Meeting Podcast 16 Top Event Planner Meetings
Show 17
The Meeting Planners podcast source for what’s new and exciting in meetings and events industry
:48 Meetings Podcast Website improvements
1:52 Report on Market Metrics Hospitality Index survey on airlines, car rentals hospitality.
5:16 Green Resources – Name badges, and a Green Hotel
8:30 Exhibitor Magazine Green list and a few resources that caught Jons eye. http://www.exhibitoronline.com/
11:10 Envelopes, greeting cards, gifts and iTunes made with paper which has seeds embedded in them.
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Brought to you by Grass Shack Events & Media
Show Notes:
Female: You are listening to the Meetings Podcast with Mike McAllen, John Trask and Tom Hillmer. The Meeting Planner podcast source for what’s new and exciting in the meetings and events industry. The information and opinions expressed in this podcast are of Mr. McAllen, Mr. Trask and Mr. Hillmer and are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of their past, present or future employers.
Please send in your question and comments to MeetingsPodcast@gmail.com and make sure to visit our website for pictures, video and show notes at www.MeetingsPodcast.com
Mike McAllen: Hi, guys. How it’s going?
John Trask: Very good.
Tom Hillmer: How are you doing? Yes, how are you doing?
Mike McAllen: Doing great, going great and I guess we got some stuff to talk about.
John Trask: Back for another round.
Mike McAllen Another round, Meetings Podcast. I did a little work on the website for people to take a look at. I think it’s little bit more functional to get in there.
John Trask: Slowly care about and got some new photos and things to look at and obviously new shows going up all the time, so we hope you’ll okay with it.
Mike McAllen Yes. I think it was good too to get the player up hire, so it’s easier for people to listen too.
John Trask: Yes.
Mike McAllen: But if they’re listening to it right now, they’ve already found the player.
John Trask: Well, that’s the good point or they navigated it before and subscribe and it’s automatically showing up in their iPod and they don’t even remember how got there.
Mike McAllen: Right.
Tom Hillmer: Maybe say, “We can maybe do a whole show and how do they find the player?”
Mike McAllen: Yes, exactly, exactly. Yes, that’s in the works too, I got the things that just to showing everybody how to get on for the newbie’s, the people.
John Trask: But if you hear, you’ve made it.
Mike McAllen: Right.
John Trask: Navigated the treasures water and found us.
Mike McAllen: Right, right so which do we start out with? We got a lot of green stuff and we got some, what was the other thing you’re going to talk about?
John Trask: Well, I found an interesting report that came out and I thought maybe we deal with that first. It’s from the Market Metrix Hospitality Index which is done each quarter. They base it on about 3500 or I’m sorry 35,000 customer interviews within the hospitality industry and it’s just got some kind of interesting results that seem to its reporting. The main sort of headline is that hotel customer satisfaction is it a five year high, so an airline of course have decline.
So, while we’ve kind of focus on the airline side things, it seems like customer satisfaction is very much up in the down economy and among those in the first half of 2008, the luxury hotels and the mid scale hotels without food and beverage showed the largest improvement. The luxury brands that have the biggest gains were intercontinental, Taj Hotels and Ritz Carlton and on the more mid scale without food and beverage, Howard Johnson, Ramada and Red Lion all showed some significant increases with the only segment that really went down being the casinos, the largest drop there was the Flamingo in Las Vegas, the Excalibur in the Rio had the biggest declines in customer satisfaction.
Airlines they’re actually up slightly but still at a record low, last time was record low, so they’re down and there’s no real improvement insight with the field that everybody is talking about, so it’s seem like that’s going to stay – kind the stay kind of in the tank for awhile so to speak. The top score on all the hotels was Drury Inn, they actually posted a 91.8 among all hotels in the industry, so they got raves about personal treatment and they’re one of the first hotel in the limited service segment but they’re also operated by an individual family and then they also looked at car rentals and on that side of things slight drop down less than a percent from 79.7 before. Enterprise being in first despite a slight drop in their score, [00:04:08] Elmo showing some gains and the rental industry kind of being clustered in a very small grouping, they’re all – it’s kind of consistent industry apparently, in the way people are rating their satisfaction with it. So, I just thought that was some interesting news, kind of looking it some different segments of our industry.
Tom Hillmer: Where did that come from?
John Trask: That actually came from the MPI website, they have a news blog but it link to the results of a group called the Market Metrix Hospitality Index and let me see if there’s a website here, there is it’s marketmetrix.com. So, you can go visit their site and get more detailed results and if you work for a property or something, see how you guys scored, if you’re not already checking that reporting. Yes, I’m guessing probably if you’re in the property or some place like that, you’re pretty aware of these kinds of things.
Tom Hillmer: Yes. That is great.
John Trask: That’s good. So and then you had some green information Mike?
Mike McAllen: Yes. I came across a couple of things of some good resources, well actually one good resource that you had something too but the first one that I had was of just a badge company that I thought it was kind cool, what you called, Registration Control Systems and they have a green badge now which it doesn’t have the a green badge, it’s not the color green but it’s green.
John Trask: Believe me, my mind was right there.
Mike McAllen: Yes, I know. Its recycled paper of course use from recycled and since, you know, always plastic that people trying to collect this, you know, the plastic holders.
John Trask: Right.
Mike McAllen: There just made from a recycled paper and so it’s just, you know, it just one more thing that you could to green up your meeting. I assume you could grab that, you know, after they’re done and then recycle those again so.
John Trask: Now, the thing that occurs to me on that is, you know, other people are saying, “Well, don’t use paper and use something that can be reuse over and over instead of having to be printed and cycle in” and I’m not where the line fall on this but it’s like, you know, on one hand you might have people saying, “Well, this plastic badge is perfect because you can use it forever” or something like that.
Mike McAllen: Right, yes.
John Trask: And on the other hand, so that’s were some of this confusion on the green stuff comes in for me. It’s like, you know, what really is green?
Mike McAllen: Right, right, what the green was and what’s green but that seem like a good idea and they also come with the reusable metal clip, so you can have the clip over and over again so …
John Trask: Pretty good, yes.
Mike McAllen: Anyway, that was one thing and then the other thing I notice was this the hotel, the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina is completely, if you wanted the ultimate green meeting they have – they use – they produce all their own energy at the hotel. They’re completely off while they’re on the green but they’re actually put in electricity back into the grids, so it’s kind of a cool idea that they’ve done that. I’ve never been there, have you there – have you work there?
John Trask: Yes.
Mike McAllen: How long?
John Trask: I used to live in San Diego for a while. I work there a lot but years ago.
Mike McAllen: Yes, it’s such an interesting that they’ve gone ahead and they’re the first hotel in North America too be completely green, so kind of fun.
John Trask: That’s very cool. You’ve been there Tom, right?
Tom Hillmer: I have yes.
John Trask: Yes.
Tom Hillmer: It’s been a few years but I have been there and I think, if I’m not mistaken, I think Starwood got a big initiative for that too with their hotel, so you know and another kind of their were zero any non-specific properties they kind leave the charge and I remember hearing that that’s was going to be one of them, it sound – that’s great that they’re accomplishing that.
Mike McAllen: Yes, it is pretty cool. After spending some time in Las Vegas, down there last week at the, you know, you realize how much waste goes on down there that maybe it will, you know, as having so much sun down there, you would think they could power a lot other stuff down there [00:08:16], now but maybe it’s moving that direction, so and you had one great thing too.
John Trask: Well, yes. Exhibitor Online are the current issue, the August issue it has a green gallery and that gallery I mean it’s pages and pages of different green products that fit within to the industry and there were a couple of things there that they just jump out at me that I thought were fun and actually I was looking through at here as we were talking because they even have another type of green name tag which is being put up by pcnametag.com and that one is made of partially recycled materials called, the World Badge and so it looks like name badges are differently one area were people are putting some focus because I guess there is a lot of potential for ways there when you think about it and this gallery again, I’m not going to try and read everything in it but of the highlights there are, you know, giveaways, a couple of the giveaways that jump out at me, there’s a bag company called Incases.net that’s recycling bags to give to attendees but it can of shows – they’ve made it in the sort of a fashion statement. In other words, it shows the materials that it’s recycled from, so the straps are something they’ll have the name of whatever the previous item was that it was recycled out of or the fabric or something like. So, it’s just of a fashion statement to go along with trying to be environmentally found and that look like kind of an interesting eye catching idea.
Another giveaway that people are doing at this point instead of, you know, just handing on another pen, is they’re giving out tree, evergreen trees and you can take those and hand them out to attendees and they can take a moment and plant them.
Mike McAllen: We have that in our yard. We have a couple of trees we got from an event. It’s funny but its fun there – it’s fun to watch them grow out there.
Mike McAllen: Yes.
Mike McAllen: Watch them grow, I don’t sit and watch them grow but with that small little pine trees or something or whether …
John Trask: Yes, it’s like, you know, a little sapling that’s maybe the length of your finger.
Mike McAllen: Yes, it’s like a little like a rose, were you get a rose …
Tom Hillmer: Right.
Mike McAllen: The little seed thing at the end, it looks like that, that’s how it came.
Tom Hillmer: That’s cool.
John Trask: And so …
Mike McAllen: Yes.
John Trask: Yes and again a different sort of way to, you know, give your client something that’s says, “Hey we’re caring about the environment and here’s the way that we can all have a little fun with it” I saw and it’s not in the this actual list but I saw something this week and I don’t remember where the reference that, that’s there a group that’s doing cards like prepaid download cards for iTunes to that sort of thing and then they’re biodegradable where seed embedded in them, so after you download, you take the card out and plant them in the garden.
Tom Hillmer: Yes. I haven’t seen it with the gift card like that but I’ve seem them with greeting card are the same way, you can seen people greeting cards and the greeting card itself it’s got the seed embedded in the paper and you can plant the card when you’re done.
John Trask: Yes.
Tom Hillmer: That’s a great idea.
John Trask: Yes.
Tom Hillmer: Actually we had a client that look – they’re using not cards like that for the amenity sending green amenity for the rooms and then having the note cards that went with it being that paper which is kind of another cool way to, you know, carried out one step further.
John Trask: I’ve seen people do that at like wedding and things and there on invitations and so that seems to be a pretty establish technology at this point, it doesn’t seem like it’s too difficult to have those put together in a number a different formats. So, I mean that, you know, there are things in here in green ink, there’s a number of things in here on LCD, lighting and on thin panel modules for signage and you know things like. So, Exhibitor Magazine, Exhibitor Online just a nice gallery to look through if you’re looking for some green ideas to maybe spark, spark a little bit of imagination and fine some new things your company might do to catch the attention of your attendees.
Tom Hillmer: It’s cool.
Mike McAllen: Well, that’s great, that’s great idea.
Tom Hillmer: Right.
Mike McAllen: And so are we all green out now?
John Trask: It’s been a very green day.
Tom Hillmer: Yes.
Mike McAllen: I saw another thing which I thought it was kind the cool, here we’re talking like on an MP3 right now which is begin fired out to everybody on the earth through the Meetings Podcast but there’s a cool little CD, digital recorder that I say that Rollin mix that might be kind of a good buy for somebody who, you know, a small meetings that wants to give a CD to everybody and the, you know, that attends, it will just burn them up, burn them out which is kind of cool.
John Trask: Right.
Mike McAllen: Or you could just take that back and then make copies of it and fire it out but I thought it was kind of a cool little, it’s at rollin.com or rollinus.com, excuse me.
John Trask: Well and you know podcasting is definitely a way to reach your under for the audience if you’ve got people in the your demographic that you’re trying to get to, this concept of podcasting and blogging is really one of the sort of new angles of people are using to connect with a group, so we think it works. We think it’s a great idea that why we’re here doing it but it can be a adopted into a lot of different types of industries and a lot of different type of situations and you can do the same things there beside letting them walk way with the CD and doing that recording on site, you can also, you know, record your meeting into an MP3 and turn it into a podcast so that they can download.
Mike McAllen: Right, right. Yes, the whole landscape is changing with this new media stuff, so helping out the getting the content that you’re doing at your meeting across different ways.
John Trask: Well, very good guys, was there anything else for this week or shall we …
Tom Hillmer: No.
Mike McAllen: Good stuff, I think that’s about it, yes.
John Trask: So, who gets to read the phone number and the e-mail address this week?
Mike McAllen: I like to do it at this time if that’s okay?
John Trask: Okay.
Mike McAllen: Did you want to do it Tom?
Tom Hillmer: You go ahead Mike.
Mike McAllen: All right, so you can e-mail us at meetingspodcast@gmail.com or use our message line which is ###### and of course you can comment on the website and that would be great too to get some comments, we’re rolling on there.
John Trask: And some big changes coming on the website, some of them have already started, so go check it out. I think you like what you’re going to see.
Mike McAllen: Yes, great. Okay, guys good talking to you.
Tom Hillmer: [00:15:01], you too.
Mike McAllen: And talk to you later, see you next week.
John Trask: Have fun.
Female: We appreciate and thank you for listening to the Meetings Podcast. You can find Mike McAllen at grassshackroad.com, John Trask at Alliant Event Services and Tom Hillmer at creativegroupink.com. The Meetings Podcast theme music comes from the Delgado Brothers which can be found at www.TheDelgadoBrothers.com and a special thanks goes out to RipTideGraphics.com for the audio edited of this podcast.
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