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Buying meetings
events is not necessarily going to be cost conscious: it’s up to procurement to negotiate with the property before it knows the deal is in the bag.” Gaskin has been working with a manufacturing company to consolidate its meetings and events (M&E) spend with that of T&E. “I don’t think it’s perfect even now, three or four years down the line. It’s a living thing,” she says. Nonetheless, results are measurable. “Overall, in the first year, we saved 10 per cent to 12 per cent, and that is conservative,” she says. “And subject to inflation, savings of a further 10 per cent to 15 per cent in the second year are realistic.”
ENTICING OFFERS Managing director of Conference Care, Andrew Deakin, throws this rogue thought into the mix: “When event planners ask us to source a venue, we will go to preferred partners, but alternative venues will often offer added value, upgrades or better rates to entice the event to take place there and get future business.” And Mervyn Williamson, joint managing director of Statesman Travel, adds: “Not all transient hotels provide a high level of service for meetings and events. It’s not their core business focus.”
The nature of an event can also be tricky: a broadcasting client of Conference Care needs a property for sales training sessions that will allow delegates to put ladders against the hotel and drill a satellite dish into it – activity that does not always elicit a sanguine response.
NEGOTIATING THE MINEFIELD
Tracey Boreham, head of global operations – meeting, groups and events at HRG, on why terms and conditions can often make-or- break a harmonious business relationship
“TRADITIONALLY, terms and conditions [T&C] were dictated by the venue but, over the past five years, they have taken a more flexible
approach, particularly when key clients are looking to channel volumes of business or increase market share across a hotel chain. “However, when clients
have a strategic meetings management programme and have enough data to negotiate a preferred meetings rate, it is easier for them to introduce their T&C alongside that of the venues. We link the two sets of T&C and make sure we allow for conflicts of interest. If there is no agency involved, a buyer needs to ensure that the two sets of T&C have been linked correctly, so that there are no misunderstandings if the
event is cancelled. “Attrition schedules and
terms for full cancellation are two of the main reasons clients want to dictate their terms, to reduce potential financial risk. Those are usually the deal-breakers. “Many companies will go with specific sets of conditions for less than 50 delegates, over 50, or for a particular value of event. If they are cancelling use of a boardroom one week out, that is not going to cripple a hotel, but for an event for 250 people over three days, it’s different. It’s about finding common ground over the impact on the venue’s business and the client’s. These days, hotels tend to go for compensation for loss of revenue rather than loss of profit. “But what is a
cancellation? From the hotel’s viewpoint, if the space is not going to be used on the date agreed by both parties, that is
a cancellation; but for the client, if the event is rescheduled for three months’ time, that is a postponement. Many hotels will be flexible and give credit if there is a postponement or if the company books another meeting to the same value. “This is where an agency
comes into its own. At HRG, we can load cancelled space on to the system so that the whole global network can see it and then we can re-sell it. Recently, we recycled meetings space and bedrooms to the value of £96,000 that way. It does work. “We can also do it with deposits or credits that are sitting with a hotel. We used a client’s credit for US$40,000 to pay for a meeting held by another department in the same company – the client signed over the credit to the new department. Credits often have a time limit attached.”
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