Before Camden’s meeting, ‘there is a tremendous amount of team building that goes on,’ as the groups work together to come up with their opening-night routines.

house band (as well as a “local, reasonably priced band”) for Dance Night, which also includes fun stuff like bobble-head mementos, photo booths, and — this year — an air-guitar contest, hosted by an employee in the conference’s lobby area. Why go to all this trouble for a management confer- ence? For a simple reason, according to Schar- ringhausen: “We want people to look forward to it.”

THEY LISTEN TO THEIR PEOPLE Whether it’s something relatively minor like food and drink or something more fundamental, like what a meeting’s educational or business focus is, Best Companies to Work For are also good about getting their employees involved in the planning process. “We spend a lot of time on pre-event com- munications,” said Don Jones, vice president of sales for the Americas at Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, where he’s a 25-year veteran. That means

“really understanding what people’s needs are, and how this meeting is going to serve those needs.” One of the bigger meetings for which this gets

practiced is Four Seasons’ biannual global mar- keting conference, held most recently this past May 13–16 at the brand-new Four Seasons Hotel Toronto, in the hotel company’s headquarters city. Three-hundred fifty people attended the meeting, including directors of marketing for each of Four Seasons’ 93 properties worldwide, as well as general managers, directors of revenue,

42 PCMA CONVENE JULY 2013 Don Jones

‘We realized we had to make sure that our fellow associates were comfortable with our leadership and direction.’

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