an acceptable gift to a breach of ethical guidelines?  Joshua Grimes of Grimes Law Offices, a firm specializing in associations and the hospitality industry, says there is no industry standard on points; however, many companies have policies that employees and contractors must follow.

“Sometimes these policies require people earning points for business travel to credit them to the company account,” Grimes says. “Other times the [individual] may keep them.”

Sheila Evans, director of sales Southern region for Hilton Worldwide, has clients who create a “house account” for points. Similar to an escrow account at a bank, Hilton holds the rewards points for use as the group books meetings. This ensures that the points are going to the company and not the individual planner. “Some clients use their points in company giveaways or donate them to their favorite charity,” Evans says.

Grimes says that most hotels have a policy allowing the meeting sponsor to designate who gets the points, the only condition being that the points will be paid to only one person or entity. “This means that any recipient may be designated,” Grimes says. “However, ethics considerations may dictate that the points should go to the meeting sponsor unless that sponsor designates another recipient.”

Evans says that it must be stated clearly, prior to the signing of the hotel contract, who will receive the points. “This is usually decided by the meeting planner or the person booking the program,” Evans says.

Ethical considerations can be stretched further when a planner bases a destination or venue decision on the rewarding of points. Kyle Greer, program manager for the Society of International Business Fellows (SIBF), books properties based on how they fit his organization’s needs, not by their points program.

“Our key concerns are location, meeting space and service level,” Greer says. “It is critical [that] we pull off high-caliber meetings and events, and we’ve yet to find that a point system helps in any way.”

Paulette Hopkins, president of The Hopkins Alliance, puts a clause in her contracts listing the designated representative who will receive the points. “But it has never been the decision-breaker [over another property],” Hopkins says.

While Grimes says there is no legally correct answer, under the federal Sarbanes-Oxley law, the points would have to go to the company or organization sponsoring the meeting. “Otherwise, there could be an implication that the planner chose a particular hotel because he or she was personally earning points — a suspect incentive because it doesn’t benefit the meeting sponsor,” Grimes says. “The best policy is for the planner to give the company the points, or to disclose to the company that the hotel is offering the points and seek approval from company officials to keep them.”

Monica Compton, CMP, is an event specialist with Pinnacle Productions Inc. based in Atlanta. She has 18 years experience as a global meeting planner, managing a variety of programs both domestically and internationally.

By Kate Burton

This past fall, the National Youth Workers Convention (NYWC) tried something new at its three conventions: In Los Angeles, Cincinnati and Atlanta, a four-hour chunk of each convention was devoted to a process called Open Space Technology. Attracting between 2,000 and 3,000 attendees to each city, NYWC wanted to balance its nearly 40 years of history with new techniques to encourage meaningful dialogue. While the sessions were being prepared last summer, Rejuvenate spoke with Mark Matlock, vice president of event content for the event management and publishing company Youth Specialties. Acting both as meeting planner and facilitator for the Open Space sessions, at the time, Matlock thought Open Space would “either be the best thing we’ve ever done or an absolute failure.” Now that all three sessions are complete, we caught up with Matlock to see how it all played out.

Open Space is a meeting process where attendees set the agenda. With no speakers, no programming, and nothing more than one pre-determined focus question, leaders open the floor to attendees to propose ideas for discussion and organize themselves into groups to exchange ideas about topics of interest. “We believe the people who attend our conferences are all experts in their own ways and this is an ideal way to leverage all that expertise,” says Matlock. For a more complete explanation of Open Space techniques and the challenges Matlock faced leading up to the conventions, see “Open Space” in the August 2009 issue of Rejuvenate or at RejuvenateMeetings.com/open-space.

How did you prepare attendees for the Open Space experience?
We included information about it in all our marketing materials in all different kinds of media. We explained it on our website and even did a couple of webinars on it to further explain the idea. I also did some interviews with a couple of popular bloggers so they could help get the word out. We basically laid it on the table and told attendees this might be the greatest thing ever or it might be the biggest flop ever — but either way, you want to be here and be a part of it.

Was that enough? Did attendees really understand what it was by the time they got there?
Not really. One big change I would make if I did it again is that I wouldn’t call it “Open Space,” even though that’s how it’s known in the industry. A lot of people misunderstood it from the beginning and thought it was just free time in the middle of the convention for them to process information. We had some really funny evaluations — one person told us how much he loved going to the beach during the Open Space “free time.”

What kind of feedback did you get from attendees leading up to the sessions?
We heard a very mixed response from the youth pastors as we were getting ready for the sessions. Some people thought it was a really exciting idea, and told us that was one of the reasons they like YS — that we’re always willing to try new things boldly and to keep our events right at the edge. But there was another element that kept saying they didn’t understand what we were trying to do. They thought it would be one big gripe session or a “sharing of ignorance.” And then there was a third group that just couldn’t get their heads around what was going to happen when we all showed up; they weren’t negative or positive, just puzzled.

With all those different responses, how were you feeling as you prepared to lead the events?
Going into the first session in L.A., I couldn’t even sleep at night. I was really nervous walking into it. I didn’t know how many people would come or what would happen once they got there. We were putting all our confidence in the attendees themselves and believing that it could be one of the most significant things we could do together as a community. But the negative feedback was really frustrating and I started to wonder if maybe the community didn’t believe in themselves enough to let this happen. Some of this was complicated by the fact that our organization was undergoing several large changes at the same time so at each of the conventions, we had that to contend with too.

How did you structure the sessions?
In each city, it was a four-hour session. After the opening set-up, people gathered in circles for roughly an hour each. We rang a bell at the hour point, which let people know they could change if they wanted to, but some groups wanted to go longer than an hour and that was fine. And some people made connections with each other in the circles, so they would go off to the side to continue to develop their ideas. Of course, throughout the sessions, there’s the “law of mobility” — it’s the only “law” in the room and it’s pretty simple: If you’re not giving, contributing or learning where you are, you need to get up and go to another circle. Some people had a hard time with that at first. It feels “rude” by most standards, but by the second round, people were more comfortable moving around when it made sense to do that.

Can you describe that first session?
We explained what was going to happen and gave them the basic ground rules. Then we opened up the agenda wall and it was the moment of truth. There was a long pause — and then one person got up and then another and then the whole room went crazy with people moving around. The ideas started to flow and for a minute, I even worried that there were going to be too many ideas. I wondered if there were enough people in the room to support all the ideas. And the truth was, there weren’t. Some ideas got more critical mass than others. You just don’t know what’s going to stick when the ideas are thrown out.

How was attendance at the sessions?
I’d say we probably had about one-third of the total attendees show up for the sessions, which is a little less participation than if we had held seminars at that time. Besides some people thinking it was free time, the exhibit hall was open while the sessions were going on. So exhibitors weren’t able to attend and some attendees chose to go to the exhibit hall instead of the sessions. If I had my way, I would have shut down the exhibit hall and asked the vendors to join us. I think they would have had a lot to share and also could have learned a lot.

Were there any surprises along the way?
We do seminars and conferences and think that our attendees are putting all these great ideas into practice. But when we got into circles to discuss their issues, it became clear that the speed of learning and adoption is slower than the dissemination of ideas. Sometimes the content just doesn’t penetrate. We were blown away by how many people in the circles were struggling with things that had been out there for so long.

Did most of the attendees stay for the entire four hours?
We had some loss of members from hour to hour. Not everyone realized it was going to run as long as it did so they had other commitments or meetings scheduled. We also had some people come and look and leave after the first segment, especially in L.A., the first city we did it in. But that happened less in Cincinnati and Atlanta.

What was different?
The second time we went in, we had all the confidence in the world. Now we knew it could work. We didn’t modify very much, but now we had more confidence and were able to explain it all better.

Were there any other changes made in response to the first session in L.A.?
In L.A., we interviewed people during the process about their experiences. We took those interviews and made a one-minute promo video. We put it up on YouTube and also used it at the next two conventions to heighten excitement. Right from the start, we could feel a different climate going into those sessions — attendees seemed a lot less tentative and more excited.

Did the same topics come up in all three cities?
There were some topics that popped up in all the cities, but even then, there was uniqueness in how they were phrased and which ones received more energy. It made it really clear how we are not living in a one-size fits all kind of society. Despite the massive globalization of communication, there are still local interests and niches that are hard to hit on with a general approach. In Atlanta, for example, the circle on reaching youth in a multicultural context was huge and there were even people standing around the outside of the circle. But that wasn’t a hot topic in the other cities.

What kind of follow-up did you do after the events?
We collected all the notes from the various circles and had them transcribed. We’re currently creating a big wiki online so attendees can continue to modify and add to it. We’re a little behind; we wanted to get that up a few weeks after each event. We didn’t want attendees to go home with it; we wanted it to resurface a few weeks after they got home as a reminder and re-engagement so it wasn’t just something they experienced and then put on a shelf.

Were there any extra expenses involved in creating the Open Space set-up?
That’s an interesting point because a lot of attendees assumed we’d made these choices as a cost-savings measure, but we didn’t really save any money. It was pretty much a wash in terms of expenses. We saved on some aspects, but that was set off by paying more for other aspects. When you do an event on this scale, you need a lot of people there helping; people shuffling chairs around, people to point attendees in the right direction, people to get the agenda wall set up, people to collect notebooks. It didn’t really make any impact financially.

Now that you’ve gone through the whole process, what are your thoughts about Open Space as a meeting process?
In certain communities, when we have ideas and practices we need to share, this can be the most effective way to get that done. There can be such a big gap between the experts, who often don’t do anything in the field any more, and the people out in the field doing things — and those things are changing so fast. Open Space revealed the true speed of change in a way that other processes can’t. It also allowed us to go deeper into the true nature of issues than a general session would have been able to address. If you want to put something together that’s in the moment and addresses what’s on attendees’ minds right now, there is nothing else that can accomplish that like Open Space.