According to PCMA Convene’s 20^th annual meetings market survey, 48 percent (up from last year’s 44 percent) of planners report that they will hold meetings outside the United States in the future.

As a result, PCMA is dedicated to presenting programs that will provide necessary tools for their members’ continued growth and success.

Many planners attended the “International  Meetings: Finding the Right Partners” session at PCMA’s 2012 “Convening Leaders” Annual Meeting to identify different types of partners available and attributes to look for in selecting the best resources for planning international events.

For example, did you know? 

• The Chinese expect you to live by their rules.
• A welcome reception outside the U.S.  can have drastically different meanings:
  • Japan – a snack and a drink
  • Thailand – a buffet dinner
  • India – a full , sit down dinner
  • Philippines – a night long fest with ballroom dancing
• In Turkey, “English speaking staff” could mean they master only a few words.
• In Morocco, female staff does not work after 8PM.
• In Brazil, medical equipment is challenged at customs and normally gets stuck.
• In India, they sew the AV screens per the specifications just before the session.
• In Europe, coffee is served with a cookie (which is a quarter of the size of a U.S. standard cookie!)
• In some countries, tips are paid BEFORE the work.

Attendees also learned that the following partners can provide the tools necessary to combat the nuances of a country’s culture and business processes:

• PCO /Professional Congress Organizer - Companies or individuals specialized in organizing events on behalf of a client organization.  They coordinate aspects from contracting the meeting venue to marketing the event

• DMC / Destination Management Company – Provide professional services requiring extensive knowledge, specializing in the design and implementation of activities and program logistics.

• Tourist Board/CVB – Nonprofit organization that promotes tourism and encourages groups to hold events, conventions and trade shows in its destination.

• Shipping Agent and Customs Broker – A third party hired to handle moving goods to and from an event. Company providing customs clearing services to shippers or goods between countries.

• Interpreters – A group of people responsible for translating program materials into foreign languages.

• Fiscal Representative – A company retained to represent your organization’s VAT needs and ancillary tax related obligations in the country where your event will be held. 

The key takeaway is to recognize that there is no standard formula; each country is unique with differing cultural norms and business methods.  Check and double check – then still be prepared for surprises.

Be aware that the main challenges are linked to different routines, terminology, and food and beverage. And remember, it may be possible to avoid a small “international incident” by serving the right sized cookie!

For more international meeting information, be sure to visit the Global Tips section of ConventionPlanit.com.

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Submitting RFPs through ConventionPlanit.com can now mean more business for independent meeting professionals.

That’s because ConventionPlanit.com is now offering free listings on its site to independent planners who submit at least three RFPs through ConventionPlanit.com.

“We recognize that association and corporate meeting planners with fewer internal staff resources than they used to have are increasingly turning to independent planners for help,” says ConventionPlanit.com Co-Founder Katherine Markham, CHME.

“So our site now helps these professionals connect.  We also know that independent meeting planners have tight budgets, so they are always looking for free exposure opportunities like this.”

Independent meeting planners who submit three RFPs through ConventionPlanit.com will receive a free one-year Ruby level listing.  Those who submit 10 RFPs will receive a Sapphire listing, and planners who submit 20 RFPs will get a Diamond listing.

Each higher listing level offers more features to display information on the site.

“Since we implemented our 24-Hour Response Guarantee for RFPs submitted through ConventionPlanit.com, we’ve seen a remarkable increase in the use of our three levels of RFP services,” Markham said.  “Using our site for RFPs is quick and easy and removes the burden of follow-up from busy meeting planners.  We make sure that connections are made and that planners receive the proposals they need on a timely basis.”

Planners can select meeting sites on ConventionPlanit.com and with a single click distribute an attached RFP to all them. Or they can fill out an RFP form on the site.

Those that want a higher level of service can choose the RFP Valet^® program, where ConventionPlanit.com executives will help them narrow their search and provide additional follow-up services.

“All these services are free to the meeting planner and they all feature the 24-Hour Response Guarantee,” Markham explains.  “There are no commissions or hidden fees – we simply connect planners and meeting sites and let them negotiate their own deals. Our compensation comes from the listing fees that hotels, resorts, convention centers, CVBs, and other suppliers pay to be part of the site.”

Meeting planners can click here to learn more about the ConventionPlanit.com RFP services.

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Eight members of the ConventionPlanit.com Meeting Planner Advisory Council met recently at The Donovan House in Washington, DC to discuss current issues facing the meetings industry and how online search directories such as ConventionPlanit.com can help address them.

ConventionPlanit.com Staff and Advisory Council Members at the November Meeting

Some of the issues included:

• Demonstrating the Value of Meeting History – Providing a hotel with historical data from previous meetings is essential in negotiating room blocks, rates, and food and beverage costs.  “Everybody complains about not having the history of hotel room pickups and meeting attendance, but nobody does anything about it,” one planner said.  “Just once I want a hotel to come to me with this information – I always have to hunt it down myself.”  Other planners shared similar experiences, and their common wish is for hotels to be more proactive about providing this information.  As electronic information-sharing in common formats becomes more common, this should improve in the future.

• Unauthorized Third-Party Housing Companies Selling Non-Refundable Rooms – This is a lightning-rod issue for many planners, who often see their room blocks erode and subsequent attrition fees assessed as association members book rooms outside the block. These unauthorized companies often launch aggressive marketing campaigns to association members, making it sound like they are the official housing provider.  Attendees that book the rooms find they are non-refundable and sometimes cannot reach the companies by phone.  Meeting planners agreed that strong communications to prospective attendees warning them of these tactics is necessary, plus legal action against these companies if appropriate.

• “Resort Fees” – Resort fees that typically cover Internet access, spa use, and other amenities are increasingly common.  The problem is that government employees cannot usually be reimbursed for these fees when they attend a meeting, and planners noted that the fees are often non-negotiable.  Their wish is for hotels to better understand the effects of these fees and be more willing to negotiate them if needed.

• E-Blasted RFPs – Some companies e-blast RFPs out to numerous properties with little regard for qualifying them in advance.  This wastes the time of hotel salespeople as they respond to RFPs that don’t match what their properties offer.  It leads to complacency that can cause them to not respond to viable RFPs that could bring them business.  ConventionPlanit.com pre-qualifies properties to ensure that only those that are a strong potential match receive the RFPs, dramatically increasing the success rate for hotel proposals.

• Hotel Proposals Lacking Necessary Information – When planners send out RFPs, they need all the information requested in order to do an apples-to-apples comparison of prospective properties.  The planners agreed that hotels are not doing themselves any favors by not providing complete information – it forces them to follow up and spend extra time getting information that should have been provided in the first place.  When RFPs are submitted through ConventionPlanit.com, incoming proposals are checked to make sure they are complete to save planners the hassle of chasing down information.

“This discussion was extremely valuable for both the planners and our staff,” said ConventionPlanit.com Principal and Co-Founder Katherine Markham, CHME.  “We found that much of what we are already doing helps to address many of these concerns, and it helps spark ideas for new solutions we can launch in the future.”

We are always looking for fresh faces to contribute to our council!  If you are an avid user of ConventionPlanit.com and would like information about joining the Meeting Planner Advisory Council, please contact Katherine Markham, CHME at katherinem@conventionplanit.com.

What improvements would you like to see on the site?

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A quick tip of the day for you regarding onsite conference registration:

Consider allowing attendees the option to register in their hotel!  Instead of sending attendees on a wild goose chase through a large convention center to track down a badge or program, set up a small registration stand in all partnering hotels.  The attendees (and their feet!) will be most grateful for the convenience.

Our very own Maureen Pickell, who has just returned from PCMA’s Convening Leaders in San Diego, shared this very smart tip with us.  Registering at the hotel saved her an extra trip to the convention center!  (Stay tuned for more great information from PCMA later this month).

Do you have a conference tip you’d like to share?  Consider entering your tip in the ConventionPlanit.com Stellar Tips Contest!

Each month, planners can submit and vote for their favorite advice.  The winner receives a $100 American Express Gift Card!

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With this year’s theme of “Capturing Innovation” guiding the program, the PCMA Convening Leaders eduction organizers  more than managed to compete with the lure of the San Diego “great outdoors” by presenting a new kind of Opening General Session.

“Rules for Epic Wins that Fascinate” was a tri- part program featuring a developmental molecular biologist, a game designer and a brand innovation consultant – three top thinkers who explain what naps, games and nine-second attention spans have to do with meetings.

In the process, they managed to keep the large audience riveted in a way that the customary solitary “talking heads” of previous conferences could never do.  This was followed by a large list of choices providing world class education to the audience of knowledgeable and experienced meeting professionals.  From tips on developing your authenticity and charisma  to how to prepare hospitality students for the realities of the meetings industry, the most difficult job was choosing the best option from a myriad of relevant topics.

Also back was last year’s successful innovation, the Learning Lounge – where attendees can partake in “bite-sized” sessions of 15 to 30 minutes that include virtual demonstrations based on their particular interest areas.

All this contributes to PCMA’s idea of mixing things up in order to present a different style of conference – demanding an increased level of commitment by the attendees as participants rather than observers.

The popular evening foundation event “Party with a Purpose” was held aboard the USS Midway Museum, an aircraft carrier docked in the San Diego Bay.  Anchors Aweigh and more tomorrow….

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We’re reposting this valuable information from our archives…’tis the season!

Lawyers will tell you whether you’re giving alcohol away or selling it at an event, anyone who has control over the facility or the event is typically liable if an intoxicated person causes bodily injury or property damage as a result of the liquor served at that event.

The good news is, provided the meeting planner isn’t pouring the drinks, they normally would not be at much risk of being held personally liable. When an employee is acting in the scope of their employment, liability usually rests with the employer, not the individual.

That good news, however, does not typically extend to independent meeting planners or third-party meeting planners who are independent contractors and not employees. In these instances, the meeting planner could be held liable along with the company, depending on the circumstances.

“The only way to eliminate liquor liability is to eliminate alcohol from your event,” says Marilyn Hauck, founder and president of The Complete Conference and a 20-year veteran in the meetings industry who plans, markets, and manages meetings and events of all sizes. “A non-alcohol event is often not an option, so the next best way to reduce your liability is to create an environment that discourages overdrinking.”

Hauck suggests these steps to take to keep your attendees from overindulging and to reduce liquor liability:

• Give written instructions to bartenders not to serve persons who are either underage or noticeably intoxicated.

• Establish a monitoring system to ensure that minors and intoxicated persons are not served alcohol.

• Designate someone from the planning team to refrain from drinking during the function to monitor the bartenders.

• Avoid self-service bars and kegs of beer.

• Control the length of the cocktail reception and don’t announce last call.

• Always provide food and non-alcoholic beverages where alcohol is served.

• Arrange transportation – or a place to stay – in advance.

• Buy liquor liability insurance if your organization is the server or seller.

• Make sure the group has a standard operating procedure for handling attendees who have had too much to drink.

Since its inception in 1979, the mission of The Complete Conference, Inc., has been to develop and implement high quality cost-effective meetings with professionalism, integrity, customer satisfaction and dependability. The company can be reached at 916-922-7032 or info@completeconference.com.

What are some of your steadfast rules for such events? Maybe we will add your tips to the list!

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Does using carbon offsets equal green meetings?

“No,” says Jeff Benavides, LEED AP O+M, Senior Project Manager for EcoPreserve, a sustainability consulting firm based in the Orlando, Fla., area. “Hold green meetings with a larger purpose in mind. First, reduce the use of non-sustainable resources where you can, reuse [and] recycle materials, and then look at using carbon offsets.

“By taking this approach, an association can achieve the most carbon reduction,” which is what Benavides says equals “green meetings.”

Benavides spoke November 8, 2011 at an ASAE Convene Green Alliance (CGA) Focus Forum called “Carbon Footprinting Made Easy” to help meeting planners decipher what carbon offsets are and how they differ, as well as what their place is in a green meetings strategy.

A recent survey of CGA members revealed that 38 percent of associations are tracking the carbon footprint of their meetings, and an additional 23 percent plan to track it within the next year.

One group already doing this is the U.S. Green Building Council, which asks attendees of its Greenbuild conference to report their mode of transportation and expected mileage. This helps quantify the largest carbon emitters of most meetings. Other areas to measure include the amount of carbon emitted by shuttle buses, vendor delivery trucks or vans, and taxis taken by attendees. The overall energy used by hotels and convention centers as a result of the meeting also should be measured if possible, and many venues offer that tracking now upon request.

Choosing an organization from which to purchase carbon offsets is the next challenge, one made more difficult by the recent proliferation of these groups, which offer everything from tree planting to renewable energy projects.

“You need to identify verifiable and reputable providers,” Benavides says. “Ask to see their certificates. It is easy to get lost in this world and not know what is real and what is not.” Some of the more well-known carbon offset companies include NativeEnergy, CarbonFund.com, and Sterling Planet.

CGA staffer Kristin Clarke also suggested that the choice of a carbon offset organization should align with the values of the association. “This can help you make choices about what calculator to use and how you want to offset,” she said. “I do all my offsetting through American Forests. If your members care a lot about animals, clean air, and trees, you may want to do that instead of building a wind farm, for example.”

Benavides also encouraged attendees to leverage the environmental commitments of sponsors and exhibitors in calculating what the association is doing to reduce the carbon footprint of a meeting. Communicating this effort to attendees and exhibitors is important, too.

In addition to Benavides, the Focus Forum featured a panel discussion that included representatives of the Orlando Convention District, which sponsored the program.

Dee Dee Baggitt of Rosen Hotels and Resorts and Michael Jueds of The Peabody Orlando joined Benavides to talk about how Orlando is advancing green meetings, including opportunities around carbon offsetting.

A new program called “Green Destination Orlando” now connects all industry sectors to create what Jueds called “The Sustainability Experience:” “We want to make it a sustainable experience from the moment you arrive until the moment you leave. We incorporate the most recognized and aggressive green building and operations standards.”

One partner in that effort is Rosen Hotels and Resorts, which recycles French fry cooking oil into fuel to power lawnmowers used on hotel properties and has a host of sustainability practices in place to lighten the eco-impacts of meetings onsite.

“All industries from restaurants to hotels are part of the initiative,” Baggitt said. “We share and learn from each other.”

Benavides added that the Orlando hospitality community pioneered the concept on which the nonprofit Clean the World has since organized formally, collecting used soap bars from hotels and providing them to nations in need to reduce diseases and infections. Numerous hotels in Orlando and outside of Florida are increasingly partnering with Clean the World to offer meeting planners, conference attendees, and other guests the chance to donate used and unused personal care items for the needy.

For more information about CGA, visit www.convenegreen.com.

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Please enjoy the following guest post from our friend Sarah Vinning with the National Conference Center, who hosted Event Camp DC earlier this month!

Seven.  It’s the total number of Event Camp conferences that have been held in the past year.

The Event Camp series is a concept that first started with Jessica Levin, a meeting planner, and a few friends on Twitter who had the idea to host a bar camp for event professionals in New York City.  Its intention was to offer meeting and event professionals an opportunity to come together in an unstructured format without a pre-planned agenda and “just be,” as Levin describes it.

The main selling point behind every Event Camp is that each one is different in its own unique way.

Conference organizers make decisions such as venue selection, conference format, if there’s a virtual component and the content (unless the organizers follow the peer conference concept in which attendees determine what happens).

“I’ve been to one, they’re all the same,” is not applicable to these conferences.  Over the first weekend in November, there were two Event Camp conferences held over the same dates across the globe – Event Camp Vancouver and Event Camp East Coast (also referred to as Event Camp DC due to The National Conference Center’s proximity to the Nation’s Capital).

Event Camp East Coast was a genuine peer conference where the attendees reveal in a round table discussion their area of expertise, what they want to learn during the conference and how they hope to get there.  The purpose of a conference like this is to ensure attendees learn what they intended to get out of the conference.

On the first night of Event Camp East Coast, we wrote topics we were interested in learning based on our own interests and expertise.  Then, the conference committee established an agenda that was posted on GoogleDocs that night.  Sessions included improv for eventprofs, exploring why some events sell out and others don’t, online community management, hybrid events and the impact on attendance and face to face shyness epidemic – making events warming.

For Event Camp Vancouver, the conference ball-game was another story.  Their agenda was established prior to the conference and posted on their website, which can be an easier sell for someone when approaching their supervisor about attending.  It also helps them set personal expectations prior to arriving.

Vancouver had a virtual component like Event Camp Twin Cities did for attendees who couldn’t attend.  The pre-determined sessions at Event Camp Vancouver included the future of hybrid, what does fair trade mean and how do we find it in our sourcing, room for thought, think before you eat, defining yourself and your brand in the age of social media.

Throughout the entire conference, attendees played Get Your Green On, a gaming app based on sustainability that was initially built for GMIC’s 2011 conference; the app presents attendees with green challenges and they can earn as many points as possible by performing different acts of green.

The Room for Thought at Event Camp Vancouver, a green space designed for participants to have a place to reflect and rejuvenate. Photo provided courtesy of Greenscape Design & Decor.

The sessions in Vancouver and in D.C. had differences but prove for an interesting case study.

Session topics at Vancouver were pre-determined while those at D.C. were created on-site, yet there was clear overlap: brain-friendly food for meetings, where we’re going with hybrid and the future as well as improv.

With unique organizers for both Event Camps and unmatched conference formats, it’s fascinating to see perhaps we’re all influencing each other through social media in the #eventprofs community and as a result, we’re interested in similar topics within the industry.

To find out more about Event Camp conferences, visit EventCamp.org.

Thank you to Sarah for writing this post for us!  To contact Sarah with questions about these events or the National Conference Center, please call 703-724-6263  or email her at svining@conferencecenter.com.

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Here is an exciting, free learning opportunity for association professionals in the Washington, DC area that sounds too good to pass up!  It is also being put on by our industry partner, The Convene Green Alliance:

What: Carbon Footprinting Made Easy 

Learn about today’s green meeting trends and define and explore renewable energy credits, carbon offsets, and other resources that meeting professionals can use to reduce the carbon footprint of future meetings.

When: November 8, 2011

Where: ASAE Headquarters Conference Center

Cost: FREE to association professionals

Registration and Additional Information: www.convenegreen.com

CP Director of Communications, Al Rickard, CAE, will be attending the event (and sharing the highlights with us).  Say hello if you see him there!

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Do you roll your eyes at the thought of participating in a team building activity, or do they send you into a planning frenzy to find an out of the box activity for your group? 

Us too…until we came across a unique idea from the Marco Island Marriott Beach Resort.

Now your group can participate in a customized flash mob!

Flash mobs have become the latest craze and are popping up everywhere from TV shows like Modern Family and Glee to YouTube videos.  (In case you are wondering what a flash mob is, it is a large group of people in a public place who suddenly break out into a synchronized activity, usually a dance).

The reasonably priced packages at the resort range from a choreographer to teach a dance to some or all of a group (maybe the Executive Committee learns a dance to surprise their group!) to inclusion of a videographer and even customized t-shirts.

If the video becomes a viral success, Marriott will even invite the guests back for a free stay!

Interested? Post a comment  for more information.

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