Get Together

If you’re planning a small meeting, here’s some good advice: Think of it as a big deal. Then you’ll take care of all the details, and you’ll find your money was well spent.

But first, let’s see what a small meeting requires. You’ll need a facility that offers relatively easy travel access, meeting rooms, audiovisual equipment, food, beverage and banquet services, business services (i.e. faxes, copying machines, computers, etc.), sleeping accommodations, the ability to coordinate off-site excursions and events (if required), and the ability on the part of the facility to work closely with you to ensure a successful event. Hey, that could apply to any size meeting! Right. So give your small meeting the attention it deserves. At the same time, realize that, aside from the sheer volume of attendees, small corporate meetings are different from large meetings and have different considerations.

So what exactly is a small meeting?

“Every convention and visitors bureau has its own definition of what a small meeting is,” says Karen Williams, executive vice president of the Louisville Convention and Visitors Bureau. “In our case, we define a small meeting as 100 people or less.”

According to Michael Reader, chief executive officer of the Bellwether Group in Nashville, TN, a small meeting is 50 people or less and typically has different objectives than a larger venue.

“Smaller meetings are more for the purpose of exchanging ideas, while the purpose of a large meeting is to inform, train or teach,” says Reader. “A small meeting is an opportunity to discuss topics, ask questions, discuss them, hone the topics, and define exactly what’s being said and how it applies to the attendees. The ability to interact and exchange ideas is facilitated in smaller meetings.”

Location, location, location
While the glamour, glitz and excitement of a large metro area can be alluring, small-meeting planners can often get more bang for their buck if they consider more modest-size facilities for their meetings. Why? The answer is simple: You’re a bigger fish in a smaller pond – and that equates to leverage.

“A small meeting for Las Vegas, Chicago or New York would be a huge meeting for Albuquerque,” says Edward Pulsifer, vice president of convention sales and marketing for the Albuquerque CVB. “It really depends on the destination.

“You have a group of people who you are responsible for. Attendees should be happy and productive, they should have a good time, and you don’t want them to be lost in some large atmosphere,” says Pulsifer. “If you have a meeting for 50 people, would you want to put them in a 1,200-room hotel or a destination hotel that has 200 or 300 rooms and offers a lot more personalized service, and your group won’t be lost among 1,000 other groups?”

“There are more hotels in Louisville with 300 rooms or less than there are with 300 rooms or more, and they would love that type of business,” says Williams. “Small meetings are not a step-child to the small to medium-size facilities, and those hotels will jump all over that type of business.”

Tony Sylvester, president of Sylvester Management Corporation in Irmo, SC, believes that “tier one” cities, such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Las Vegas have a tendency to look down on small meetings.

“If I try to book a meeting in Washington D.C. with anything less than 80 sleeping rooms, they probably won’t even talk to me or offer a proposal,” says Sylvester.

“Second-tier cities are more eager for your business and can offer better value for the corporate small-meeting planner,” says Sylvester. “Little Rock, Albuquerque, Charlotte, Sacramento, Sante Fe, Cleveland and Cincinnati are examples of second-tier cities that, as a whole, offer better value.”

That’s not saying that the larger hotels in major destination areas don’t appreciate or want small-meeting business. In fact, more and more larger hotels are designating sales managers to handle specifically the smaller meetings and are even creating small-business-meeting sales departments. Still, in many cases, small meetings are viewed by big hotels as ways to “fill in the gaps” between the large meetings.

“I worked in a department at the Opreyland Hotel called ‘executive conference sales,’ where we sold only to the smaller markets, with an average seven-month booking period,” says Reader. “The heavy-hitter salespeople booked the big 2,000- to 3,000-person events, and our job was to fill in the holes.”

Reader feels that picking up the remnants from larger meetings, along with having a shorter booking-out time, actually gives an advantage to smaller meetings and allows them to get good deals.

“Hotels have a perishable product. If you didn’t fill a hotel room last night, you can never regain the ability to sell that room again,” says Reader. “You have more negotiating power if you’re booking a meeting a few months out as opposed to a few years out, because you are plugging in the holes,” notes Reader.

“It all comes back to the product itself. Hotels are in the business of selling sleeping rooms and the meeting space is simply there to sell the rooms,” says Reader. “A hotel may sell $100,000 in sleeping rooms and $80,000 of that will be profit; whereas if they sold $100,000 in meeting space, which came along with food and beverage, the profit would only be $20,000. Their goal is to put people in hotel rooms.

“The advantage for small-meeting planners is that they can pick up the remnants, and they have more flexibility and opportunity as far as availability goes,” says Reader. “It’s simply gravy for a lot of hotels when you’re booking out in a six-month-window period. If they have available sleeping rooms with some meeting space left over, they can plug your group in there and give you a deal to do it. They have a 100 percent house, your needs are met, and everybody is happy.”

Details, details, details
Without a shadow of a doubt, attention to detail is crucial to the success of any meeting, be it a large city-wide get-together or a small corporate meeting. Make sure that wherever you decide to hold your meeting there is adequate dedicated hotel staff to help you cover the details.

“The difference between big and small meetings is the attention to detail required,” says Sylvester. “The people that attend small meetings are more demanding, they expect more, and every detail has to be perfect.

“For example, if you’re booking 500 rooms, people are more likely just to take whatever room they get,” says Sylvester. “If you’re booking a small group, every person wants something special and may be much more particular in terms of the room view, the size of the room, the number of beds – those types of things. You have to fulfill all those expectations.

“In many cases, it’s the little things that really count,” notes Sylvester. “Fresh flowers in the room every day, extended room service, a turned-down bed with a chocolate on the pillow, a newspaper under the door every morning – all these things make the meeting memorable,” says Sylvester.

“There’s an incredible number of meetings that fall in the 20-to-30-room range, and the industry has attempted to organize itself from a sales and service perspective to fill those particular meeting needs,” says Roger Childers, vice president of sales at Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, GA.

Childers stresses that people charged with putting together small meetings should make sure the facility they choose has staff who are specifically designated to service small business meetings. He emphasizes that this is especially important if the meeting-planning responsibility is delegated to someone who is not experienced in planning meetings.

“In my experience, oftentimes the people calling the meeting are so busy they don’t have time to plan the meeting, so they delegate it to someone else, and that person may not be quite sure what the boss wants or has no background in meeting planning,” says Childers. “That person plans a menu without knowing that the boss hates cauliflower. When the boss arrives, guess what, there’s cauliflower on the plate and he or she thinks, because of that, nothing is right.

“You need to find a facility that will, even if the meeting is booked short term and is in a frantic mode, have dedicated people that pay attention to all the details and know the right questions to ask,” says Childers. “If a secretary is given the responsibility for organizing a small meeting with a cocktail party, doesn’t know what the boss’s favorite wine is, and maybe doesn’t even think to ask, the hotel has to have staff that anticipates these situations and will automatically supply a list of alcohol selections so the boss can pick the appropriate labels.”

David vs. Goliath?
Do small-corporate-meeting planners have any clout? According to Childers, it’s all in the way you approach the issue. That means taking the time to learn the facility’s business, learning it’s sales peaks and valleys, demonstrating a willingness on your part to be flexible, and keeping a win-win attitude.

“Clout, in part, depends on how flexible you are. For instance, look at timing. Let’s say you call me up and tell me you want 20 rooms, you’re arriving on a Sunday, you’re holding a welcoming reception, a lunch and dinner each day, and you’re hoping I can give you good room rate,” says Childers. “I know I’m going to have a lot of empty rooms on a Sunday night, and that automatically gives you some clout. I’m also looking at some food and beverage, and that gives you more clout. On the other hand, if you’re arriving on a Friday, want just a meeting room with no real food and beverage, and I’m running full tilt in terms of room occupancy, I know I’m going to sell the rooms anyhow, and you’re not bringing anything to the table.

“Small-meeting planners should understand that they might not have any clout when they’re trying to book a meeting in Las Vegas during the times when the hotels are at 90 percent occupancy. But I will assure you that there are times you can go to Vegas when a 20-room buy is really nice for the hotel, and if it’s on a specific day when occupancy is down, it’s even nicer,” says Childers. “It’s all in the way you approach the issue.”

If your company holds larger meetings, don’t hesitate to let the hotel know that. You can leverage that clout for your smaller corporate meeting.

“I’ve had 20-person events in large hotels where they absolutely rolled out the red carpet,” says Reader. “I did a meeting at the Drake Hotel in Chicago for 25 physicians for a large health care company. This company does an additional 750- to 1,000-person event. The physicians were blown away by the hotel, the hospitality and the level of service, and based on that small event, they brought their big national event there.

“Here’s an example. You’re the ACME company, and you’re rolling into the 5,000-plus-room Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas for a small 20-person corporate meeting. But, during the course of the year, you also hold other, larger meetings. Let the hotel know about those meetings, whether they are for 800 or 8,000 people, and that you judge where to hold that meeting based on the success of the smaller corporate meetings. The hotel then knows that they may get some bigger events down the road, and that can change the whole perspective of how they treat you and what you can get,” says Reader. “Go with that angle, especially if it’s a board of directors meeting.”

The art of negotiation…ask and you shall receive…but first, get your ducks in a row

“When you negotiate a hotel contract, there are things out there that the hotel will give you if you just simply ask for them,” says Reader. “Nothing is outside the realm of possibility.”

Reader advises that small-corporate-meeting planners pay special attention to contracts and not be hesitant to challenge hotels on specific contract clauses and language.

“In the past few years, hotels have gotten very aggressive with attrition and cancellation clauses, food and beverage minimums, tacking on resort fees, and energy surplus surcharges – and every bit of that is negotiable,” says Reader. “A meeting at a hotel is a totally negotiable experience, so negotiate. But you have to know what you want to negotiate, so do your homework and pay special attention to contract clauses.

“For example, if a group books a meeting nine months in advance today and then cancels tomorrow, they’ll go ahead and send that big whopping cancellation check to the hotel, and they don’t have to,” says Reader. “If the hotel resells those rooms, legally they can’t charge you or profit from your loss. It’s a wait-and-see game. After 30 days past the event date, have them tell you what their occupancy actually was and what their typical occupancy is at that time of the year. If the hotel ran at an 80 percent occupancy rate and it is charging you for the 20 percent of rooms that normally run empty anyway, that’s b.s.”

“No matter what the size of the meeting, know your history and always, always make and take appropriate planning time,” says Sylvester. “Give yourself the time to consider all the variables, plan your questions, know what you want to accomplish, and go after it.”

“Just remember,” concludes Reader. “Everything is negotiable.”