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Five Things to Know When Planning a Hotel Event
Planning A Hotel Event
Hotels can be wonderful places to hold an event. Many are designed to meet every conceivable guest’s need, and come with a bevy of resources and staff. However, as with any venue, a hotel event requires thorough planning with an eye on costs. Knowing what to look for before you sign that contract, and knowing what is reasonable to ask, can help put many concerns to rest – and leave you free to focus on running a fantastic event!
- Hotel Event Room Rental Fee: Don’t always assume that you need to pay a rental fee! Hotels will often waive or adjust this fee with food and beverage minimums, as well as the timing of events.
- Food and Beverages: Don’t be afraid to ask for discounts! Always ask about available packages (don’t forget to break these down to ensure that they really provide value). If you have an all day meeting, don’t pay by beverage consumption. The hotel will charge you throughout the day for gallons of wasted coffee, decaf and hot water. Ask for an all-day beverage break as this price will generally reduce your costs by a third.
- Events with Sleeping Rooms: If your date is flexible, ask if there are any “need dates” promotions, as these can often result in lower room rates along with food, beverage and Audio-Visual (A/V) discounts.
- Parking: Especially when the hotel is a city property, parking is a top concern. Ask for a reduced rate for all attendees, as many times this rate is lowered by $8 to $10 per car per day
- Internet: For sleeping rooms, have the lowest band width put into the rate. For meeting space, ask to have the fee waived; if the hotel is not willing to do that, then only pay a one-time fee rather than per day/per connection
Go Digital: 5 Benefits of Mobile Bidding
Mobile bidding can help you surpass your fundraising goal at your next event. The addition of technology in live and silent auctions has changed the way attendees bid, pay and interact at fundraising events. Here are some of the top benefits:
1) Live and silent auction items can be viewed before the event. Guests will be able to come prepared ready to bid on the items they want to take home.
2) Guests are required to pre-register their credit card. This can be done on the hosted website before the event or when they arrive onsite with a simple swipe. This ensures all payments by the close of the event.
3) In a live auction, guests can check out as soon as their item is closed.
4) Guests will receive alerts on any items that have not been bid on for a silent auction. Then you are less likely to have items that are never bid on at the end of the evening.
5) Guests can monitor their bids at anytime without having to go to the location of the item. As a planner or client you can also monitor the exact dollar amount raised at anytime!
If your guests do not have to have a smart phone, representatives from the bidding company are on hand with iPads to assist and make bids for guests. The staff will also assist guests with bidding on their own phones as well as answer questions.
These user-friendly systems are positively changing auctions and non-profits one event at a time.
The Top 10 Mistakes Companies Make with Events [Sucessful Meetings]
By Matt Alderton
Even in the digital age, live events are pervasive, according to event planning firm TCG Events. Last year, it surveyed 300 executives and found that 84 percent work at companies that hold corporate events. Just because a majority of companies host events, however, doesn’t mean that they do a good job of it. For that reason, TCG CEO Cassie Brown has compiled her list of “The Top 10 Mistakes Your Company is (Probably) Making with Events”:
10. Not getting a music license.
“Your DJ isn’t taking care of this. And you’ll wind up paying a steep price,” Brown says.
9. Making your company event an afterthought.
“Not including it in the yearly budget, or even picking a specific date,” is a mistake according to Brown, who says “surprises at work, especially in accounting, are not so welcome.”
8. Not taking employees’ wants and needs into account.
“Events should be planned to the demographics of the employees,” Brown says. “For example, a company with mainly millennials should plan a different event than a company where the majority of employees are married with kids.”
7. Not taking an RSVP.
Again, Brown says, surprises in the workplace are a bad idea.
6. Interrupting family time and not inviting the family.
“An event attended grudgingly, rather than the positive morale builder it was meant to be,” is a failed event, Brown says.
5. Not making it cool enough to be on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.
“Make the most of your event investment and turn it into a brand builder,” Brown advises.
4. Designing a half-hearted invitation.
“This tells your invitees, ‘I don’t expect this to be worth your time, feel free to make excuses,'” Brown says.
3. Serving a vegetable tray and cheese tray.
Brown has one word: “Boooooring.”
2. Scheduling a speech where the CEO or another executive rambles on, and on, and on.
“Nobody wins in this situation, not the speaker nor the attendees,” Brown says. “Design a compelling, fun, 2-minute video, instead. Your attendees and your executive team will thank you for it.”
1. Having the same party year after year.
“The most important, deadly mistake is annual repetition,” Brown concludes. “Events are an opportunity to bring your brand to life, whether for your employees, your investors, or your clients and prospects. You wouldn’t let your brand get stale — don’t make that mistake with your company events.”
Read the original article in Successful Meetings.
Is Venue Selection Really That Important?
Ever heard someone say, “It’s no big deal, let’s just have the event at the museum uptown”? Don’t be among the many event hosts or planners that make this common mistake. Venue selection can make or break your event. Here are 4 key reasons why venue selection is critical to the success of your event.
- How many times in the past year has your guest been to the venue you are considering? Don’t get caught sending an invitation to someone who has had five other invitations come across their desk for a similar event at the same venue. Choose something more unique that piques the guests’ interest rather than reminding them of another long redundant evening.
- Consider your budget. When your budget is limited, it is important to make sure that your venue provides optimum value. Every dollar counts and extra money spent on chairs, tables, linens, audio visual support, air conditioning, heat, etc. can be draining to a small budget.
- Consider the style of your event. It’s our belief that most any space can be turned into the perfect venue with a little bit of vision and creativity. However, some spaces are better suited for specific event themes. Avoid choosing a venue that is counter-productive to your theme or event style.
- What is your headcount? Don’t assume that you can fudge on the numbers. Filling the venue to capacity with guests on top of added elements such as staging, food tables and a band can make for a very congested and uncomfortable evening for your guests. On the flip side, avoid using a venue that fits 1000 people when you only have 100 guests. You don’t want your event to feel empty.
Thinking Inside the Box
A client came to us this year wanting to shake up their corporate awards program. They were looking for ways to refresh the typical “grip and grin” photo ops and long company descriptions being read as the company representative slowly makes his or her way to the stage. It was time for a new look! Enter TCG Events. Ready to shake things up and add new and engaging elements, we were ready to pull out all the stops.
Then came the challenge: no budget increase.
The current budget was stretched to the max and managed to the penny. Giving this event an overhaul was going to be a stroke of creative genius, not a bought solution.
After hours of looking at the event backwards and forwards, inside and out, and forcing ourselves to think outside the box, we found our solution. It was time to think inside the box. Instead of taking down all the parameters, we put up the parameters. There were only so many elements that we could play with that were not cost prohibitive: room orientation, staging (provided at no charge by the facility) and program flow. By narrowing down our options it became clear that the answer was in the staging. Rather than creating the typical rectangular stage in the front of the room we would use the stage decks to create a runway in the middle of the room with seating tables on either side of the runway. With energetic runway music pumping in the background, alternating MCEEs called the (58) award winners to the stage. To quicken the pace, company descriptions were read as the winners walked the runway. At the end of the runway they received their award and had an opportunity to strike a pose at the step and repeat.
No typical square stage, no time lost in getting on and off the stage, no awkward grip and grins – just a high energy program that was loads of fun.
Next time you find yourself in such a predicament, try thinking inside the box for a change.
Invites At First Sight
The excitement for your event starts with your first touch-point – your invitation. Don’t rush! It is better to move the event date than to rush your invitations.
Let’s say this is the first time your company is putting together a big event. You have set the date, are entrenched in the details, and it is time to consider your invitations. Do you buy a template and print in-house? Invest in a graphic designer? Do you hire a printing company who has graphic design capabilities?
Think about your invitees – how many invitations do they regularly receive? What do those invitations look like? Are they physical or electronic? How are you going to make your invitation stand out? How are you going to give them a reason to attend your event? Will your invitation make it past the receptionist’s desk? A standout, creative, well-planned invitation can be a key element to ensuring attendance.
If you do not believe your invitations will stand out, neither will your guests. Take the time to step back, re-create, brainstorm, or re-design your invitation. Every touch point leading up to an event is critical to the guest experience. Although the event world is a lot of behind the scenes work, you need to be highly sensitive to the elements that do reach your invitees. At first sight, guests should feel that excitement in anticipating your big event.
Inspiration From the Culinary Industry: Recreating the Alinea Dessert Experience at Events
As a creative bunch, some of our fabulous ideas are often outlandish without a concrete method of execution. This is where our vendors, who are all connoisseurs in their own areas, come into play. One such idea was inspired by Alinea Restaurant in Chicago.
We recently did an event where one of the client’s main goals was to increase opportunities for networking and interaction throughout the evening. We had been dying to replicate the famous chocolate dessert created at the esteemed Chicago based restaurant, Alinea, and saw this as the perfect opportunity. However, doing it for an event of 450 people was a serious undertaking. The dessert at Alinea begins with a silicon tablecloth; the chefs then create a stunning almost Picasso like artistic creation, transforming dots into squares with gel, a chocolate & honey explosion created with freeze dried blueberries scattered on the cloth. It’s almost impossible to describe, so check out the video online!
For our recreation, we were working with an amazing caterer who at first was unsure they could pull it off. Eventually, our encouragement pushed them to take on the challenge.
Not surprisingly, the caterer exceeded our expectations as well as our client’s. They went with a chocolate and cherries theme that included nitrogen poached cherry mousse, Belgian chocolate pate, crispy macaroons, and cherry vodka foam. It provided an opportunity for the guests to interact with each other as well as with the chefs creating the dessert and everyone had a ball! It tasted and looked amazing as you can see in the picture above.
