CMP SERIES CERTIFICATION MADE POSSIBLE

Hotels Get In On the App Several years ago, Jon Summersfield, president and co-owner of The Global Event Team, found himself expressing his frustrations about the meeting-planning process with a group of convention-services and meeting-planner professionals.

So he came up with the idea for an app called getplanning, which is powered by hotel-marketing agency Cendyn — and now used in 60 Hilton properties in the Americas. “In this day and age, there’s no reason for us to be printing out reams of paper that then become redundant as soon as there’s a change made” to things like hotel contracts, Summersfield said. As an industry tool, getplanning has a number of document categories specific to the materials that are exchanged during the planning process — from contracts to BEOs to floor plans — where both the planner and hotel representatives can upload documents.

Planners can use the app as a repository for materials or to communicate with staff, whether the venue uses it or not, but “obviously it works best when it’s collaborative,” Summersfield said.

What about on site? How many times have you wished you could snap your fingers and make more coffee appear in a session room? With its Red Coat Direct app (chan- neling the red coats that Marriott staff members wear), it actually is that simple at hundreds of Marriott hotel prop- erties in the United States. Using the app — which Marriott expects to have available in 500 properties worldwide by the end of 2014, and which is available for Internet- enabled iPhone, iPad, Android, Kindle Fire, and laptops — planners can ask for any number of changes directly from the meeting room — more coffee, a temperature change, an extra few chairs, an earlier lunch time — and the re- quest will be routed to the hotel’s on-site event manager.

“The turnaround time, from the time you made the request … literally within two minutes, somebody was in that [meet- ing] room taking care of it,” said Carrie White, senior meet- ing planner with AEGIS Insurance Services Inc., which held its 1,100-person Annual Policyholders’ Conference in early August at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront.

The app has a built-in response system, so White knew whether a request was handled without ever having to go to the room to check. “[The request] goes right to staff, and they text back and say, ‘We’re on it,’ and then it will say, ‘Completed.’”

For more information, visit redcoatdirect.marriott.com.

requires some discipline” to use the product, which captures notes, audio, photos, and web clippings. “You really need to spend some time getting organized with it,” Levin said, “cre- ating categories and tags for yourself to make sure that you can use it effectively.” With users’ accounts accessible from all their platforms — smartphone, tablet, computer — you can organize notes and information and then find them again quickly through a tagging system that groups items together. “A lot of times you connect with someone … and you didn’t

necessarily exchange business cards,” Levin said, “or if you did, you didn’t enter their phone or email right into your own contacts.” LinkedIn Contacts (Free; iPhone/iPad) integrates with the user’s email and mobile address book and calendar to pull together all of a contact’s information — including email exchanges — as well as his or her LinkedIn profile. The app will remind users about contacts’ birthdays and job changes (much like LinkedIn does), and it is also possible to set up reminders to reach out to certain contacts that you don’t want to lose touch with. “It’s tremendously helpful,” Levin said.

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF With everything else on your plate, your own physical well- being can become a low priority. “When you think about the life of a planner, whether you’re on site or traveling to site visits,” Levin said, “eating healthy is so difficult.” Enter MyFitnessPal (Free; iPhone/iPad, Android, or Web), a calorie- counting and fitness-journal app where users can input their daily food choices and workout routines in order to track weight-loss (or maintenance) progress. The app has a data- base of more than one million food items, making it simple to calculate the number of calories and nutritional value in a meal or snack. MyFitnessPal also features a community forum for users to discuss their progress and strategies, which is one of its best features, according to Levin. “It really has good social integration,” she said. Seamless (Free; iPhone/iPad, Android, BlackBerry, or

Web) is a restaurant delivery and takeout web app that allows users to access menus and quickly order food in more than 600 U.S. cities. “Meeting professionals also march on their stomachs,” Paone said, “so my team’s go-to app for food is Seamless.” Seamless often sends out discount codes via email and stores users’ delivery-address and credit-card informa- tion for easy ordering if they so choose. “Getting discounts always helps the budget,” Paone said, “but finding the food to fit your at-the-moment appetite is awesome.” Convene Senior Editor Barbara Palmer relied on an app

called Deep Sleep With Andrew Johnson ($2.99; iPhone/iPad, Android, or on CD) when she traveled to Beijing for the China Incentive, Business Travel & Meetings Exhibition (CIBTM).

62 PCMA CONVENE OCTOBER 2013 PCMA.ORG