16 Jul 10 Meeting at Sea: The Perfect Meeting Destination and Surprisingly Affordable
Planning meetings can be fun, but it tends to be more fun whenever the meeting is someplace exotic or interesting. What is more interesting than a meeting on a cruise ship? Possibly a meeting on the International Space Station, but at around $20 million a ticket, it is probably better to go with meetings on exotic cruise ships bound for sun drenched destinations. Surprisingly, meetings at sea are not only more affordable than blasting off into low-orbit, but they are often more affordable than meetings held at hotels. Consider the following:
Hotels are forced to compete with many restaurants in terms of quality and offerings. Today’s cruise ships bring the restaurants and hotels with them, reducing the competition and overhead associated with advertising while simultaneously increasing the power buying authority of the vendor.
Safety is job number of all cruise ship employees, while job number two is ensuring that you and your business guests have a great time. This means you get more bang for your buck on a cruise ship than you would with a hotel in virtually any city.
Top quality business meeting rooms and chambers are available on cruise ships, big and small. Most cruise ships have rooms that can be easily converted from theaters to huge meeting rooms to dance floors with relative ease as well as standard meeting rooms. It does not matter how big or small your event is, a cruise ship is perfect!
Tags: Business Guests, Business Meeting Rooms, Chambers, Cruise Ship, Cruise Ships, Fun, Great Time, Hotels, International Space Station, Job, Low Orbit, Meeting At Sea, Meeting Planning, Offerings, Quality Business, Restaurants, Sun, Theaters, Top Quality
18 Nov 09 How to Make Networking Fun
Whether you’re on your own or an employee of another company, you know how important it is to get in touch–and stay in touch–with almost everyone. This is so important that some people are starting their own networking clubs, and many of them are highly successful. Here are some ways to start your own networking club.
First, find out how many people might be interested in your networking group. You could go so far as to post an ad in Craigslist, but you could also post on industry-specific websites if you want to be more particular. Give yourself a few weeks to establish about how many you might expect at your first event.
Next, contact some of your suppliers. See if they would be willing to offer wares and services in exchange for invitations. For instance, you could ask your beverage supplier to bring her best offerings for samples and then give her “prime real estate” in the layout of your networking event. Make sure these contacts include properties so you will have a cheap or free place to hold your own event.
Then do what you do best and plan it. No one knows better how to design, arrange, prepare, and execute an event better than those in your field, so make sure your events are top-notch even if they are only for twenty people. And keep in mind that they don’t need to be big events–you already know quality counts.
Tags: Contacts, Craigslist, Find People, Fun, How Many People, Invitations, Networking Club, Networking Clubs, Networking Event, Networking Group, Offerings, Prime Real Estate, Quality Counts, Rsquo, Top Notch, Wares
06 Aug 09 Fourth Quarter Play Strategies–Vacations
While this sounds like a chapter out of a football playbook, it sort of is and sort of isn’t. Like football, it describes the final chapter of an arbitrary time frame that we use to determine our actions and push for a winning game. However, it is being applied to our business in this blog. What are we going to do for the rest of a stressful year?
What We Do Best
As planners, what we do best is help others. Sure, it’s a business, but it’s one that can help others from losing their marbles trying to book their own events. What may change about that in the fourth quarter is that some of them may want to save money on events by planning some of it themselves. You can be prepared by having a short list of things that they can do that won’t be too difficult but can lop off at least a little bit of your bill. Consider this another service in your collection of offerings. (more…)
Tags: Arbitrary Time, Blog, Clientele, Exotic Travel, Financial Scene, Football Playbook, Fourth Quarter, Game, Hideaways, Little Bit, Marbles, Money, Offerings, Planners, Professional Life, Sounds, Time Frame, Travel Packages, Vacations
18 May 09 Need Some Training? Try Marriott’s Meetings Excellence!
In a time when event planning professionals are either looking for new jobs or piling on second jobs to make ends meet, Marriott International says you can take that time to increase your value instead.
Meetings Excellence! Is a new program offered online to help both the new planner as well as the seasoned professional. The curriculum introduces event planning to new intermediary planning professionals, as well as approaches for planning a successful event. It also covers Marriott’s own offerings to the conference and business meeting planner. Soon the educational units will be offered in other languages, including Turkish, Chinese, and Japanese. (more…)
Tags: Booking Rates, Business Meeting Planner, Commission Structures, Education Training, Educational Units, Event Planning, Event Professionals, Excellence Program, Global Economic Crisis, Great Strides, Group Meetings, Group Partners, Marriott, Marriott International, New Jobs, Obligation, Offerings, Point Of View, Stamp Of Approval, Sunny Day
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Corporate Meeting Planner Resources
- What Makes Travel Events and Meetings Amazing?The act of hosting a meeting in an exclusive or interesting location can be made more impressive with a little planning or can be ruined as a gesture with carelessness. Here is what you need to think about in order to keep your travel events purely amazing: Events – Going to an exotic destination and failing [...] […]
- Best Plan for Meetings at SeaPlanning a meeting at sea is not as difficult or as different as it might sound on the surface but there are still a few key differences to be aware of. Some of the best meeting planners keep the following advice in mind: Equipment and space for equipment is at a premium – It might be [...] […]
- Factors to Consider When Shopping For a Cruise EventAnyone planning on hosting a cruise event should certainly check to see which cruise companies can get the job done at the best price, but there is often more to consider than just the bottom line. In fact, some customers that have not given a lot of thought to the logistics and organizational side of [...] […]