Hotels, outside vendors, and are Meeting Planners getting the best values at venues?
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Transcripts:
Mike McAllen: And this is Mike. I wanted to thank you again for tuning in to Meetings Podcast. I wanted to apologize for the audio on this show. I used my iPhone and it didn’t sound good at all. But, I hope you enjoyed anyway and please bear with me at the beginning but it gets better at the end. Thanks a lot.
Female Speaker: Welcome to the Meetings Podcast. The Meeting Planners podcast source for what’s new in the meetings and events industry. Meetings Podcast is a conversation with a variety of voices that looks at events, meetings, and media in the changing world around them.
Mike McAllen: Welcome back to Meetings Podcast. This is Mike McAllen with Grass Shack Events and Media and we have again Jon Trask from Alliant Event.
Jon Trask: Well, again, that sounds like wow, we – we just won’t go away, will we. We keep trying but we can’t stake [Phonetic] [0:00:51] him.
Mike McAllen: And Tom Hilmer is not on the call. I didn’t call him because this is a last minute thing and he’s time is much different than ours so I thought we should knock it out.
Jon Trask: Tom exists in another time and dimensional space from us occasionally, I think.
Mike McAllen: I think – yes. Because you never know where he is. I think he’s in Ireland now. He’s – I don’t know where he is now. He’s all over the place.
Jon Trask: But one of these days, we’ll have him actually back on the call.
Mike McAllen: Yes. That will be great. Basically, it’s my fault for not calling him but I’m sure he won’t mind. So what have you got today, Jon?
Jon Trask: Well, you know, I was looking through the paper and it’s really interesting because there’s kind of a schizophrenic sort of thing going on and I mean, I hear this in a lot of people talking as well. It seems like it’s getting busier. It seems like there’s business out there but yet, you know, unemployment is still up. There were some numbers that came out today that there’s going to be a lot less holiday travel.
Basically, they’re thinking that people are going to be something like four percent down for the holidays on airlines and hotel rooms. And so, you know, definitely that’s affecting us in the meeting industry too because of travel capacities and all of that and it just seems like I’m still hearing the bleakness on the economics side and yet, there’s a lot of RFPs out there and there seems to be a lot of stuff sort of coming up in the New Year.
So, it’s a little bit interesting trying to figure out what the balance is if this – if things are actually getting better or staying the same or getting worse and I know I heard a statistic in the last week that one of the things about unemployment is a lot less people are getting hired but they’re getting like more work out of everybody they’ve got. And so that seems to be that there’s a big increase in productivity which is keeping companies from hiring and it’s sort of almost a shift in the way things are happening and there are some questions floating around out there if we’re going to have a recovery in like hiring or if unemployment is going to stay really high while the economy kind of picks back up.
Mike McAllen: Yes. It’s interesting. I was just in San Francisco and I was doing a couple of site surveys and I was – I happen to be driving back and the – it’s kind of – that same realm. It’s interesting that the Palace Hotel, they’re on strike and they were all outside picketing the hotel.
Jon Trask: Right.
Mike McAllen: And I don’t know what it was about and I can’t really speak of it that much but it was interesting to me to see that happening at this time. It seems like – I guess people have contracts and they have to – you know …
Jon Trask: Yes. I know there was just a transit strike in Philadelphia that got settled after about a week. And yes, you wonder about the timing of that and yet, I guess if you have a contract, you have to renew. You have to deal with that.
Mike McAllen: Right, right, right.
Jon Trask: I know one of the things – oh, go ahead. Sorry.
Mike McAllen: No, no, you go ahead. Go ahead.
Jon Trask: I just – on the same economic front, there was an article in another local paper today because I’m in southern California about a certain committee group called Sunstone that has already turned back in a couple of hotels and they’re discussing now if they’re going to surrender 11 more distressed properties back to the lender or if they’re going to try and, you know, work out some kind of deal with them and that would bring the total number that this one company has forfeited up to 14 if they let go of those.
And that included the W down in San Diego and the Marriott Ontario and quite another long list going from Atlanta to Minneapolis to southern California of properties that are sort of at risk of them forfeiting them something like 2587 rooms between the various properties.
Mike McAllen: Wow. Yes. That’s why it’s such an interesting – it’s still business as usual which is good. I mean …
Jon Trask: Right.
Mike McAllen: … strikes and some companies [Indiscernible] [0:04:55] but, you know, other companies are getting – because I think that the problem with this hotel in San Francisco too is that the Starwood Hotels and Resort that owns the property and I think they showed a big profit last year and – I don’t know. You never know what’s going on because they lay off people to make it look better and then just like you’re saying. Hotels are closing but, you know, maybe their parent companies are showing gains by closing hotels, you know, for their so-called …
Jon Trask: Yes. And it’s so complex. I mean, it’s such a delicate web. You just don’t know what piece is the right piece to get everything back or if everything will ever go back exactly the way it was.
Mike McAllen: Right. Right, right. Yes, very interesting.
Jon Trask: That just – that had struck me as something that I definitely wanted to bring to the conversation and another thing that I’ve been wanting to kind of just sort of throw out there and see what your opinion is and maybe see what some of the listener’s opinion is. We obviously left feedback as always on some of this but production guidelines from hotels. I’ve been running into this a little bit more lately it seems where the in-house companies in concert with the property are making it as challenging as possible maybe for an outside company to come on to the property and do work.
And I mean, you can understand from an economic perspective why they would want to do that but yet, it would seem to be kind of shackling planners into using an in-house company which may not always be the most appropriate choice for the meeting. And so I just wonder how people are feeling about this. I mean, I have one and I certainly won’t name the property or anything related to it but it’s just fascinating because they go through a lot of things that are sort of normal – we should be doing anyway. But then they put a lot of real arbitrary deadlines like you have to have the entertainment writer to them 21 days prior to your meeting. You have to have diagrams 21 days and I understand plan tracking and fire clearances and all of that sort of thing.
But there’s nothing in this that says if things change and we both know how much in the weeks later [Indiscernible] [0:07:10] meeting, things can change. So, you know, what are the penalties for not complying with this? If I give you a drawing and a week out, we changed the seating, how is that done under this sort of guidelines that they’re putting out and making the planners sign off on? You know, and the schedule of events because we, you know, even can have schedules changed at the last minute as we know.
Mike McAllen: Right.
Jon Trask: And then there are these other sort of varied things that I just – I don’t know if they bring value to the customer like in this one in particular, the pricing of the equipment is subject – equipment at labor is subject to a 24 percent service charge plus tax. Additionally, there’s a lost damage waiver fee of another seven percent. So that’s a 31 percent bump that the client is paying to use the equipment that’s there on property. And …
Mike McAllen: Yes. It’s a slippery – that’s a slippery slope with all this stuff because you can’t – you’re not able to – yes. I’m sorry. Go ahead.
Jon Trask: No. It’s just that you’re right. It’s a slippery slope because so much of it is worded so vaguely. Even in this case, they say that, you know, if you bring in an outside company, they’re going to estimate the equipment and charge you for that.
Mike McAllen: Yes. The strange thing about all this is that some of this [Indiscernible] [0:08:30] and become the in-house company. They’re not – I mean, I’m sure there’s hotels out there. I don’t know of any that have their own equipment in-house but they’re really bringing in people anyway. I mean, someone has won the bid on the hotel to bring in the – I recently lost out on a job just because of this stuff that I worked on for several months and I won’t name the hotel either but they just kept coming up with stuff.
And it was very frustrating. It was not in this country though so it was – the rules were even more lax because they started putting like they needed to have a supervisor fee all of a sudden that came up. And it was like where did the supervisor fee come – oh, I’m sorry, we’re going to have to charge you, you know.
[Crosstalk] [0:09:12]
Jon Trask: … as well.
Mike McAllen: Yes. But it’s just things like that like what’s the supervisor’s job is to – you know.
Jon Trask: Well that’s the amusing part to me because I’ve had this come up on shows before and usually the guy who gets assigned to be my room supervisor has probably about two years experience and I’m coming in with a crew of guys who have been working in the business for 20 years and this guy is going to make sure that we don’t do anything wrong. It – I find it kind of just fascinating to observe from a sort of dispassionate viewpoint because I just can’t always see how you can justify that to the end client saying they’re getting any value for spending $500 a day, let’s say, for having this person in the room and no – we’ve asked before – no, they can’t work on the show. I can’t use them as one of my hands, you know. So I can’t say, “Okay, help me unload the truck. Help me put this trust [Phonetic] [0:10:10] together. Help me, you know, do these things.” No, they just have to observe and make sure that we’re not doing anything wrong.
Mike McAllen: Yes. And a lot of the stuff is – you know, the decisions have been made about the hotel before we’re even involved. I mean, my company is or yours in which – which is usually sad because it’s like that there is no real recourse to go after them. I guess there is – not to go there again in the word of mouth of like, hey, don’t work there because of these problems but it seems to be happening all over the place. And it’s too bad because we could be doing – concentrating more on putting on – you know, giving the clients the best, you know, products they could get.
Jon Trask: I try and be fair to in-house and I worked on that side of things in the past. So, you know, I understand that they are there to do business and it’s part of their job to capture what comes in but I always felt like I wanted to capture the business by giving better service than an outside company and by having better knowledge and by knowing the property more intimately rather than sort of forcing them to use me and saying, you know, “You have to use me.”
I mean, in this case they want to – they’re going to estimate 20 percent of the equipment rental price and charge you that plus charge you for a person to observe. So they’re just basically trying to make it prohibitive for you to do anything but use them.
Mike McAllen: And a lot of the time too, the clients themselves, you know, you learn how to work with clients. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with these in-house people but after you’ve worked with a client for several years, you know that the CEO likes this and that and this and then that CEO can really concentrate on what they’re doing, on what they’re presenting not on all these little detailed things that, you know – that you know.
Jon Trask: And I mean I know revenue is important to every property. We’ve talked about how properties are struggling but it just – it seems – well, and, you know, you can also make the argument, “Okay, if you bring in an outside caterer, you’re going to pay a penalty too.”
Mike McAllen: Yes.
Jon Trask: So, you know, trying to look at it from the hotel perspective and be absolutely fair here. You know, they’re building in a revenue model and they’re wanting a certain amount of revenue off of these groups so you can understand why they want to capture that but it’s definitely a negotiation point that I think planners should be aware of going on to properties because the rules have sort of changed in the past few years and I don’t know that everybody is really aware of it and I think there are people who are signing contracts and not really paying attention to some of the finer points of these that they then have to either go back and try and negotiate out or they’re stuck with maybe a choice that they don’t want.
Mike McAllen: Yes, I agree. I agree. And I think that happens a lot of – at a lot of different clients too that there are different roles on who’s signing that contract too and that sometimes, they don’t even look into the production side of it or the …
Jon Trask: Right. Or they say, they will sort that out later. “We don’t know when our meeting is going to have A/V-wise so we don’t want to get a quote yet.” You know, I’ve observed that a lot where people just stay away from the A/V part as long as possible.
Mike McAllen: And also the meeting planner may have, you know – they’re not connected in with what’s going on at that meeting anyway. I mean, they – I mean, within the context side of it, what’s going to be – you know, what’s the educational portion or what is the, you know, the motivation factors that they’re trying to get across. All this stuff is, you know, from the marketing department or whoever. Right? I mean, it’s not …
[Crosstalk] [0:13:35]
Mike McAllen: … they just want to make sure there’s – you know – it’s – and the – not putting anything down on the meeting planners. They’re busting their humps all the time but, you know, it’s really hard.
Jon Trask: But they’re worried about, you know, rooms and they’re worried about the accessibility of the property and a bunch of other things. They’re not really getting in to the finer details three years out of what …
Mike McAllen: Right. And that’s out of their control too. I mean, they – you know, that’s always the question that I have for clients too. Like, what’s different now? What are you guys doing? You know …
Jon Trask: Right.
Mike McAllen: And then, normally, it’s – you know, has anything changed in your meeting? And that the meeting planner will be like, “Well, I’m not really sure yet. We haven’t had a meeting yet about the meeting.” [laughs]
[Crosstalk] [0:14:14]
Mike McAllen: Yes. We’re having it. They’re trying to decide. And the guy – you know, these people, these companies, they have – you know, they’re selling something or they have a product or they’re – you know, they’re not thinking about their meetings in-depthly until they can really get up on them usually. I mean …
Jon Trask: Yes, maybe – it may just be this is our national sales meeting for 2012. We’re booked in the place now because we know that’s where we’re going to go.
Mike McAllen: Right. Right, right, right.
Jon Trask: So …
Mike McAllen: And a lot – and all these companies do do that, right? I mean, they’re out there – I mean, that’s where Tom is all the time. He’s driving around, flying all over the world looking at venues for the future meeting. You know, that’s why he’s always gone because that’s what he’s doing. He’s with his client, looking at hotels, looking at resorts. You know …
Jon Trask: But I – I just – I really wanted to bring that out at some point here on the podcasting kind of maybe get some feedback. We would love people to drop us an email or just send us their thoughts on it, you know. If you want to be interviewed about it, if you’ve got some opinions, send us your phone number and we’ll get you on the podcast some time and talk to you about it.
Mike McAllen: For sure. It is interesting because you and I and then when Tom too, we talk a lot about like, you know, these internal meetings that people are having for companies and stuff and I wondered – you know, we should probably bring in other people around to talk and to talk about other events that are – you know, concerts that we seem to talk about or people that are – people who are throwing on conferences.
Jon Trask: Sure. No, I think that would be great and we’ve kind of talked about that in passing and I believe we’ll be doing that hopefully before the end of the year, getting some of those folks on.
Mike McAllen: Yes.
Jon Trask: So, you know, if you work for a property and you want to talk about production guidelines and how they’re helpful and give another perspective to it, love to hear it because my perspective is just mine.
Mike McAllen: Yes, yes. That’s a great idea. We should probably pull in some people. It would be very easy to find them too.
Jon Trask: Yes.
Mike McAllen: They’re all around. I don’t know if they would want to talk with us though.
[Laughter]
Jon Trask: I’m not sure anybody wants to talk to us these days.
Mike McAllen: No, no. No, I don’t think …
Jon Trask: Well, let’s go for something lighter and sort of end on a lighter note. How about that? Event Solutions had an interesting article that I just never got caught up with when we kind of took a little bit of time off there. This actually happened while I was out on the road doing sort of a Tom thing going from city to city but it was just a list of six ways to keep on top of event trends and it was some ideas of websites that you could go to, to learn about trends in fashion and ways to kind of get ideas to keep your events fresh.
So I just thought that was kind of a neat thing. We can link that on the website. It’s Event Solutions Magazine from September. Trendwatching.com is the first one. Site is free. They do a monthly trend briefing. Springwise is a source of business ideas but as they say, it’s also a top notch inspiration for design.
The Tasting Table is a free daily email for adventurous eaters that covers dining, wine, drinks, cooking and people. They have a New York, an L.A. and a Chicago edition and they’re planning a San Francisco one. Touchy [Phonetic] [0:17:31], Pantone [Phonetic] which – every quarter, I’ve heard of Pantone [Phonetic] before. They put out a color report based on trends of the season and so, they’ll kind of say cars are looking to be this type of color in the upcoming year and that sort of thing and that’s just kind of an interesting thing. They just talk about color. And there’s actually the Color Association and I think I may have done a meeting for them at some point in the past or a quote or something. I remember the Color Association.
But – so there are six different places that you can go just for some interesting ideas for your meetings and something new and trendy.
Mike McAllen: Very cool idea. That’s a great magazine. In fact, we have a column in there.
Jon Trask: Yes we do. We like that.
Mike McAllen: [laughs]
Jon Trask: They like us.
Mike McAllen: [Inaudible] [0:18:21]. Hey, I saw something too that I thought was pretty cool. There’s this – you know, you go to these big events and you can’t really tell or like they’ll have that – you may have those – you know, people that – a large event, they’ll all be in the area and then they’ll kind of estimate how many people are there obviously if they haven’t sold tickets but if it’s somewhere outside like a free concert or something, this company in Spain called Lynce. I’ll put up a …
[Crosstalk] [0:18:53]
Mike McAllen: … on the show but they use – they came up with a software by using cameras and the software that he can calculate an accurate number of participants within 15 percent of error, the guy who put this together. It’s kind of interesting. It’s kind of a – I don’t know really where you would use that. Well, where would you – think you can use that? I mean, that – it’s just an interesting thing to have that so you can kind of tell how many people are there. I guess maybe year to year, you could use the …
Jon Trask: Well, there are always some questions especially if it’s a free type event as to what attendance was and, you know, in figuring your ROI, that sort of thing. So it would seem to be helpful for that. You know, we’ve – there has always been controversy for example over events on the National Mall, how many people were actually there.
Mike McAllen: Right, right. Exactly.
Jon Trask: And so I could see that being a much more useful way to get a more accurate count than just taking a sample and making assumptions.
Mike McAllen: He – the guy who started it, his name is Juan Manuel Gutierrez. He’s in Spain. He started it because there was an event that had a question of – that the organizers claimed there was like so many people but supposedly there was a gap of 200,000 people difference or something that, you know. He said that this is something that the industry could use to make a change. I got that off the event manager blog which is Julius Solaris’s blog.
Jon Trask: Yes, Julius.
Mike McAllen: Yes.
Jon Trask: He has some really neat stuff there out of England, doesn’t he?
Mike McAllen: Yes. He’s the guy with the – he’s doing the crowdsourcing stuff is what he’s into and [Indiscernible] [0:20:33] marketing and stuff. He’s – and all his social media. He’s very deep into that. But – yes.
Jon Trask: Well, that’s what I had for this week on my side of things. So I think that’s probably a good show, wouldn’t you say?
Mike McAllen: I think so. I think we should probably stop.
Jon Trask: Yes. Get out now while there’s time.
[Laughter]
Mike McAllen: Alright, Jon, well, thank you very much. And I will talk to you next week, I guess, huh?
Jon Trask: Very good. Yes, we’ll keep this momentum going. We’re back and glad to be back.
Mike McAllen: Yes. We got the holidays coming up so I’m sure there’s going to be some excitement around that. I’m sure we’ll have a lot of time to throw up some cool stuff on the feed. Maybe you can – you got some stuff too or shoot other stuff down the feed during this time because I know as the holidays come, it’s going to be harder to get the other …
Jon Trask: I was looking through old show photos the other night. I’ll have to make sure I get some old show photos over on to the website. Actually, I got a very interesting note from somebody that I’ll just – a producer that I know in New York sent a note, an answer to something that I was talking to him about and at the end of it, he asked if I knew a fellow from Meeting U who has spoken at a couple of MPI events out in upstate New York on Web 2.0 and he said each time one of the first pages that he pulls up is our Meetings Podcast site.
Mike McAllen: Oh, how funny. That’s great. That’s Jim …
Jon Trask: Jim Spellos of Meeting U.
Mike McAllen: Yes, yes, he’s a nice guy.
Jon Trask: So, thanks, Jim. We appreciate it.
Mike McAllen: That’s great. Alright, Jon. You have a …
Jon Trask: Alright. Have a good week …
Mike McAllen: And I will talk to you again very soon.
Jon Trask: Alright. Thank you.
Mike McAllen: Bye-bye.
Female Speaker: We appreciate and thank you for listening to the Meetings Podcast. You can find Mike McAllen at GrassShackRoad.com, Jon Trask at AlliantEvents.com and Tom Hilmer at CreativeGroupInc.com. The Meetings Podcast theme music comes from the Delgado Brothers which can be found at DelgadoBrothers.com. Special thanks to RiptideGraphics.com for the audio editing of this podcast.
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