JAN 2012
A special issue
brought to you by
SECURING
SPECIAL ISSUE BROUGHT TO YOU BY CAESARS ENTERTAINMENT
SPONSORSHIPS
IN TOUGH
TIMES
ALSO INSIDE:
Contract Negotiation
Best Practices
Social Media and Gamification
Up-and-Coming Meeting
Planners
Becoming Better During
a Downturn
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®
January 2012 • Special Edition
“Special Edition” =
Special Content for You
EDITORIAL STAFF
EDITOR IN CHIEF David Basler, dbasler@mpiweb.org
MANAGING EDITOR Blair Potter, bpotter@mpiweb.org
EDITOR Michael Pinchera, mpinchera@mpiweb.org
EDITOR Jason Hensel, jhensel@mpiweb.org
EDITOR Jessie States, jstates@mpiweb.org
REPORTER Stephen Peters, speters@mpiweb.org
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jeff Daigle, jdaigle@mpiweb.org
GRAPHIC DESIGNER Jason Judy, jjudy@mpiweb.org
GRAPHIC DESIGNER Javier Adame, jadame@mpiweb.org
WELCOME TO YOUR JANUARY 2012 SPECIAL EDITION OF ONE+ MAGAZINE!
January is usually a month in which we don’t publish a magazine, but this
year is different. We have partnered with Caesars Entertainment to bring
you a special edition of the magazine that delivers the award-winning One+
content you find so valuable and showcases the uniqueness of Caesars
Entertainment’s meetings and events portfolio.
As you read through the pages of this edition you’ll find that the stories haven’t changed. They are exactly what you would expect from your
monthly One+ magazine. We’re highlighting full-length feature stories on
contract negotiations, securing sponsorships in tough times and social media
and gamification. The content is completely and uniquely One+.
We reached out to members at IMEX America in October and at
the World Education Congress in July and asked what key issues were
“keeping them up at night,” and the content in this issue was developed
based on those responses. And as we go into 2012, many of the topics
you told us you wanted to know more about are the same ones showing
up on industry “trends” lists and at water cooler brainstorms around
the globe.
“Gamification,” for instance, is a topic in just about every conversation
these days. Some meeting professionals are wanting to know how to incorporate ggamification,, while some are just
wanting to know what gamificap
j
tion is. All completely fair—it’s a new idea, but one that
I think will most defi
d nitely change the way we meet.
The other two
tw topics in this issue focus on the
economy—something that’s keeping everyone up at
economy—some
night, no matter your industry. (If it isn’t keeping you
write a book and tell the world your
up, you should w
stories offer some valuable action items
secrets.) The stor
help solidify sponsorships in tough
you can use to h
and to boost your negotiation power.
times an
Enjoy this special edition and all its
En
unique content, and we’ll see you again
uniq
next month in the regular edition of your
One+ magazine!
One
DESIGN AND PREPRESS Sherry Gritch, SG2Designs, sherry@sgproductions.net
COVER DESIGN Jeff Daigle, jdaigle@mpiweb.org
MPI ADVERTISING STAFF
Denise Autorino, dautorino@mpiweb.org, Phone: (407) 233-7305
(FL, GA, HI, MA, ME, MI, NH, NY, RI, VT, Canada, Caribbean, Central America, Mexico,
South America)
Fredrik Ehrenborg, fehrenborg@mpiweb.org, Phone: +011.352 26 10 36 10 53
(EMEA Region)
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(AL, AR, CO, IA, IL, KS, KY, LA, MN, MO, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NM, OH, OK,
SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, WI, WV, WY)
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(AK, AZ, CA, CT, DC, DE, ID, MD, NJ, NV, OR, PA, WA)
Carolyn Nyquist, Manager of Client Services, cnyquist@mpiweb.org,
Phone: (972) 702-3002
MPI EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT
Bruce M. MacMillan, C.A., President and CEO
Danya Casey, Vice President of Events and Certification
Diane Hawkins, SPHR, Director of People and Performance
Sandra Riggins, Chief of Staff
Didier Scaillet, Chief Development Officer
Junior Tauvaa, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketplace
INTERNATIONAL BOARD OF DIRECTORS
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Chairman of the Board
Sébastien Tondeur, MCI Group Holding SA
Chairman-elect
Kevin Hinton, Associated Luxury Hotels International
Vice Chairwoman of Finance
Cindy D’Aoust, Maxvantage
Vice Chairman
Craig Ardis, CMM, Meetings Analytics
Vice Chairwoman
Patty Reger, CMM, DePuy/Johnson & Johnson
Immediate Past Chairman
Eric Rozenberg, CMP, CMM, Swantegy
BOARD MEMBERS
Chuck Bowling, Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino
Jordan D. Clark, Caesars Entertainment
Paul Cunningham, IIMC International Information Management Corporation
Michael Dominguez, Loews Hotels & Resorts
Ricardo Ferreira, GRUPO ALATUR
Roel Frissen, CMM, Parthen
Chris Gasbarro, Community Connections LLC
Hattie Hill, CMM, Hattie Hill Enterprises Inc.
Kyle Hillman, CMP, NASWIL
Cornelia Horner, CMP, American Land Title Association
Carol Muldoon, CMM, KPMG LLP
Kevin A. Olsen, One Smooth Stone
Erin Tench, CMP, CMM, Penn State University
POSTMASTER: One+ (Print ISSN: 1943-1864, Digital Edition ISSN: 1947-6930) is printed
monthly, except the month of October, by Meeting Professionals International (MPI), a professional association of meeting + event planners and suppliers. Send address changes to
One+, Meeting Professionals International, 3030 LBJ Freeway, Suite 1700, Dallas, TX, 752342759. Periodicals postage paid at Dallas, Texas, and additional mailing offices.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: Members receive One+ as a membership benefit paid for by membership
dues. Nonmembers may subscribe to the publication for $99 annually. “One+” and the
One+ logo are trademarks of MPI. © 2012, Meeting Professionals International, Printed
by RR Donnelley
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CONTACT ONE+: Contact us online at www.mpioneplus.org or e-mail us at
editor@mpiweb.org. View our advertising, editorial and reprint policies online
at www.mpioneplus.org.
MPI VISION: Build a rich global meeting industry community
GLOBAL HEADQUARTERS:
Dallas, TX
DAVID BASLER is editor in chief of One+. He can be reached at
dbasler@mpiweb.org. Follow him at www.twitter.com/onepluseditor.
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JANUARY 2012 - SPECIAL ISSUE
14
42 SPECIAL SECTION
Spotlight on Caesars Entertainment
Properties by Region
The BUZZ
16
9 SoundOff
Industry pros discuss securing sponsorships in
tough economic times.
38
18 A True Partnership
Can Do Anything
8 A Meeting Planner Convergence in Las Vegas
A weekend packed with entertainment, seminars
and the chance to experience local Caesars Entertainment properties.
10 Better! Faster! Smarter!
What you must consider when selecting marketing
technologies for your business.
18
Las Vegas provided solace and service for a
displaced Amerinet conference.
11 Art of Travel
Precious Armor protects your most fragile possessions on the road.
12 The Professional Summarizer
This guy will add zip to your meeting or event.
BY JENNIFER JUERGENS
Columns
22 The Grass is Greener
Lawn Doctor’s annual trade show and
conference landed in Atlantic City due to
top-notch Caesars staff.
6 Point-Counterpoint
Immersion in the latest networking technology:
the good, the bad and face-to-face.
BY JENNIFER JUERGENS
28 Fair Trade
BY BRUCE MACMILLAN AND MICHAEL MASSARI
28
A Discussion on Contract Negotiation Best
Practices
14 What Up-and-Coming Meeting
Planners Bring to the Table
Whether you were born in 1943 or 1993, the essential characteristics of meeting planners will never
change.
BY ANDREA GRIMES
BY MARIE AJA
32 State of Play
16 We Are Better Today Than We
Were Yesterday
Social Media, Gamification and How Events
are Changing as a Result
It’s easy to feel sorry for yourself when times are tough,
but suck it up and use the opportunity to get better.
BY ELIZABETH HENDERSON
BY MICHAEL MASSARI
38 Finding Fiscal Friends
The SEO of securing sponsorships in tough
times: specificity, exclusivity and originality.
BY ELAINE POFELDT
32
Contest!
56 Meet Where?
Name this location for a chance to win a free stay at a
Caesars Entertainment property.
mpiweb.org
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POINT-COUNTERPOINT
>
Immersion in the latest networking technology:
the good, the bad and face-to-face.
6
IN TODAY’S FAST-PACED SOCIETY, PEOPLE FEEL PRESSURE
TO REMAIN CONTINUOUSLY
CONNECTED, AND TECHNOLOGY HAS RISEN TO MEET THE
DEMAND. Text and instant
messaging, email, social networking—is it even necessary
to actually speak to anyone
anymore? Of course, nothing beats the value of face-toface, but what of the argument that people who don’t
excel in these more modern modes of communication
won’t be able to connect with the next generation of
customers, employees and attendees? I respectfully
disagree.
Face-to-face communication is the single most effective way to engage in a collaborative interaction with
another human being. By experiencing the myriad
ways people send information to one another, there is
opportunity for deep understanding. There’s a level of
trust and familiarity that cannot be fostered in email
or by text, which explains why we’re much more likely
to come to an agreement in person than by any other
means. This applies to colleague interactions, leaders
seeking team buy-in and the sales department trying to
develop positive relationships with customers.
Despite advancements in communications, people
still meet and interact in-person. Unless humans change
fundamentally, face-to-face is always going to be the
best way to communicate. Millions of years of history
aren’t wrong.
I ask my team to keep this in mind: If you don’t care
what the answer is, send a text or email. If it’s somewhat important but not critical, pick up the phone. And
if it’s really important to you, meet in person. As smart
as the next generation is, I am certain they’ll get it.
IN A WORLD WHERE THE COMPETITION FOR RESOURCES,
EMPLOYMENT AND ATTENTION HAS HIT NEW LEVELS
OF INTENSITY AND GLOBAL
BREADTH, mastery of today’s
connectivity tools is essential
to success. Tom Friedman
calls hyperconnectivity “the
single most important trend in the world today.” Connectivity technology and social platforms have not only made
the creation of professional networks faster and more efficient, they’ve delivered unimagined value and opportunity
through the unleashing of human connections.
Having a powerful network of business contacts and
accessible resources has always made people faster, more
efficient and better able to create value that secures the deal
or gets the job. But, with today’s connectivity technology
ubiquitous, success will go to the person who knows how
to use it effectively, in new and inventive ways.
There’s no doubt that the richness or depth of these
digital connections pales in comparison to their face-toface equivalents. Masters of today’s connectivity tools
know that and use these tools to make their face-to-face
encounters much richer and their return on time that
much higher.
I was 25 years old before I gained my first professional
contacts overseas. My 13-year-old daughter now has multiple contacts in Europe and Asia that she connects with
regularly and that may someday play a role in her personal
and professional development. Our industry talks about
the crucial role that networking plays in developing careers
and business. That remains irrefutable. We now have exciting tech tools to truly unleash the power of human connections as never before. Mastering them is essential for
success today. Resistance is futile.
MICHAEL MASSARI
senior vice president of Caesars Entertainment
BRUCE MACMILLAN, CA
president and CEO of MPI
one+
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A Meeting Planner
Convergence in Las Vegas
MORE THAN 200 MEETING PROFESSIONALS CONVERGED ON LAS VEGAS TO ATTEND DIAMONDS
ARE A PLANNER’S BEST FRIEND, THE LAS VEGAS
EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE PRESENTED BY CAESARS ENTERTAINMENT IN MID-NOVEMBER.
The weekend was packed with entertainment,
seminars and a chance to experience all of the
Caesars Entertainment properties in Las Vegas.
A reception at PURE nightclub kicked off the
event, a chance for current and prospective planners to mingle with Caesars sales and management teams from all over the country.
The next morning’s breakfast gave chefs from
the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino a chance to
show their stuff while creating made-to-order
omelets, eggs Benedict and yogurt martinis.
The breakfast and opening words by Jordan D.
Clark, vice president of sales for Caesars Entertainment Corp., happened to be on the morning of Veteran’s Day, so after a moving toast and
a lesson on the day’s origins, he welcomed the
group to the meeting.
“It’s all about having an objective: First we’re
going to learn; second we’re going to meet some
great people; and third, we’re going to have
fun.” He added, “I hope one or all of these things
sparks some ideas.”
While the idea behind this event was to present Caesars Entertainment properties, it was also
a way to showcase many entertainment options
and local destination management companies.
“We could sit here extolling the virtues of
Caesars and pretend that it’s fun, or we can show
you and make it fun,” Clark said.
And it was.
Clark introduced Master of Ceremonies Dale
Irvin, the “World’s Only Professional Summarizer” (see Page 12), who has been adding levity by serving as emcee for the company’s last
10 events. After comedians Jon Wee and Owen
Morse of “The Passing Zone” performed—in
tutus—a jaw-dropping juggling act with chainsaws using a volunteer from the audience, Irvin
brought down the house with his deadpan assessment not of their talent but of their sanity.
But the performance was not all fun and games.
Passing Zone’s theme, “ICE: Innovation, Collaboration, Execution,” extolled the importance
of these three concepts for the success of any organization.
Walter Bond, ex-Dallas Mavericks basketball
player, delivered a message of personal accountability, emphasizing the power of confidence and
the pursuit of excellence, but warned planners
not to cross the line from confidence into arrogance.
“The moment you get arrogant, you stop
growing and learning,” he said. Bond also said
people want to buy from “people we know,
people we like and people we trust” and told
planners, “don’t go back to your office the same
meeting planner. Stop merely communicating
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and start connecting.”
During a talk show-style panel, Irvin interviewed four Caesars executives including
Michael Massari, senior vice president at Caesars Entertainment Corp., to share the new
way Caesars is doing business.
“Because there are so many wonderful
properties across the country for meetings…we have to compete on a different
level,” Massari said. “That’s why we have
instituted a single chain of command for
Caesars Entertainment. Planners can use all
38 properties in the Caesars Entertainment
family while only having to deal with one
contact, one contract. We know a meeting
planner’s job is difficult so if you’re successful, we’ll be successful.”
Diamonds!
The diamond theme was chosen to tie into
the nation-wide launch of Caesars Entertainment’s Meeting Diamond program, now up
and running at all of their properties. The
program offers planners and their VIPs guaranteed priority service at check-in, business
centers, restaurants and more, as well as complimentary access to spas, fitness centers and
private Diamond lounges at each property.
During the “talk show,” the comedy and
singing group The Water Coolers described
the expanded Caesars sales force—the sales
team is not only on-property now, but puts
salespeople where the customers are—with a
song they wrote, “We Are Everywhere, Man”
to the tune of Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Everywhere, Man.”
Breakout sessions during the day included
“Say What You Mean: Communicating with
X, Y and Zoomers in the Workplace,” presented by Cheryl Cran of Speak Inc. Christian
Saucedo’s session helped planners identify the
questions they need to ask clients when considering meeting technology. Saucedo guided
them to consider how to design content to get
the most value out of technology and how to
sell the idea of a tech-reliant meeting to clients. There was also a workshop on using
social media (see Page 37).
The next day, breakfast was served at
Harrah’s Las Vegas with a high-energy demonstration by Dan Dunn who painted portraits of John Lennon and Bob Marley—in
minutes—to the legends’ own music. Then
it was off to St. Jude’s Ranch for Children,
where meeting planners were put in teams to
decorate the ranch for the holidays.
“This was a highlight for me. I looked
forward to this all week long,” said Jennifer
Cavenee, planner with the National Tobacco
Company.
Roger Dow, president and CEO of the
U.S. Travel Association, spoke on the state
of the industry. Citing the fallout of the AIG
effect, he said there are challenges meeting
planners and other travel industry professionals face.
“Meetings are serious business, even if our
neighbors think it’s a frivolous industry,” he
said. “The travel industry is responsible for
one in nine jobs in the United States and that
equates to 14 million jobs, more than the
auto, chemical and insurance industries combined.”
He spoke of the meeting he had with
President Obama and a blue-ribbon panel
of industry executives including Tom Ridge,
former Secretary of the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security, and Bob Crandall, former president and chairman of American
Airlines, among others, to discuss the US$150
million Travel Promotion Act. In the end,
Dow was optimistic, saying business travel is
coming back.
“Planners, if you want to book something,
do it now. The deals are starting to disappear,” he said. “Everything is looking up.”
JENNIFER JUERGENS is a veteran meeting and
event industry journalist and former editor in chief
of Incentive magazine.
SOUNDOFF
How do you secure
sponsorships in tough
economic times?
“In simplest
terms, you need
to demonstrate
value. Sponsorships are no
longer about
just obtaining goodwill,
they’re about
demonstrating
an ROI that can compete with other
opportunities the sponsor may be
considering and doing this in a relevant and measureable form. To do
this successfully, you need to know
what the potential sponsor is trying
to achieve in their own business and
then shape both your proposal and
the resulting benefits in those terms.
At the same time, you need to be
aware of any specific restrictions on
sponsorships—pharmaceutical codes
are a good example—and make sure
these are taken into consideration as
well.”
— Philippe Fournier, president of the
Joint Meetings Industry Council
“As a membership organization, we rely
on partners
and sponsors
in both good
and unfavorable
economic times.
We’re fortunate the Dallas
hospitality community as a whole
recognizes the importance and mutual benefit of supporting each other
and working together. Any time we’re
securing sponsorships, our goal is
to create and present a plan proving
tangible value or benefits, whether
it’s visibility, increased business,
leads, etc. Then we focus on delivery.
We’ve found that if you clearly demonstrate value, deliver and work hard
to build and maintain relationships,
sponsor relations can thrive in many
economic conditions.”
— Salma Gottfried, senior vice
president of marketing for the Dallas
Convention and Visitors Bureau
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Better! Faster! Smarter!
MARKETERS ARE OFTEN ENTICED
BY THE ALLURE OF THE NEWEST,
COOLEST TOYS. No, not the latest
3D television or the neat new Apple
product; I’m talking about trendy
marketing platforms, channels and
technologies. Marketing technology companies are always pitching
the magic bullet
that’s going to
allow us to reach
our audience and
generate business
more effectively
or efficiently than
our competitors.
A sampling
of solicitations
from my inbox
on a single day
promises to help
me “reach more
customers than
ever before,”
“dramatically impact the future of
business,” “unify
marketing and
sales,” “execute flawless communications,” “guarantee an impressive
ROI,” “generate leads and drive
sales,” “identify and energize the
best customers,” “make better decisions,” “optimize lead generation
results,” “develop a flawless sales
process,” “achieve higher conversion rates,” “harness the power of
millions” and even “get smarter.”
Faced with a dizzying array of toogood-to-be-true claims, how does
someone with responsibility for
making marketing-related decisions
know what to believe and where to
begin?
As much as I like to think I’ve
got my finger on the pulse of the
10
one+
latest marketing trends, the reality is that for my business, simpler
is better. In the meetings business,
face-to-face is king and relationships rule. We have the luxury of
sitting down with every customer,
getting to know them and gaining a first-hand understanding of
what they need. We are in a direct
sales-based business. That means
my team’s primary focus is making sure our sales team can sell. We
work to make our brand meaningful to our audience, we produce
sales materials and trade show assets, we communicate with our customers and prospects in ways we
believe are impactful. In essence,
we focus mostly on traditional
marketing.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a
place in our business for technology. We use survey tools, a database management system and
other basics of a good sales and
marketing effort. We even utilize a
custom-developed software application that allows our salespeople
to personalize sales materials for
the individual prospect. But, what
of all those grandiose promises?
Could more sophisticated marketing technologies really help me “get
smarter”?
The answer is, maybe. But when
the newest shiny marketing tech
bauble dazzles me with its sparkle,
I invariably end up coming to the
same realization: The pearl is not
worth the dive. It takes resources
to effectively implement any new
marketing technology—substantial resources that many companies
just don’t have in abundance these
days: people, time and money. I see
companies that proudly ride the
“We work to make
our brand meaningful
to our audience, we
produce sales materials and trade show
assets, we communicate with our customers and prospects in
ways we believe are
impactful. In essence,
we focus mostly on
traditional marketing.”
cutting edge of marketing tech, but
I always wonder, “At what cost?”
Do they lose focus from the core of
their business, like taking good care
of their customers, improving their
products or making it easier to do
business with them?
Unlike those marketers who
bombard my inbox by the hour, I
can’t tell you what your business
needs. But here are some things to
take into account when considering
marketing technologies for your
business.
Be true to yourself. Things don’t
have to be done a certain way just
because that’s how they’ve always
been done. Know your business
enough to realize when something
is—and isn’t—a good fit.
Don’t fall into the “but everyone
else is doing it” trap. Sometimes
everyone else is doing it for good
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reason. Sometimes they’re just doing
it because everyone else is.
Don’t be mesmerized by a good
sales pitch. Make sure you understand
what the tangible benefits are and the
real cost of implementation—in terms
of both time and money.
Get it from the horse’s mouth. No
matter how well you know your audience, it can’t hurt to talk to a few customers with whom you have a good
relationship to see what they think.
As an added bonus, they’ll be flattered
that you want their opinion.
Get references. Ask the vendor if
you can contact some of their clients,
and then call them to discuss their experiences with the technology and the
company.
Get specifics. If your salesperson
says you’ll receive eight development
hours per month, make sure you
know what that does and doesn’t include.
Know your limits. Get in writing
any limitations on number of users,
storage capacity or data transfers.
Understand all costs. Don’t focus
simply on start-up costs; clearly understand the expense of future enhancements or modifications to the system.
If the product is something the vendor
sells “off the shelf,” will you automatically receive updates or will you have
to pay additional fees?
Have contingency plans. What
happens if you aren’t ready to launch
on time, if the system goes down or if
the product or division is sold to another company?
Lastly, always get it in writing.
AMY ALLEN is director of marketing for
Caesars Entertainment.
ART OF
TRAVEL
Precious Armor
(Magellans.com, US$19.50)
Precious Armor is perfectly sized to protect fragile items, such as perfume, crystal, electronic devices and objects d’art
in your luggage or carry-on bag. It has
see-through windows for easy airport
security inspection, two extra-strength,
zip-top seals and Velcro fold-over flaps.
Made of durable, leak-proof nylon with a
layer of protective padding.
Hang-N-Go Travel Hanger
(Travelsmith.com, US$14.95)
Never be caught without a hanger again.
This standard-sized hanger collapses into
a slim pouch and reassembles in seconds.
Hang it on a closet rod or train railing to
keep garments pristine or to dry laundry
overnight.
SecureSleep Bed Bug Luggage Liner
Archtek Toothpaste Tablets
(Travelsmith.com, US$7.00)
Leave your toothpaste at home with
these inventive, dentist-recommended
tablets, which contain a mix of proven
dental cleaners and natural ingredients
for potent cleaning without mess. Just
chew, brush, rinse and you’re done. Each
small, recyclable bottle contains one
month’s supply of 60 tablets, packing
neatly into your toiletry bag.
(Protravelgear.com, US$19.85)
With clothing being one of the most
common ways to transfer bed bugs,
never leave home without the protection
of your luggage liner. Easy to use and
great to use in drawers to keep clothes
bug free and get the feeling that everything is still unpacked. These anti-bed
bug liners are made with patent-pending
zipper technology and 100 percent
micro-polyester to keep the bugs out.
mpiweb.org
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The Professional
Summarizer
THIS GUY WILL ADD ZIP TO YOUR
MEETING OR EVENT.
Dale Irvin, CSP, is furiously taking notes offstage while
listening to one of the head honchos at Caesars Entertainment welcome attendees to the recent Las Vegas
Educational Experience. Irvin has served as emcee for the
company’s last 10 events.
“It’s my job to recap what you should have learned had
you been paying attention,” he tells the group of about
200 meeting planners when it’s his turn to speak.
What’s amazing is that he does it on the spot, in real
time, with only the time it takes to listen to a speaker. He
does this throughout the entire three-day meeting.
“I don’t hear anything in advance,” he said. “But I’ve
been doing this my whole life. I was the kid in the back of
the room making fun of the teacher.”
He also spent a year and a half at The Second City
improv club in Chicago, where you really have to think
on your feet. But after 10 years in comedy and being on
the road “too many days a year,” he missed his daughter,
Danielle, now 29. His wife, Linda, is a teacher who edits
everything he writes.
“She has good comedic timing,” he said.
He discovered the corporate market 15 years ago, and
one of his clients coined the phrase “professional summarizer” to describe him. He has been hired by planners
from companies across the board—from Hewlett Packard to Mobil Oil to Anheuser-Busch. He’s also worked on
speeches for others, such as Harvey Mackay, a popular
business speaker who, he says, “Just needed his speech
punched up.”
Irvin is different from most speakers in that he attends
the entire meeting—from meals to seminars to the final
night’s banquet. He’ll follow every speaker and every act
and make the funniest observations about each one—keeping a meeting fresh and fun. His summarizing sometimes
raises eyebrows when he crosses the line ever so slightly.
As a speaker, he reaches more than 100,000 people a year
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with his message of laughter therapy. And Irvin is a member of the CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame.
“Attendees rush from their break just to hear Dale
summarize the previous session,” said Jordan D. Clark,
To sign up for Friday Funnies or
vice president of sales for
to contact Dale Irvin, visit www.
Caesars Entertainment.
daleirvin.com.
“They enjoy it because he’s
funny, but what is really
happening is that he is driving home the main points of the
last speaker. I can’t imagine doing an event without Dale.”
While Irvin enjoys the pressure of having to think on
his feet, when he gets home he crashes.
“I usually do nothing the weekend after an event. I’m
exhausted.”
Still, he creates “Friday Funnies” each week that are
emailed to subscribers and can also be found on YouTube.
“I take odd stories from the news and give my twist on
them.”
For the Caesars Entertainment event, he recorded his
Friday Funnies on Veterans Day in his hotel room. He
joked that he might be the only one in Las Vegas not gambling or getting married, as the hotel was booked with
couples coming to tie the knot on 11/11/11. He offered
that gambling was a lot like marriage.
“If you don’t play your cards right, you just might lose
your house.”
JENNIFER JUERGENS is a veteran meeting and event industry journalist and former editor in chief of Incentive magazine.
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>> FROM WHERE I SIT
WHAT UPͳ
ANDͳCOMING
MEETING
PLANNERS
BRING TO
THE TABLE
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BY MARIE AJA <<
FACEBOOK. FRIENDS. FAMILY.
Celebrities. Cars. Clothing. These
are the keywords in the minds
of many young adults. However, there is a group of ambitious
20-somethings that is speaking a
different language, one that would
be foreign to most: ADR. ROI.
BEO. MPI. The next generation of
meeting planners is ready to take
the industry by storm.
The beginning of the meeting
and event industry can be traced
back to the planning of small
gatherings hundreds of years ago.
They may not have known it, but
they were the first employees of the
meeting industry. According to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, meeting
and event planners now account
for more than 56,000 jobs in the
U.S. alone.
Many young people, myself included, see themselves as the future
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of event planning and are pursuing
a professional degree specifically
in the field, an opportunity veteran
planners did not have. Though we
may have a long way to go before
we develop the experience and the
loyal clientele that the typical veteran planner possesses, we do bring
a lot to the industry.
Today’s planners have their pick
of powerful technological tools to
enhance and enrich their meetings.
Virtual meetings enhance face-toface gatherings. Social media is also
a great way to market a meeting,
build anticipation and promote
attendance. It can also encourage a
dialogue among attendees before,
during and after, and foster connections that may last well beyond the
actual event. The new generation of
planners has almost never known a
time where social media and other
technologies weren’t part of daily
life. We are familiar with technology, and we aren’t afraid to use it.
Whereas most young planners
would welcome engagement in
social media during a meeting or
conference, the older guard may
find tweeting during a session to
be an impolite and unnecessary
distraction. Young attendees may
be offended when asked to turn
off mobile phones. We have been
raised on technology and believe it
is a crucial component of a meeting,
rather than a nuisance.
The next generation also knows
how careful one has to be when
it comes to social media, because
we’ve experienced the negative
ramifications of it firsthand in our
personal lives. As it applies to meetings, if a speaker says something
inappropriate or commits a faux
pas, it can be instantly disseminated. The information that once
remained in the confines of the
conference room can now reach
Young planners need to keep in mind that
not all attendees will be comfortable with
heavy reliance on technology during a
meeting. Nevertheless, some may have
viewed social media as a passing trend;
we know it is here to stay.
hundreds or even thousands of people within seconds. We do not take
this fact lightly and are prepared to
implement damage control.
Young planners need to keep in
mind that not all attendees, mainly
our veteran counterparts, will be
comfortable with heavy reliance
on technology during a meeting.
Nevertheless, some may have viewed
social media as a passing trend; we
know it is here to stay. We bring an
ingrained knowledge of what the
various social media tools are and
how to leverage them.
Of course, we also have the
advantage of being raised during
the sustainability movement. We
understand that many attendees will
demand green practices, and we are
well versed on how to integrate these
components. Indeed, we have been
taught institutionally that a goal of
every meeting should be to make
it as environmentally friendly as
possible.
We also enter the industry having
spent the most recent of our formative years in the worst economic
climate since the Great Depression.
The experience has taught us many
things, and delivered some humility and a reality check. We have a
strong sense of budgetary restrictions, and understand the meaning
of doing more with less. We’ve had
to be diligent and tough and creative, and those attributes will help
us no matter which path we choose.
Within a couple of decades, the
meeting industry will be fully in the
hands of my generation. While it
may be cheaper and more efficient to
hold multiple meetings via videoconference, on the phone or other
new tech methods—the preference
of many young people—face-to-face
meetings will not be lost with my
generation. Will the successful and
necessary industry that veteran planners have built and nurtured over
past decades be completely flipped
upside-down in the hands of the next
generation? Perhaps.
After looking at the many differences and similarities between
amateur and veteran planners, I
have come to one conclusion—all
successful meeting planners share
common characteristics: a solid work
ethic, attention to detail, flexibility
and influential negotiation skills.
Whether you were born in 1943 or
1993, these essential characteristics
will never change.
MARIE AJA is a student of
hospitality management at
Endicott College. She can be
contacted at maja852@
mail.endicott.edu.
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>> LESSONS FROM THE DOWNTURN
BY M I C H A E L M A SSA R I < <
WE ARE BETTER
TODAY THAN WE
WERE YESTERDAY
SOMEONE ONCE SAID THAT A CALM
SEA NEVER MADE A SKILLFUL MARINER.
Well, the last couple of years have been
anything but smooth sailing.
As our economy makes its way
slowly but surely back to prosperity,
it’s becoming easier to see the silver
lining in the cloudy skies that many
companies have had to endure over
what has been the worst economic
and business climate in my professional career. As I reflect on where
we have been and where we are
headed, I realize something important: We are better today than we
were yesterday.
No one is as good as their best day
or as bad as their worst day, but it was
a lot easier for companies to be good
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pre-recession. The downturn caused
most of us to suddenly find that we had
to work much harder to get results.
I saw a lot of people feel sorry for
themselves, and many companies had
knee-jerk reactions.
My team and I took a step back and
asked ourselves if we still believed in
the mission and vision we’d previously
set forth and if we still thought the path
we’d chosen was the right one. The answer to both questions was yes. So, we
decided to do almost nothing—nothing
remarkably different, anyway. We believed wholly in the way that we’d been
running our business, and we came to
the conclusion that the right move was,
simply, to stay the course. But a funny
thing happened along the way: We
did change. We became more skillful
at servicing our guests, working as a
team and negotiating. We deepened
our relationships with our clients. We
toughened up. We became more courageous. We became…better.
When the chips are down, staying
the course may not be right for every
company. But there are components
of your strategy that change with time
and there are those that are timeless. If
you’ve made good decisions for your
business and have been thoughtful
and smart in your approach, things
don’t automatically fly out the window
because of changing circumstances.
It’s easy to feel sorry for yourself
when times are tough, but suck it up
and use the opportunity to get better.
• Know your core competencies and
stay focused on them. Work on what’s
most important and the rest will sort
itself out in time.
• Always re-evaluate, but be confident
in the decisions you make. Be thoughtful about changes; don’t have a kneejerk or emotional reaction.
• Know what your competitors are
doing, but don’t simply follow the
pack. Conversely, don’t be different for
the sake of being different. Do what’s
right for your business.
• Sometimes simpler really is better.
• As a leader, listen to your team, be
empathetic, be human, but make sure
they believe in you and know you’re
still leading them down the right path.
Inspire confidence. Be optimistic yet
realistic.
• If it’s the right thing to do, it’s worth
doing right. Go big or go home.
• On the way up you weren’t that
smart and on the way down you
weren’t that dumb—don’t dwell on
the things you
can’t control.
MICHAEL MASSARI
is senior vice president of
Caesars Entertainment.
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A True Partnership
Can Do Anything
Las Vegas provided solace and service for
a displaced Amerinet conference.
BY JENNIFER JUERGENS
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THE NEWS WAS GRIM. On May 4, 2010, The
Tennessean’s front page was a jumble of reports on the devastating floods in Nashville.
The Gaylord Opryland Hotel was flooded,
and about 1,500 guests had been evacuated
the previous night, according to one report.
As the Cumberland River continued to rise,
downtown streets near the riverfront and
restaurants and bars in the tourist district
were closed.
In Pittsburgh, Kerry Price, CMP, was
in her office watching the emails pile up
from nervous attendees for an upcoming
meeting set to take place at the Opryland
in just nine days. As the vice president for
strategic customer engagement at St. Louisbased Amerinet Inc., Price was more than a
bit anxious. The meeting for this national
healthcare solutions organization was a
year in the making and a cancellation could
cost the company $2 million if they couldn’t
relocate.
“After a sleepless night, I came back
into the office at 6 a.m. and started making calls,” said Price, who is responsible for
about 250 meetings each year. “I called a
few hotel chains we had used in the past
and Todd Gagnon (director of sales for Cae-
sars Entertainment) came through with the
room availability and space at Las Vegas’
Rio for September.”
Joseph Parkes, director of catering, conventions and events at Rio All-Suite Hotel
& Casino, was so new to the property—
after stints with The Ritz-Carlton and an
event planning company—that Price was
his first client.
“In fact, someone came up to me and,
seeing my hotel badge, asked me where the
restrooms were,” Parkes said. “I had to
look at Kerry because I hadn’t learned the
hotel yet. We still laugh about that.”
What Parkes did know was that they
had to get busy to pull off a September
meeting. He came up with a room block
for 1,500 attendees and space for the 375
exhibitors of hospital supplies and equipment. Price was happy, though, just to have
this.
“My group fit perfectly,” Price said. “We
didn’t lose a single person even though the
airlines—except Southwest—did nothing
to help my attendees change their flights. A
lot of people lost money.”
The three-night member conference for
Amerinet is a chance for suppliers of medi-
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cal equipment—from hospital beds to office supplies—to show their wares to
healthcare providers. The meeting includes
32 educational seminars on topics such as
professional development, clinical, pharmacy, nutrition, supply chain and leadership. There are also continuing education
classes for healthcare professionals.
There was also to be a dine-around,
awards dinner and sponsor reception—all
of which Parkes’ staff put together.
“When they say one-stop shopping,
they really mean it,” Price said. “They
made this meeting seamless and as easy as
possible. The only difference from previous meetings we’ve held at the Rio is we
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“When they say
one-stop shopping,
they really mean it.
They made this
meeting seamless
and as easy as
possible.”
used the Penn and Teller Theater for our
general session instead of using a traditional ballroom because the ballroom was
booked. But through flexibility and creativity, we made it work.”
Dine-arounds for the event were a
breeze, too, according to Price, who
worked with Maggie Cupp, Caesars’ director of citywide restaurant group sales.
Cupp is responsible for 53 restaurants
across 10 properties. Restaurants for
the evening included New York’s famed
Rao’s, Philadelphia’s Martorano’s, Jimmy
Buffett’s Margaritaville and Bobby Flay’s
Mesa Grill. One of the groups used the
VooDoo Rooftop Lounge as their dinearound venue.
Additional activities included a nursing
executive dinner in the Wine Cellar and
Tasting Room at the Rio, home to one of
the most impressive wine collections in the
country with some 50,000 bottles. There
was a reception at the VooDoo Beach pool
at the Rio with eight different food stations,
including a made-to-order pasta bar and a
barbecue station for ribs and burgers.
While Price used the Keppler Speakers Bureau to hire Ben Stein—who talked
about health care and the economy—Jill
Schneider, Caesars Entertainment director of citywide entertainment group sales,
hired the rest of the talent. She secured
tickets to see comedian Mac King at
Harrah’s and “worked her magic,” Price
says, referring to the night she whisked
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Australian singing sensation Human Nature from their gig at the Imperial Palace
directly to an Amerinet dinner to wow the
crowd with some of Motown’s greatest
hits.
Price hired speed-painting phenom Dan
Dunn for one very important sponsor
event where leading healthcare suppliers
were invited as a thank you for their generous support of the conference. The room
was made to look like an artist’s studio
and had paint-splattered drop cloths for
tablecloths and finger paints for attendees
to try out. Everyone got a painter’s cap to
wear, which put them in a creative frame
of mind. The group watched as Dunn
whipped through an upside-down canvas
to music from the 1960s.
“Part of our deal with the artist is we
keep the paintings,” Price said. “We decided to have a silent auction for the artwork
where we raised close to $5,000 to donate
to The Red Cross for Nashville’s flood
relief.”
The member meeting was such a success that as soon as Price sent out savethe-date emails for next year’s event, she
received 75 supplier commitments.
“This was such a high-energy, wowfactor event,” Parkes said. “From a logistical standpoint, everything just fit and we
had so much fun working together. We just
clicked.”
Price also looks forward to working
with the team at Caesars next May.
“Working with Caesars Entertainment
and hosting the meeting at the Rio was
great from start to finish. Their customer
service is the best I’ve ever seen. They’re a
solid partner and I can’t wait to work with
Joseph again.”
JENNIFER JUERGENS is a veteran meeting and
event industry journalist and former editor in
chief of Incentive magazine.
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The Grass is Greener
Lawn Doctor’s annual trade show and conference landed in
Atlantic City due to top-notch Caesars staff.
BY JENNIFER JUERGENS
EACH YEAR, LAWN DOCTOR DOES ITS DUE
DILIGENCE ON SEVERAL DIFFERENT PROPERTIES in Atlantic City before making a
final decision for their annual trade show
and conference. For the second year in a
row, they chose Bally’s and Caesars.
“Bally’s is phenomenal; completely
and totally customer oriented,” said Kim
King, director of training at the Holmdel,
N.J.-based Lawn Doctor. “We chose them
based on their service, ability and a fair
and value-added contract.”
But the icing on the cake?
“Jim and his staff, it is as simple as
that,” King said of Jim Ziereis, vice president conventions/hotel sales at Caesars
Entertainment.
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“Kim is the ultimate professional,”
Ziereis said. “She and her team are very
creative in partnering with us to make for
an exciting experience for their attendees.”
King says Ziereis is over all of the properties, which gives planners incredible leverage.
“Using the two properties—one for most
of the guest rooms and function rooms, the
other for the trade show—worked perfectly,” King said.
One of the things the convention sales
staff did was customize the menu for the
Lawn Doctor event.
“That’s one of the things we like to do
for them,” said another Jim—Jim Marota,
catering and convention services manager
for Caesars and Bally’s. “King liked the
salad and dessert from Caesars, so we customized the menu for them here at Bally’s.”
About 75 percent of the meeting’s 150plus delegates come from the east coast, according to King, so Atlantic City is a natural draw.
“Most of them drive, and they pay for
their own rooms, so they have their preference of staying at Bally’s or Caesars,” she
said. “You have some franchisees who are
just starting out, others who have been in
the business for years, so there’s a range of
hotel rooms they can book.”
And the hotels make it easy to book online,
King says, as well as by phone with dedicated
people to take reservations for groups.
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“The delegates also love to walk back
and forth [to enjoy shopping and gaming at each of] the properties, too, and
they can take a shuttle to Harrah’s if they
want,” she said.
Lawn Doctor, which was born in 1967,
is the largest franchise company in the
U.S. lawn care industry with close to 500
franchises in 40 states. While they have
several smaller educational and training
meetings during the year, this gathering
brings franchisees and vendors together
for educational sessions, networking,
learning new initiatives and a trade show.
It is well attended and many delegates
bring their managers and/or salespeople.
Ewald Altstadt, vice president of operations for Lawn Doctor, says one of the
unique things for this particular meeting is
the size of the Caesars ballroom.
“We bring in vans and patented equipment for show specials and demos,” Altstadt said. “The freight elevators are great
for this equipment. The hotel also allows
us to put our vans in public spaces, which
offer us great exposure for the Lawn Doctor
brand.”
Marota added: “My audiovisual techs
put extra lighting on the vans to really make
them shine.”
Another thing the hotel does for the
company as far as brand awareness is concerned is to put the logo prominently on the
TVs—cycling it on the monitors throughout
the hotels.
“We also have a huge outdoor LCD TV
that you can see right after you come off the
expressway, where we also put their logo,”
Marota said.
King likes the fact that she also gets a certain number of Meeting Diamond badges.
“Many of our owners and managers like
to have meetings in the Diamond Lounge,
so it works well for them,” King said.
In addition to access to private Diamond
Lounges, Diamond privileges include complimentary access to spas and fitness centers, as well as priority service at business
centers, restaurants and more.
Educational Landscape
The event begins on Sunday with arrivals
and small educational meetings throughout
Bally’s.
“We have group meetings and continuing education courses,” King said. “The
Lawn Doctor has corporate instructors
and external speakers as well as franchisees
participating in panel discussions. Lawn
Doctor facilitates sessions for marketing,
sales and retention, service and a green task
force. These franchisees are all about expanding their knowledge.”
Sunday evening there’s a cocktail party
for the 150 attendees, with Russell Frith,
Lawn Doctor president and CEO, welcoming the group.
“Frith gives a state of the union address,
speaking on how the company is doing
overall and the company’s new initiatives,”
King said. “Afterward, there’s a simple, but
elegant, dinner with floral centerpieces and
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crisp tablecloths.”
The networking party after dinner is
where everyone catches up.
“It’s very much like a family,” King said.
Monday’s lunch is a hearty one, with
steak or beef stew, for two reasons, King
says: One, it’s the employee awards lunch
where winners are honored by owners
with plaques, and two, the evening meal
will be lighter fare during the trade show,
where food stations around the room allow eating, mixing and mingling and stopping at 40-plus vendor booths to learn
about the latest in lawn care products and
business services.
There’s also a bit of fun and entertainment. Lawn Doctor brought in big-screen
TVs and Nintendo Wii gaming consoles,
where attendees compete for the highest
score to take home the actual games.
“They set up everything strategically so
we have a great flow in the room,” Altstadt said. “The food and games are in the
middle and the vendors surrounded the
ballroom against the walls, which helped
disperse the crowd. The catering staff was
extremely helpful and the food was great.”
King concurs on that point.
“We were able to get the Bally’s boardwalk buffet at the trade show at Caesars:
corn dogs, freezer bins of Häagen Dazs
ice cream, cotton candy and cheese steak
sandwiches that everyone loved.”
The gala event was held in The Grand
Ballroom at Bally’s.
“This is a night where the men and
women come in semi-formal attire,” King
said. “This is the highlight of the convention. It is here that our franchisees get their
awards. We have a cocktail party. And this
year we’re serving lobster tails and filet.”
Robert Magda, senior vice president
of Lawn Doctor, and Frith give out the
awards and pose for pictures with winners
(pictured left).
“It means a lot to be recognized,” King
said. “Then after dinner it’s dancing time.
We get a DJ and entertainers and it usually
breaks up at about 11 p.m.”
Through it all, the hotel staff sees to everything, and King says she never has to
yell at anyone. For Marota, the feeling is
mutual.
“They are a great group to work for.
It makes my job easier when the client
knows what they want.”
JENNIFER JUERGENS is a veteran meeting and
event industry journalist and former editor in
chief of Incentive magazine.
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Great Activities for Your
Group in Atlantic City
Game Shows
Indoor Beach Party
Scavenger Hunt
What location was the original home of
the Miss America Pageant? Where do the
street names come from in the game Monopoly? Where is the longest boardwalk
in the world? Where is the second-largest
collection of casino resorts in the U.S.? If
you answered Atlantic City to all of these
questions, you’d be right.
These are just some of the questions
Barbara Flamenbaum, DMCP, president
of Atlantic City Ambassador LLC, incorporates in The Atlantic City Game Show
she puts on for her corporate groups.
Companies can also put in their own corporate trivia. AC Ambassador will set up
game show podiums and supply the buzzers and prizes.
Another game-show-themed event,
“Win It in a Minute,” is based on the TV
game show “Minute to Win It,” with contestants using household items to perform
challenges with just 60 seconds on the
clock. Flamenbaum’s team has scoured
trade shows to find fun games for participants: cup stacking, Walla Balla (a cup
is strapped to the contestant’s waist and
the person has to catch a ball in the cup)
and the Australian Trolley (four team
members get on one piece of wood and
race to the finish line). All the while, a
disc jockey sets the tone with actual game
show music. And when the winners are
“crowned,” cue Queen’s epic “We are the
Champions.”
For a 90-degree day in Atlantic City, moving the beach party from the beach was
“the best thing we did,” said Flamenbaum,
who put together an event for 950 people
on a hot July day. This Latin-themed
party came with a DJ, the 11-piece Latin
band New Palladium Orchestra and, of
course, a dance floor. Beach towels were
used as table runners, and glass containers filled with greens, sand and shells were
the centerpieces. Beach balls were tossed
around the room and a cabana was set up
for VIPs right in the Palladium Ballroom
at Caesars Atlantic City. Attendees arrived via red carpet to a champagne toast
and a place to have their photo taken, replete with beach backdrop. The Spanishflavored food included chimichurri-marinated chicken breast with garlic tomato
butter, minted zucchini squash and saffron rice. Summer berry pudding bombe
with mango and raspberry purée capped
off the meal.
Can you find the monocled, human-sized
Mr. Peanut statue along Atlantic City’s
boardwalk? Well, if you’re competing in
the Atlantic City Photo Scavenger Hunt,
you better! Take a picture of him or, better yet, a picture with you on his lap.
“We give attendees a list of things they
have to find, pictures they have to take,
and they get extra points for creativity,”
Flamenbaum said.
Who wouldn’t want to take a picture
with a beefy Atlantic City lifeguard? And,
you get extra points if you snap a photo
with him in a beach patrol boat. Flamenbaum uses all the boardwalk has to offer:
the Ferris wheel, fortune tellers, miniature golf, roller coaster and rolling chairs,
which are a staple on the boardwalk.
Boardwalk food, such as cheesesteaks,
sausages and peppers and Sno Cones, can
be incorporated. Picture a group of smiling delegates all in signature Atlantic City
T-shirts for their team photo at the competition’s end.
Elegant Chef’s Event
Noted Chef and sommelier Luke Palladino’s signature restaurant at Harrah’s
Resort Atlantic City offers a unique option for group events. When Flamenbaum
wanted to do an exclusive dinner for her
group of 45, she booked the restaurant.
“We had Prosecco, Italian beer and
antipasti, including truffled Grissini (crisp
breadsticks brushed with truffle butter),”
Flamenbaum said. “Then everyone sat
down to dinner.”
Each course was paired with wine chosen by Palladino, while he gave a 10-minute demonstration of pasta making.
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FAIR
TRADE
A Discussion on Contract
Negotiation Best Practices
BY ANDREA GRIMES
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T
he average private law degree costs close to
US$100,000 these days, and yet the delicate
art of negotiation seems to be something kids
bring with them from the womb. Whether it’s
another cookie, one more story or permission
to go to the party because oh-em-gee mom and
dad, everybody else is going and it’ll be, like, social death if I
don’t, kids can be ruthless in their pursuit of extras.
But somewhere between seventh grade and a company’s seventh annual conference, the stakes got significantly higher. If the catering doesn’t come through for
the school dance, pizza’s there in a jiffy. If a meeting
planner can’t feed several hundred hungry delegates,
they’re booking it to the closest casual dining establishment. And while a 13-year-old back may
not mind a cot and a sleeping bag—hey, it’s an
adventure—grown-up backs prefer a nice pillow top most nights.
The best way to guarantee all goes well
at any event is to negotiate a fair, reasonable
contract wherein terms are not only clear,
but closely adhered to—just like the best
way to get a ride from dad to the dance
is to promise to take the trash out for a
month…and then actually do it. To gain
some insight into the most common contract negotiation issues, we talked with
some of the industry’s top legal minds.
“Meeting professionals tend to treat
contracts like a tuxedo,” said Reto Keller,
director of global operations for meetings
and events at MCI, a global event management organization.
“It is not important until you need it
and only then you find out if it fits you, the
other parties involved and the occasion,” the
Geneva-based Keller explained.
With that in mind, we wondered, how
can meeting professionals avoid problems on
paper before they arise in practice? The answer
starts with keeping an eye on what University of
Alabama law professor Tyra Hilliard, Esq., CMP,
calls the “big three” issues: attrition, cancellation
and force majeure.
Attrition
When it comes to organizing events at hotels, Hilliard
says, “People always want to talk about attrition, whether
we’re in an economic boom or a downturn.”
Because everyone wants to get the most out of their financial investment, it’s important to discuss what happens when a
block of hotel rooms doesn’t fill for an event and who’s responsible for making up the difference.
“Hoteliers feel like meeting planners are always trying to get
out of attrition clauses,” she said, “which is probably not far
from the truth.”
The key is to make sure, as a planner, you’re not paying a
penalty—that is, that a hotel can’t make more money by en-
forcing an attrition clause than if the original contract had been
fulfilled.
Atlanta-based attorney John Foster, Esq., CHME, who serves
as outside counsel to MPI on industry contracts and other legal issues, specializes in just this kind of thing. He encourages
planners to base damages—not penalties—on room nights, not
revenue performance. That way, planners are responsible for
the rooms themselves, not fulfilling a certain revenue amount,
which can come back to haunt the group if delegates book
rooms outside the block at a lower rate.
Planners should also make sure they get credit if a hotel is
able to book rooms unoccupied by meeting attendees.
“That should be subtracted from the planner’s damages,”
Foster said.
However, if planners aren’t smart enough to ask for it, he
points out that “hotels don’t want to give credit for resold
rooms,” which is where controversies often arise.
Because hotels do have the right to sell other un-blocked
rooms before they begin selling empty blocked rooms, Foster
Meeting professionals tend
to treat contracts like a tuxedo;
it’s not important until you need
it and only then you find out if
it fits you, the other parties
involved and the occasion.
also advises planners to make sure hotels are honest about other
events booked at the same time that may also not have filled up.
Hotels should count those rooms as filled, even if they’re technically empty, and not calculate damages at a cost to an unrelated
planning organization by filling those rooms first.
“Those need to count as sold rooms vis-à-vis the other planners,” he said. Yet another thing that “doesn’t always happen if
you don’t ask for it.”
There are ways to approach attrition without minute negotiations about rooms, rates and percentages. Hilliard recommends that, instead of arguing about attrition clauses, organizers should let the hotel participate in marketing.
“Let’s get your attendance up,” she said. “That’s how everybody wins.”
Foster also recommends that planners stipulate they’re not
responsible for generating ancillary expenses—things like room
service, drinks in the bar or spending at the gift shop.
“It’s all discretionary,” Foster said, and planners should
make sure hotels agree to that.
Cancellation
Hilliard is seeing hotels cancel events they may have scheduled
in a down economy that they’re less invested in now that things
are on the upswing.
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“Hotels took business that wasn’t the greatest business when the economy wasn’t
great,” she said—and some properties look for what they believe to be better clients.
Or, new managers take over hotels and don’t want to fulfill contracts they inherited.
“It’s important for planners to make sure they’ve got a cancellation-by-hotel clause
that says exactly what damages they’re entitled to,” Hilliard said.
Another upshot of the economic downturn is that hotels are now able to conduct
remodels and renovations that they’d put off in tough times. Planners should make
sure that those things either won’t be happening when their events take place or that
they “won’t disrupt the quiet enjoyment of the hotel by the meeting attendees.”
Force Majeure
Continuing
Education
To learn more about meeting and
event legal issues, be sure to check
out the following sessions from
MPI’s Professional Development
On Demand at www.mpiweb.org/On
Demand. All PD On Demand content
is available to MPI members 24/7 at
no cost.
Back to the Basics of Hotel
Contracts
Legal tips every meeting professional must understand in today’s
business climate.
The Meetings Industry Legal Year
in Review
This session offers a discussion of
some of the most important and
strangest recent meeting industry
legal developments.
Meetings and Events Can Be a
Risky Business
This interactive quiz presents common, yet advanced-level contract
questions and liability scenarios.
Topics to be addressed include force
majeure, rate protection, liquor
liability, negligence, indemnification
and insurance.
Legal Issues: Taking Your Event
Abroad
A look at the most talked-about
contract provisions and ways to limit
costs and liability exposure while
navigating the maze of laws affecting events abroad.
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In an era of high-profile terrorist attacks, disease scares and severe weather events,
force majeure clauses that deal with the fallout from unforeseeable events are more
important than ever. Foster cites the 2003 SARS outbreak in Toronto as an example.
If something happens once, he says, “You’ve got to assume that it’s going to happen again, and you need to provide for it.”
That means, in part, making sure a contract deals with events that become “impracticable,” even if they’re not “impossible.” Foster represented a group that booked
a meeting in Toronto during the SARS epidemic—a meeting they’d booked five years
in advance. At that point, he says, “it’s not impossible,” but the execution is “substantially and materially negatively affected.”
Additional Considerations
There are, of course, issues aside from attrition, cancellation and force majeure that
lawyers recommend keeping tabs on. In the digital age, Foster says hotels often want
to be able to share meeting attendee information with their subsidiaries, and they’ll
ask planners’ permission to do so. But he says that’s not a planner’s responsibility.
“You don’t want to agree to be responsible for privacy,” he said. “Don’t put that
burden on the meeting planner.”
If hotels want to share delegate information, planners should be removed: Hotels
should ask attendees directly for such permission.
Tyra Hilliard says hotels are “doing what a lot of businesses are doing,” which
is “unbundling” charges that used to be included in basic costs. Surcharges and fees
increase as hotels try to recover from the economic downturn, “but it really adds up
and can hurt a meeting planner’s budget.”
Make sure additional fees can’t be added after a contract is signed.
“You get very angry attendees,” when they end up with surprise costs at check out,
Hilliard said.
Issues of difference in culture and tradition also arise when planners book across
oceans and borders, according to MCI’s Keller. And handling that requires some
homework.
“When approaching negotiations in an international environment without your
homework being done beforehand, you are setting yourself up for failure or at least
for painful situations,” Keller said. For example, “the value of a written contract [in
China] is by no means comparable to its value in Europe or the U.S.”
He also says the issue of currency exchange in international contracts should be
discussed from the very beginning, especially with increasingly fluctuating exchange
rates. Planners can set exchange rates in an initial budget, he says, but a good option
is to “adapt the exchange rate” on a final invoice based on a rate from a neutral entity
that both parties agree upon.
And, of course, agreement is the entire point of negotiation. Internationally or
domestically, good relationships should take priority. Hilliard says that’s often lost in
all the red tape.
“If you kick the other side when they’re down, they’re going to remember that,”
she said. “That’s just not good business.”
ANDREA GRIMES is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Dallas Observer, D Magazine,
The Austin Chronicle, Salon.com and more.
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Consultative
Selling
By Jordan D. Clark
While the nuts and bolts of a contract are important for
obvious reasons, planners know that getting what you need
from your hotel to pull off a successful program is not all
black and white. Your first clue as to whether or not an
organization can help you achieve what you set out to do
is the salesperson.
Every planner has come across the “turn and burn” sales
manager. They’re all about rates, dates and space. They sell
features and benefits. They ask you just enough questions to
be able to tell you what you want to hear so they can get the
contract signed. For overworked planners with too much to
do and too little time in which to do it, this may not seem
like such a bad thing: Get the facts quickly and move on.
But what is the cost of this type of exchange? Is it worth the
success of your meeting?
A Fish Can Be More Than a Fish
Of course, the answer to the previous question is no. A
more effective approach is that of the consultative salesperson and the consultative organization. Initially, the consultative salesperson may not appear different than any other.
They ask about your meeting—the number of anticipated
attendees, the dates, the budget and so on. They may ask
what your goals are and inquire about hot-button issues.
But here is where the consultative salesperson sets him
or herself apart: They dig deeper. They don’t just want to
know that there can’t be fish on the menu; they want to
understand what causes you to mention it. Then they want
to know not only that the reason you mention it is that
your CEO is allergic to fish, but that she chewed you out
when she was served fish at last year’s opening dinner, and
then challenged you about every little thing after that. But it
doesn’t stop there. The consultative salesperson keeps going
until they understand that what it really boils down to is the
importance of making sure the slightly high-maintenance
CEO is well cared for with lots of personalized attention,
and that she will be happy throughout the program. The
demand that there be no fish on the menu is really just a
byproduct of the deeper need.
Finding This Rare Breed
You can identify the consultative salesperson by how deeply
they question you, how genuinely they seek to understand
and how effectively they relay that information back to you
and, more importantly, to others in the organization. Do
you find yourself thinking that he or she “just gets me?”
Do you see it in the proposal? Is it identified in the contract? Are you repeating yourself to the convention services
manager or are they already aware of the things that are
important to you?
Some planners try to give as little information as possible
in the course of negotiating. They’re rushed or they think
they’ll lose some leverage if they give too much away. Or
they say, “I just need to know if you have availability and
your rates.” But the planner who buys on product and price
alone may not be happy with the results.
The Bigger Picture
A consultative salesperson is a sign of a consultative organization. You can have a high degree of confidence that
if your salesperson cares about what you need and what
This is how the consultative
salesperson sets him or herself
apart: They dig deeper. They
don’t just want to know that
there can’t be fish on the menu;
they want to understand what
causes you to mention it.
you’re trying to achieve, and also makes strong verbal and
written commitments to those needs, that the hotel will
truly partner with you to deliver a successful program. Of
course, this type of interaction takes more time. And, for
most these days, time is in short supply. That is the cost.
But, what is the benefit? Making the boss happy? Achieving
the objectives you set forth for your meeting? Recognition
and accolades for the planner who made it all possible?
In our business, we have lots of properties in various
destinations and an almost limitless array of options from
which to choose. You can pick the cheapest, the newest, the
most luxurious or the closest, but if you don’t meet the objectives of your meeting, nothing else matters. If your hotel
doesn’t even understand your objectives, how can they help
make your program successful?
JORDAN D. CLARK is vice president of sales at Caesars Entertainment.
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State
f
Play
Social Media,
Gamification and
How Events are
Changing as a Result
BY ELIZABETH HENDERSON, M.E., DES.
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Integrating games into conferences, meetings and events,
often through the use of social
media and “gamification,” is the
latest sparkly idea to take hold
of the industry.
It refers to the integration of game design and mechanics—typically the concepts used to create massive multiplayer online games, such as World of Warcraft—into
business activities to drive engagement, increase participation and solve problems.
But event professionals shouldn’t consider gamification without assessing why they are doing it and what
the best options for implementation might be. Once they
have, though, there are social media platforms that can
guide successful integration of strategy into an effective
state of play.
Before the mention of online games turns you off, understand this form of entertainment crosses gender and
age groups. According to the Entertainment Software
Association’s 2011 Essential Facts about the Computer
and Videogame Industry, the average gamer is 37 years
old, and 82 percent are over the age of 18. Women, the
fastest-growing demographic in the industry, make up
42 percent of all players, and adult women, at 37 percent, outplay males under the age of 18 (13 percent). A
remarkable 29 percent of players are over the age of 50.
So statistics tell us that gamers are…well, they’re you.
Games give purpose and allow people to aspire to
greater things in a safe environment, and because of
their richness and sometimes complexity can inspire innovation and leadership. For meetings and events, incorporating gaming can be effective—assuming there is
a purpose to the game that drives goals and objectives,
such as networking, learning or behavior change—and,
due to the widespread accessibility of social media and
smartphones, both inexpensive and easy to do.
Samuel J. Smith, co-founder of EventCamp Twin Cities in Minneapolis, decided to incorporate gamification
into that event based on the success of Game On!, the
Green Meeting Industry Council’s Sustainable Meetings
Conference, which based its entire design on gaming mechanics. A virtual attendee of that event, Smith decided
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to see how the concept could be integrated
more fully into virtual teams. To reach the
largest and most diverse number of people, he
incorporated a number of different social media applications into the design of the conference, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube
and LinkedIn.
Smith selected these social media platforms for multiple reasons.
“Facebook was the 800-pound gorilla in
the room when we considered which media
to use,” Smith said, adding that it was used in
order to reach the largest number of people.
Facebook also has the capability to widely
The following are some key
share information easily using the “Like”
questions event professionals
button. Twitter was selected because it is the
should ask when considering
virtual home of the EventCamp community.
a social media and gamifica“EventCamp started on Twitter; we use it
tion strategy.
1. “Will social media and
as the base for an ongamification help me achieve
going conversation,”
event and organizational
Smith said.
objectives?”
Not stopping there,
2. “What platform is best
EventCamp also insuited to help me achieve
event and/or organizational
corporated YouTube
objectives without adding
and LinkedIn.
unnecessary complexity?”
“YouTube reaches
3. “What platform is a good
the
creative people; it
match for the type of particiis a rich communicapants at the event; for example, using groundswell theory, tions tool tied to conare participants joiners, crittent that can then be
ics, creators or spectators?”
shared on Facebook
4. “Is protecting or dispersing
and Twitter,” he said.
intellectual capital more imThe
EventCamp
portant to my goals?” This will
help you choose between an
organizers, borrowexisting or custom platform.
ing from groundswell
5. “What will bring the most
theory,
recognized
value to my attendees? What
that
different
attendwill help them learn or increase the value of their social ees were comprised
capital?”
of various behavioral
types.
Groundswell
Applying these filters and
theory,
originating
somewhat bizarrely from
following these pieces of
landscape
design,
looks
at people and techpractical advice can help you
harness not only the power of nology as elements of a virtual landscape. Acsocial media, but also the add- cording to the theory, there are four types of
ed richness and complexity of participants in this virtual landscape: joiners,
games. This state of play can
who like to gather with those people of simiinspire innovation, leadership
and engagement and increase lar opinion; creators, who originate the news
and opinions; critics; and spectators, who
the overall effectiveness of
your next meeting or event.
form their own opinions based on what they
observe. EventCamp attempted to give these
different participants a way to interact, using
social media, in a way that was most natural
to them: YouTube for creators, Facebook and
Twitter for critics and spectators and all of
them for joiners.
Trevor Roald of Vancouver-based QuickMobile defines social media as “any mecha-
Is Gamification
Right for You?
nism that facilitates a user to actively participate in the generation of relevant content.” In
this context, he has seen social media used in
many ways, including the big four platforms
mentioned above but also with check-in networks such as Foursquare, Gowalla and GetGlue; niche networks such as Pathable and
CrowdVine; and closed corporate networks
such as Chatter. More events are using social
media because, according to Roald, they are
perfect pairs. Social media encourages specific user behaviors (defined by event objectives)
in exchange for social capital, the “currency”
generated by social networks.
“By leveraging social media, event professionals increase the value of their social capital in the event community, which can greatly
increase an individual’s motivation to participate in an event gamification strategy,” Roald
said.
One of the most successful events he has
seen using gamification
was the 2011 Mountain
Travel
Symposium, which was able to
achieve an 11-fold increase in the amount of
user-submitted photos to
its photo gallery through
incentives embedded in
an event-based game.
The end result was a significant number of new
photos to be used for
marketing purposes.
Like Smith, Roald sees
benefits to using existing
platforms. Some, such as
Twitter, can reach communities much greater
in scope than that defined by the attendees at
the event itself. Another benefit is that participants are already familiar with the platforms, reducing the learning curve. On the
flipside, Roald sees advantages to custom
platforms in the areas of security and exclusivity, which can be important to control
the distribution of intellectual property and
to create a sense of safety in the community,
which encourages an open dialogue. Custom
platforms also reduce the spam factor, a concern that irrelevant content might decrease
social capital in existing networks. He says
choosing existing or custom platforms should
depend on the objectives of the event and the
host organization.
What we’re
seeing now
is only the
beginning.
Social media
and gamification
are two of the
fastest-growing
audience
engagement
trends.
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Social Media for
Meeting Planners
JIM SPELLOS, CMP, IS ON A MISSION.
The Future of the Social Media and
Gamification Marriage
According to Roald, what we’re seeing now is
only the beginning. He sees social media and
gamification as two of the fastest-growing audience engagement trends.
Smith sees the future tied firmly to event
and organizational objectives and the relative
complexity of the gamification strategy.
“If it’s about certain things, social media
and gamification isn’t going to be that relevant,” he said. “[However,] simple games
with simple rules stimulate learning and the
achievement of specific outcomes and can be
remarkable in their ability to reinforce learning points. Social media is incredibly effective
in spreading core messages.”
Social media in the context of gamification
can be powerful, playful and purposeful, but for
meeting professionals wanting to play it safe, the
primary practical messages here are two-fold.
First, know what you are trying to achieve with
your event before planning a social media and
gamification strategy to support those objectives. This might include anything from more intense engagement to increasing social networks
(and the value of participants’ social capital) to
solving specific problems. If social media isn’t
going to help you achieve your objectives, don’t
use it; just because it’s sparkly doesn’t mean it’s
relevant. Second, assess the best social media
platform. This could, of course, be one or many
existing platforms.
ELIZABETH HENDERSON, M.E., Des., is the chief sustainability strategist with Meeting Change, a consultancy that
uses sustainability to increase heart-share, mindshare
and market-share for effective business results. She can
be reached at elizabeth@meetingchange.com
He’s all for Facebook and LinkedIn,
but wants to get meeting planners
tweeting to increase business.
“Twitter is the most important
social media now,” said Spellos,
president of Meeting U, a company
that helps meeting planners become
more proficient with the latest technology.
A meeting planner for 18 years
before starting his company, he is
recognized as an expert in the field
of technology and tech tools for the
business professional. At the recent
Las Vegas Educational Experience
presented by Caesars Entertainment, his seminar “Everything You
Need to Know About Social Media
and Web 2.0” brought out planners who wanted to know all about
technologies that can improve their
marketing and communications and
keep them top of mind with clients.
Spellos sums this all up in one
word: MobileSocialLocal.
“Everything is instantaneous,”
he said. “Social media is not a fad.
There are 200,000 blogs out there
now. There are 5,000 to 15,000
social media choices; Facebook is
not the only player.”
If you don’t know what Web 2.0
means, you’re not alone. Spellos
explained that it means interactive
websites that include polls, videos,
games and/or a place for comments.
“If you don’t have a website that
can be synced with a mobile device,
your site will be obsolete.”
Foursquare, a location-based
social networking website for mobile devices such as smartphones,
is an important name in the mobile
marketing arena.
“Fifty million people are marketing on Foursquare,” he said.
Spellos also talked about the rising popularity of QR codes in which
black-and-white modules arranged
in a square pattern are encoded with
information that, when scanned by
Sign up for Spellos’ free
monthly tech info e-letter by
sending him an email:
jspellos@meeting-u.com
Read his blog:
www.fabulousspellosbrothers.
typepad.com
Friend him on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/meetingu
Follow him on Twitter
@jspellos
a smartphone, can deliver a web
address, a sales brochure or other
marketing information. For planners
who want to start a blog, Spellos
suggests a starting point: Tumblr
and Posterous, sites that allow easy
setup of blogs. He also advises
meeting planners to have a bigger
presence on Facebook by establishing an event page. Also important is
a meeting-specific Twitter account,
he says, so that planners can tweet
during the meeting and attendees
can give instantaneous feedback.
“Paper.Li will put your tweets in a
daily paper so you can do a conference daily online and it’s free,”
Spellos added.
And to publish tweets in an online magazine, use Scoop.it.
Just for meeting planners,
Spellos suggests Engage365, a
community for networking and
learning about new ways to use
technology and social media. There
are plenty of choices.
“But the best tool for you is the
one that best connects you to your
customer,” he said.
—JENNIFER JUERGENS
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FINDING
FISCAL
FRIENDS
The SEO of securing
sponsorships in tough
times: specificity,
exclusivity and originality.
BY ELAINE POFELDT
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W
hen the Association of Residential
Cleaning Services International
(ARCSI) looked for a company to
sponsor its annual meeting—part of
the ISSA/INTERCLEAN Las Vegas
2011 trade show in October—no
one was beating down the door, according to Derek Christian,
volunteer vendor relations chair for the group.
“The premier, top-level sponsorship didn’t sell,” Christian
said.
That didn’t mean the show was a wash for his group. Indeed,
the association took in almost double the amount of sponsorship money from the previous year. The ARCSI teams up with
two other cleaning industry groups to hold the larger event,
which attracts about 15,000 attendees.
“Sponsors showed up at the same dollar level, but sponsored
a lot of little things,” Christian said.
For instance, there was great demand for sponsorships of
gift bags, roundtable discussions and awards. And a bidding
war broke out over sponsorship of the members lounge. The
winning sponsor, Clean Team, got the exclusive right to set up
a table in this gathering spot, where its representatives offered
samples of its cleaning supplies and talked with attendees oneon-one.
“They were looking for things that had a much more direct
ROI,” Christian said.
He understood their point of view. He owns a cleaning business in Cincinnati and Dallas, following a career at Procter &
Gamble.
“I know what they want,” he said. “They want people in
their booth. They want people trying their product. All of our
sponsorship opportunities were tied to that.”
After a few disappointing years, there’s some good news for
organizers selling sponsorships these days. Sponsorship spending is up around the world, according to IEG Consulting, a
Chicago firm that tracks this information. Spending by North
American companies grew 3.9 percent in 2010 to US$17.2 billion. Globally, spending on sponsorships rose by 5.2 percent to
$46.3 billion.
But as the ARCSI discovered, the sponsorship landscape remains considerably different from what it was before the global financial crisis. Many sponsors are watching their budgets
closely—and when they do spend, they’re continually evaluating how well their efforts are helping them to achieve company
goals.
“It’s a combination of the economy and recognizing that
some of the old ways we used to market don’t work as well as
they used to,” said Shannon Cherry, a marketer who advises
businesses on promoting themselves at events and teaches an
online course called Sponsorships Made Simple.
Indeed, corporations are increasingly demanding the kind
of one-on-one contact that translates into sales, conversions of
prospects into customers and media exposure they can track.
Otherwise, they’re likely to walk away from the table.
“Everybody has, since the recession, looked at everything in
their budget and started to weed out things that aren’t really delivering an ROI,” said Gail S. Bower, president of Bower Consulting, a firm that advises nonprofit organizations on raising
their profile, and author of the book How to Jump-Start Your
Sponsorship Strategy in Tough Times.
One reason, notes Bower, is that many sponsors are facing
shorter sales cycles in concert with greater difficulty in reaching
prospects by phone and email in a crowded marketplace. As a
result, sponsors are looking for events that will help them cut
through the clutter and reach these prospects.
“The sponsorship program needs to generate clear results
and have some pretty solid outcomes,” Bower said. “[Corporations] want to partner with organizations with which they can
make a difference and make money for their investment.”
Addressing these needs can require a lot of creative thinking by organizers. However, there’s a silver lining. Sponsors are
willing to pay well for what they want.
“Sponsorship pricing is based on value,” Bower said. “The
stronger the value, the more the sponsor is willing to pay.”
Closing the Deal: 2012
One essential way to close deals with sponsors now is to offer category exclusivity on options that provide the ability to
reach small subgroups of attendees at an event in meaningful
and memorable ways.
“We’re a very segmented society now,” Cherry said. “They
want to be in front of a specific niche.”
That may mean they want to reach everyone at a conference
who uses Facebook or all of the folks who happen to be moth-
After a few disappointing years,
there’s some good news for organizers selling sponsorships
these days. Sponsorship spending is up around the world.
ers, so it’s important for organizers to be able to deliver options
like this, she says.
Once they’ve secured such opportunities, more sponsors are
looking for chances to send representatives to speak directly
with attendees in a setting they may not have tried before, such
as lounges, private lunches or a single discrete presentation at
the event.
“Sponsors are going to be investing in more intimate spaces,” Cherry said.
That holds true for the ARCSI—the association sold its largest sponsorship to Moody Insurance, for an individual speech
on customer service by an executive at online shoe retailer Zappos, by offering a deal in which Moody first got to talk with
attendees individually.
“Our members had to get a ticket from their booth on the
trade show floor,” Christian said.
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Being willing to customize sponsorship options in this new environment
is essential. Sponsors expect organizers to be ready to slice and dice
their offerings to meet their specific
goals in a more collaborative way
than ever before.
tinues after the event is over. Cherry says some sponsors, for
instance, appreciate the opportunity to have attendees complete
brief pre-event and post-event surveys, to measure what attendees have learned about their company.
“Here is where technology is great,” she said.
Sponsors are also expecting organizers to give them exposure
outside of the immediate world of the event. That’s helped to
sell sponsorships at Nolcha Fashion Week New York, an event
that showcases up-and-coming fashion designers, according to
Arthur Mandel, president of Nolcha—the company that runs it.
When Mandel approaches sponsors, he offers them traditional options such as having their names on VIP goodie bags
and giving out product samples, in addition to putting their
logo on the pressboard that serves as a backdrop for photo
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shoots. But, on top of this, he does the legwork to make sure the
event is well attended by journalists and fashion bloggers and
has arranged coverage by its media partner, the celebrity-centric
cable network VH1. Result: The show, going into its sixth year,
has attracted sponsors such as American Airlines, Glaceau vitaminwater and Vitabath, he says. The show typically sells seven
or eight sponsorships in the $15,000 to $25,000 range.
“It’s very important for sponsors to meet people who are going to write about their products,” Mandel said.
Many sponsors track the media mentions and online readership that result—and share that information with him, he says.
Also essential to sponsors is being able to reach the community around an event through its social media channels.
“Sponsors definitely want more of an online presence,”
Mandel said.
To that end, he has built a combined following of about
20,000 people on Facebook and Twitter—and, along with
event information, he tweets information about sponsors to this
group that consists mainly of those in the fashion industry.
“They influence so many others,” Mandel said.
Being willing to customize sponsorship options in this new
environment is, of course, essential. Sponsors expect organizers
to be ready to slice and dice their offerings to meet their specific
goals in a far more collaborative way than ever before.
“Gone are the days when [organizers] can offer the gold,
silver and bronze packages,” Bower said.
Today, the focus has to be on what the event producer and
sponsor can co-create together to help the sponsor achieve its
business goals, she says.
“It’s not a one-sided approach,” Bower said. “It’s got to be a
two-way street.”
Mandel says that even when working with the largest corporations, he cultivates a very close relationship with frequent
phone conversations.
“You treat them almost like a family business, like a family
pharmacy,” he advised.
Customization has worked well for the Simmons Leadership
Conference, an April event that has attracted sponsors such as
Goldman Sachs, Novartis and HP, according to Nancy G. Leeser, corporate relations officer for Boston-based Simmons College. For instance, while many sponsors respond well to offers
of tickets to the 2,500-attendee conference for their employees,
some find that they must limit the number of in-person attendees because of tight travel budgets.
“They send employees to the conference but can’t send
everyone,” Leeser explained.
For the two top levels of sponsors, Simmons has, for the past
two years, offered the option of having their employees back at
the office attend the event virtually via live streaming or with an
on-demand webcast available for 60 days.
“They really like that benefit,” Leeser said.
And for Simmons College, being accommodating pays off
in more than sponsorship dollars. Many of the attendees come
from sponsoring companies. And at the last event, sponsorship
opportunities were sold out.
ELAINE POFELDT is a former senior editor for FORTUNE Small Business
and a regular contributor to One+.
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CAESARS
ENTERTAINMENT
SPECIAL SECTION
page 43 : Caesars Entertainment Goes Big
pages 44-45 : Las Vegas
pages 46-47 : Atlantic City
pages 48-49 : Lake Tahoe
pages 50-51 : Midwest
pages 52-53 : Mid-South
pages 54-55 : West
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CAESARS ENTERTAINMENT GOES BIG
I
n a move that mirrors a successful effort undertaken by the company
in 2005 to combine meeting sales and services across eight Las Vegas
properties, Caesars Entertainment has undergone a nation-wide reorganization of its meetings businesses into a single department under
one leadership team. The new structure brings together 38 Caesars
Entertainment properties across the U.S. and extends benefits originally
introduced under the Las Vegas Meetings brand, including the ability
to mix and match properties and venues within a destination with a
single contact, contract and minimum.
Decision-Makers in Your Backyard
The plan calls for big changes to the company’s sales force, placing representatives
in metro areas throughout the country.
“We live in a world where email, text,
social media and instant messaging are
reducing the amount of face-to-face
interactions we have, so being able to
interact with people face-to-face is more
valuable than ever before,” said Senior
Vice President of Sales Michael Massari.
“We decided that, rather than putting our
people where our properties are, they’ll
live and work in the communities where
our customers live and work. And customers will have just one or two contacts in
their own backyard that can understand
them and their needs and provide access
to our entire portfolio of properties.
“It seems like a no-brainer, but this
is really different from how other hotel
suppliers do business,” Massari continued.
“Smaller hotel groups and other gaming
companies are still in the place where,
for the most part, they have their people
where their properties are. The bigger
lodging companies have people in-market
near customers, but they are selling sometimes hundreds of properties, and serve
primarily as aggregators of information.
We’re in the unique position to be able
to put our people in-market and allow
them to truly be decision-makers. They
won’t need to check with the property to
see what’s available or what the rate is.
They’ll be the ones making the decisions,
so they’ll be able to respond more quickly
and better meet a customer’s needs.”
Diamonds are Forever
One of the tangible benefits of the reorganization is the extension of the popular
Meeting Diamond program. When a
planner books a Caesars Entertainment
property in the U.S., they are automatically
granted Meeting Diamond status for the
duration of their program, giving them
access to exclusive perks and privileges
reserved for the highest level of customer.
Benefits include VIP check-in, access to
private Diamond Lounges, complimentary
use of fitness facilities and guaranteed
priority service at business centers, restaurants and more. As an added bonus, planners can designate key staff members and
VIPs to enjoy Diamond status as well.
Totally Rewarded
Planners can also benefit from Caesars
Entertainment’s Total Rewards Meetings &
Events program. Launched in mid-2011,
the program is a fully integrated extension of the award-winning Total Rewards
loyalty program, and allows meeting
planners or owners to earn Reward
Credits for meetings held at any Caesars
Entertainment property, and redeem those
credits for future programs or for individual rewards.
In addition to earning Credits for every
dollar posted to the master account,
members also earn for gaming, entertainment and other leisure activities across the
company’s portfolio. Additionally, a recent
enhancement to the program—the Total
Rewards Marketplace—allows members
to earn credits for shopping online at
hundreds of brand-name retailers.
Caesars Entertainment Facts
• 38 properties in 13 states
• Property brands include Caesars,
Harrah’s, Horseshoe, Bally’s, Paris,
Flamingo and more
• 1.5 million square feet of meeting
and event space
• Over 40,000 guest rooms and suites
Call (855) MEET-CET or visit www.CET
Meetings.com for more information.
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CAESARS ENTERTAINMENT SPECIAL SECTION
LAS VEGAS
CETMeetings.com
I
n the incomparable city of Las Vegas, Caesars
Entertainment offers a unique variety of eight
resorts that are destinations unto themselves.
With 24,000 guest rooms, a million square feet
of meeting space, 100 restaurants, cafes and
lounges and an endless array of recreational diversions,
it’s a snap to provide attendees with an unforgettable Las
Vegas experience.
Bally’s Las Vegas
For nearly 30 years, Bally’s has been a legacy in the city
that never sleeps with its classic elegance and timeless
style.
• 175,000 square feet of meeting space
• 2,814 guest rooms
• For more space and even greater flexibility, Bally’s
Las Vegas is connected seamlessly to Paris Las
Vegas
Caesars Palace
Unlike any hotel in the world, Caesars Palace makes
an unforgettable impression on every guest who walks
through its doors. The legendary, 85-acre resort offers
world-class entertainment, celebrity-chef dining and
brand name shopping in an environment that is simply
like no other.
• 300,000 square feet of meeting space
• 3,960 guest rooms
• Unique alternative venues include The Colosseum,
the Garden of the Gods Pool Oasis and one of the
country’s hottest nightspots—PURE.
Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino
Flamingo Las Vegas
Though much has changed since the storied Flamingo
opened its doors in 1946, it is still Forever Fabulous. The
innovative FAB rooms—set for completion in 2012—will
raise the bar for stylish comfort, and the newly opened
Margaritaville Casino provides a lively diversion when the
day’s work is done.
• 73,000 square feet of meeting space
• 3,460 guest rooms
• The 15-acre Wildlife Habitat provides a truly
unique alternate venue for special events.
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Caesars Palace
Harrah’s Las Vegas
While you’ll be in the middle of it all, your group will
never get lost in the crowd at Harrah’s Las Vegas, where
recently renovated meeting spaces are designed especially
for small to mid-sized groups. And when it’s time to have
some fun, a world of choices is just outside your door.
• 25,000 square feet of meeting space
• 2,550 guest rooms
• Convenient indoor walkway to Imperial Palace
Imperial Palace
Offering a diverse array of facilities and exceptional value
for gatherings of all types, Imperial Palace is known as the
“small meeting headquarters.”
• 40,000 square feet of meeting space
• 2,550 guest rooms
• Unbeatable location at the heart of The Strip
Paris Las Vegas
Paris Las Vegas pays magnificent homage to the French
“City of Light,” and is the perfect place for a business
rendezvous of any size.
• 140,000 square feet of meeting space
• 2,916 guest rooms
• An elegantly unique alternate venue, the Paris Theater offers a special setting for the most important
business occasions.
Paris Las Vegas
Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino
This star-worthy resort offers style and substance in a
convenient location with a multitude of amenities.
• 88,000 square feet of meeting space
• 2,500 guest rooms
• Gaze upon celebrities and style-makers while you
mix it up with an event on the Mezzanine, overlooking the entire casino floor.
Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino
Slightly west of the Strip, the Rio offers what is arguably
the most well designed meeting space in town. Combine
that with world-class service and breathtaking views, and
you are virtually guaranteed success.
• 160,000 square feet of meeting space
• 2,500 guest suites
• A unique alternative venue, The Penn & Teller
Theatre will add drama and theatrical style to any
important presentation.
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CAESARS ENTERTAINMENT SPECIAL SECTION
ATLANTIC CITY
Caesars Atlantic City
CETMeetings.com
F
rom the oceanfront location and sandy beaches to the historic piers and
exciting nightlife, our Atlantic City properties are the ideal meeting and
event destinations. With four Caesars Entertainment resorts that provide a
multitude of meeting spaces, you’ll have everything you’ll need to present a
successful event.
Bally’s Atlantic City
Located at the well-known intersection of Park Place and The Boardwalk, Bally’s Atlantic
City is a prime destination for any meeting. Offering 16 restaurants, 40,000 square feet
of spa relaxation and 100 name-brand outlet stores, the amenities at Bally’s will meet the
expectations of all your guests.
• 80,000 square feet of meeting space
• 1,760 guest rooms
• Situated on the famous Boardwalk and just a few short blocks from the Atlantic City
Convention Center
WITH FOUR CAESARS ENTERTAINMENT RESORTS
THAT PROVIDE A MULTITUDE OF MEETING SPACES,
YOU’LL HAVE EVERYTHING YOU’LL NEED TO PRESENT
A SUCCESSFUL EVENT.
Caesars Atlantic City
Your meetings will never fall short of expectations at Caesars Atlantic City. With its central
Boardwalk location, contemporary Roman Empire theme and enclosed walkway to the
famous Pier Shops, it’s no surprise that this exquisite property is a mainstay on many
best-of lists.
• 24,000 square feet of meeting space
• 1,144 guest rooms
• Renovated Circus Maximus Theater seats more than 1,500 guests for special events
Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City
Your meetings will become effortless at this recently renovated and newly expanded property. The Marina District location of Harrah’s Atlantic City offers luxurious views of the bay
and superb services that will delight your attendees.
• 25,000 square feet of meeting space
• 2,590 guest rooms
• Recently completed a $500 million expansion and renovation
Showboat Atlantic City
Known as the Mardi Gras casino, Showboat Atlantic City is the vivacious destination meeting planners seek when they’re looking for something fun. Not only does Showboat reside
on the beach and the Boardwalk, it is home to the House of Blues, which is also available
as a group venue. This is where Bourbon Street meets the Boardwalk.
• 1,329 guest rooms
• 12 restaurants and lounges
• Houses the only House of Blues location in the entire Northeast
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Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City
Bally’s Atlantic City
Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City
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CAESARS ENTERTAINMENT SPECIAL SECTION
LAKE TAHOE
CETMeetings.com
Harrah’s & Harveys Lake Tahoe
THE BREATHTAKING LAKE, WONDROUS ALPINE FORESTS AND TWO OF
CAESARS ENTERTAINMENT’S SUPERIOR PROPERTIES MAKE LAKE TAHOE,
NEVADA, A TRULY SPECTACULAR MEETINGS DESTINATION.
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N
othing beats experiencing nature’s
majesty in Lake Tahoe. The frosty
winter months provide fun-filled
snowy pursuits, while spring, summer
and fall offer hiking, fishing and water sports. The
breathtaking lake, wondrous alpine forests and two
of Caesars Entertainment’s superior properties make
Lake Tahoe, Nevada a truly spectacular meetings
destination. Connected by an all-weather causeway, Harrah’s and Harveys combine to offer more
than 42,000 square feet of meeting space. These
lavish lakeside properties are designed with services
that will truly make your event unforgettable.
Harrah’s Lake Tahoe
Harrah’s Lake Tahoe is a AAA Four-Diamond Awardwinning property and has 512 guest rooms, eight
great restaurants and countless amenities that
surpass meetings planners’ aspirations. Situated on
the second floor—just a short elevator ride from
guest rooms—is the Harrah’s Special Events Center.
Known for their creativity and recognized for their
extraordinary events, the Harrah’s Lake Tahoe team
guarantees that yours will impress. If the magnetism of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the
glistening beauty of Lake Tahoe don’t impress you,
the service at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe certainly will.
• 22,000 square feet of meeting space
• 500 guest rooms
• The Summit’s 16th-floor, lake-view location
is available for receptions, dinners or
private events.
Harveys Lake Tahoe
Harrah’s Lake Tahoe
Harveys Lake Tahoe
This sensational resort was the first ever hotel and
casino built on the South Shore of Lake Tahoe, and
sits mere steps from the Heavenly ski area. Meeting
spaces offer 22-foot ballroom ceilings and elegant
décor and are located on a separate level from
the casino, ensuring privacy, yet easily accessible
from the guest rooms by elevator. The mixture
of business and pleasure at Harveys provides an
abundance of options for planners of all types of
gatherings.
• 20,000 square feet of meeting space
• 750 guest rooms
• 1,000-square-foot West End Suites are
perfect for intimate gatherings.
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MIDWEST
CETMeetings.com
COUNCIL BLUFFS, IOWA
Historic Council Bluffs is just across the Missouri River from Omaha, Nebraska, historic
Council Bluffs is replete with an abundance
of attractions, historical sites and entertainment options.
Harrah’s Council Bluffs
Harrah’s Council Bluffs features sumptuous accommodations and amenities, with a
24-hour fitness center, two golf courses and
big-name live entertainment.
• 251 guest rooms and suites
• 21,000 square feet of meeting space
• Stir Concert Cove, with seating for
3,500
Harrah’s North Kansas City
JOLIET, ILLINOIS
Colorful murals dot the town of Joliet, just
45 miles southwest of Chicago’s Loop. Also
nearby: Rialto Square Theatre, Chicagoland
Speedway and golf courses.
Harrah’s Joliet
On the Des Plaines River, Harrah’s Joliet is the
finest hotel in the area, with premier amenities and entertainment.
• 200 guest rooms and suites
• 6,000 square feet of meeting space
• 6 dining options
METROPOLIS, ILLINOIS
At the southern tip of Illinois, Metropolis
proudly honors Superman with a bronze
statue and museum.
Harrah’s Metropolis
Located on the scenic Ohio River, Harrah’s
Metropolis provides first-class rooms and live
entertainment.
• 252 guest rooms and suites
• 12,000-square-foot Riverfront Event
Center
• 4 dining options
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI
On the Mississippi River, the Gateway to the
West has a rich history and diverse culture.
Nearby are the Gateway Arch, America’s
Center, Anheuser-Busch Brewery and
Grant’s Farm.
Harrah’s Council Bluffs
Horseshoe Hammond
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Harrah’s St. Louis
Relax in comfort with world-class amenities,
exceptional service and luxurious rooms.
• 502 rooms and suites
• 8,000 square feet of meeting space
• 8 dining options
HAMMOND, INDIANA
Hammond is ideally situated just outside of
Chicago. Nearby attractions include Navy Pier,
Wolf Lake and the Hammond Marina.
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
Kansas City pointed wagon trains over the
Santa Fe, California and Oregon trails—and is
also famous for its jazz, food (think barbecue)
and attractions.
Horseshoe Hammond
Overlooking Lake Michigan, Horseshoe Hammond features The Venue, providing unparalleled flexibility with cutting-edge technologies, automated lifts and drop-down ceiling
grids to simplify lighting and rigging.
• 100,000 square feet of meeting space
• 6 dining options
Harrah’s North Kansas City
Harrah’s North Kansas City offers lavish
rooms, first-rate amenities and the best
nightlife and live entertainment in town.
• 392 guest rooms and suites
• 10,000 square feet of meeting space
• 6 dining options
SOUTHERN INDIANA
This hotspot is located on the Indiana and
Kentucky border near Louisville, Kentucky.
Nearby are the Kentucky Derby Museum,
the Muhammad Ali Center and the Louisville
Science Center.
Horseshoe Southern Indiana
Voted one of the Best Casino Hotels by CitySearch.com and MSN, Horseshoe Southern
Indiana rivals the best hotels in the industry,
with opulent guest rooms, an indoor pool
with hot tub, a 24-hour fitness center and an
outdoor fitness trail.
• 503 guest rooms and suites
• 15,000 square feet of meeting space
• The Showroom offers 14,000 square
feet, accommodating up to 1,000
Harrah’s St. Louis
Harrah’s Joliet
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CAESARS ENTERTAINMENT SPECIAL SECTION
MID-SOUTH
CETMeetings.com
TUNICA, MISSISSIPPI
Tunica features championship golf,
exciting nightlife and popular attractions
such as Graceland, Beale Street and the
National Civil Rights Museum.
Mid-South Convention Center
The Mid-South Convention Center serves
all three of our Tunica properties, and provides over 45,000 square feet of flexible
space, state-of-the-art technology and a
full-service catering and convention staff.
Harrah’s Tunica
This sprawling resort is a true example of
Southern hospitality!
• 1,356 guest rooms and suites and
200 RV stations
• 2,300-seat, state-of-the-art event
center
• 7 dining choices
Horseshoe Tunica
Located on the Mississippi, Horseshoe has
a fitness center, swimming pool, nightclub and five dining options, plus:
• 500 guest rooms and suites
• 1,900 square feet of meeting
space, in addition to the Mid-South
Convention Center
• The 10,000-square-foot Bluesville
Entertainment venue, accommodating up to 1,400 people
Tunica Roadhouse
The Tunica Roadhouse all-suite hotel rivals
world-class resorts.
• 134 guest suites
• Easy access to the Mid-South
Convention Center
BILOXI, MISSISSIPPI
Biloxi is an ideal meetings destination in
the heart of the Mississippi Gulf Coast,
and just a short drive from New Orleans
and Mobile, Alabama.
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Grand Biloxi Casino, Hotel and Spa
Along with well-appointed guest rooms,
a fitness center, a pool, a Jack Nicklaus
golf course and a 16,000-square-foot spa
and salon, the Grand Biloxi features:
• 500 guest rooms and suites
• 5,000 square feet of meeting space
• Alternate venues including the
5,000-square-foot Grand Bear
Clubhouse
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA
Nestled on the banks of the Mississippi
River, New Orleans mesmerizes with its
Old World European charm, rich cultural
fabric and intriguing history.
Harrah’s New Orleans
Harrah’s New Orleans is a luxurious AAA
Four Diamond Award resort near the
French Quarter, the Warehouse Arts District and Convention Center Boulevard.
• 450 guest rooms and suites
• 43,000 square feet of meeting
space
• Alternative venues include the
5,103-square-foot Masquerade
nightclub, the 9,000-square-foot
Theatre and the 21,246-square-foot
Fulton Street Promenade
CHEROKEE, NORTH CAROLINA
Be enchanted in the Great Smoky
Mountains. The inviting homeland of the
Cherokee Indians presents some of the
most fantastic trout fishing, hiking, golf and
sightseeing in America.
Harrah’s Cherokee
This 21-story luxury resort highlights the
beautiful mountain setting and provides
four-star lodging, an indoor pool and a
workout room.
• 1,108 guest rooms and suites
• 21,000 square feet of meeting space
• Event Center with amphitheater
seating for more than 3,000 people;
main floor accommodates dinner for
800 or a trade show of more than
150 booths
Horseshoe Tunica
BOSSIER CITY, LOUISIANA
Bossier City is full of local flavor and
attractions.
Horseshoe Bossier City
Horseshoe’s 25-story luxury hotel offers
lavish suites, ample amenities and state-ofthe-art meeting facilities.
• 606 guest rooms and suites
• 5,000 square feet of meeting space
• 4 dining options, health club and spa
Harrah’s New Orleans
Harrah’s Cherokee
Harrah’s Louisiana Downs
Beautiful glass-enclosed surroundings, an
accomplished staff and delicious cuisine.
• 10,000 square feet of meeting space
• 5 dining options
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Harrah’s Bossier City
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WEST
CETMeetings.com
PHOENIX, ARIZONA
The desert oasis of Phoenix is the ultimate year-round destination. A variety of
botanical gardens, historic museums and the beauty of the Sonoran Desert make
Arizona an exceptional scene for meetings and special events.
Harrah’s Reno
Harrah’s Phoenix Ak-Chin
Located in the sixth-largest city in the nation, Harrah’s Ak-Chin provides a blend
of Southwestern atmosphere with comfortable meeting space and outstanding
services.
• 5,000 square feet of meeting space
• 300 guest rooms
LAUGHLIN, NEVADA
Alongside the incredible Black Mountains resides Laughlin, Nevada, where there
are multiple options for indoor and outdoor pursuits. For a flawless meeting or
event, Laughlin delivers with an unbeatable riverside setting.
Harrah’s Laughlin
This Southern Nevada location offers excellent meeting facilities that are complemented by the scenic Colorado River. The waterfront setting and outstanding
amenities will leave meeting planners with a stunningly successful event.
• 7,000 square feet of meeting space
• 1,505 guest rooms
• Harrah’s Laughlin Beach is the perfect spot for beachside events overlooking
the Colorado River
RENO, NEVADA
Known as “The Biggest Little City in the World,” Reno is a city of bright lights and
non-stop options for business and leisure.
Harrah’s Reno
Having received the Mobil Three Star Award and rated a AAA Three Diamond
Hotel, Harrah’s Reno will never fall short of a planner’s expectations. With a variety
of restaurants, a soothing spa and a 24-hour casino, this 60,000-square-foot property is Reno’s best bet for all kinds of meetings and events.
• 24,000 square feet of meeting space
• 928 guest rooms
• Sammy’s Showroom has a stage with a drop-down screen for presentations,
and seats up to 420 attendees for private events
VALLEY CENTER, CALIFORNIA
You can’t pass up the blue skies in Valley Center, California. Just north of San
Diego, where the beaches are endless, you’ll find an opportune destination for
your meeting or event.
Harrah’s Rincon
After experiencing the abundant amenities, graceful spaces and accommodating
service of Harrah’s Rincon, mixing business with pleasure will be effortless.
• 13,500 square feet of meeting space
• 662 guest rooms
• 104 suites, 7 dining locations, an award-winning spa and a state-of-the-art
fitness center
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Harrah’s Laughlin
Harrah’s Rincon
Harrah’s Rincon
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>
>
MEET WHERE ?
CONTEST!
Correctly name the Caesars Entertainment property that is home to this statue and you’ll
be entered into a contest to win a free stay at a Caesars Entertainment property of your
choice. The winner will receive:
• A three-night stay for two at any of Caesars Entertainment’s 38 U.S. properties.
• A $150 dining credit to use at any Caesars Entertainment restaurant.
• Two tickets to any Caesars Entertainment-owned show.
• Round-trip limousine transportation between the destination airport and hotel.
If you know the answer, please email editor@mpiweb.org. Good luck!
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