PLANNING, PREPARATION AND PRESENTATION
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Grant Appleton,
Commercial Director UK,
Hotel Reservation Service
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For SME s and large corporates alike, planning a company or client meeting or
event can be daunting, time consuming and expensive, explains Grant Appleton.
For SMEs in particular, meetings and
events can become a major headache
as often the cost of outsourcing to a
specialist agency is prohibitive. As a
result, the task of organising meetings
and events, whatever the size, frequently falls to
administrative staff. However, for those staff with
little knowledge of event planning, this task can
prove to be a minefield and an expensive one to
boot. So, where is the best place to start?
IDENTIFY YOUR REQUIREMENTS
Before you begin your search for the perfect venue,
the most important thing to do is to identify what
you require for the meeting or event. What is the
purpose and what do you hope to achieve from it?
These two questions must be answered before you
can begin. For example, a team awayday requires
a completely different set of criteria to a board
meeting or product showcase. Then you need to
answer several questions: how many people will
attend; what time of year is it to be held and could
the weather be a factor; where will the event take
place – at home, abroad, in a city location, a rural
one; who is attending; what is the budget per head;
are travel arrangements necessary; are activities
required and so on.
VENUE HIRE
Once you’ve identified your requirements the
next thing is to secure a venue. Whatever your
budget, the vast majority of business events and
meetings are generally best catered for by hotels.
This is because hotels with meeting facilities have
an events or hospitality manager who is a skilled
organiser and can work with you to ensure you get
everything you want and need from your event. In
addition, hotels have everything ‘on site’ so you don’t
need to worry about talking to separate caterers,
equipment companies, florists and so on. In addition
hotel staff have a very good knowledge of what’s on
locally and good activity options, if required.
DIRECT BOOKING
However, the conundrum can be which hotel to
choose. The best place to start looking is a specialist
hotel booking site such as www.hrs.com, which
lists a large amount of hotels in the area you are
looking which allows for easy comparisons for price,
category, location, facilities, reviews, and more. There
is a separate function on the site for searching for
hotels that can host meetings. Simply click on the
conference/group/trade fair booking section of
www.hrs.com. Here the site guides you through your
requirements, from dates, numbers of bedrooms
and conference rooms needed, to asking whether
you require audio visual equipment, internet access,
beverages and much, much more. After giving in
your requirements, a list of all available relevant
hotels is generated within seconds, with real-time
room rates and availability. After selecting from this
list, the hotels in question will be touch within 24
hours with their proposal for your event. For events
for 10 to 20 people and with participating hotels,
HRS has recently launched complete direct booking,
which means that bookings are immediate and not
only room prices are displayed in real time, but also
the delegate fee for a standard meeting package.
GROUP DISCOUNTS
Generally most travel companies, hotels and hotel
booking sites give group discounts over a certain
amount of people and these can be massive. For
example, some train companies offer discounts of
nearly 70% if 10 or more are travelling so sometimes
if you’re organising a small meeting or event it can
be worth considering extending the invitation out
to include more people so you benefit from bigger
discounts. Airlines and
train companies tend
to work on the figure of
anything from 10 people
upwards as do many hotels
and hotel booking sites.
However it’s always worth
haggling over the price and
asking for discounts even if
your group is smaller than
the ‘cut off’ point.
Contact: For more information on how HRS can
make the most of your travel budget, please visit
www.hrs.com/corporate
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