Plan Your Meetings

It’s not just the New Year that has everyone thinking about fitness. Well before January, we were seeing hotel chains such as Kimpton pushing in-room yoga baskets and healthy meeting breaks. In-room workout stations have been around for more than a year, too. 

The Hilton Personal Performance Study, released ages ago in 2003, launched the trend when it released figures proving business travelers who worked out on the road performed 61 percent better than non-exercisers. (Incidentally, its findings that performance abilities decreased significantly with less than six hours of sleep launched the much-heralded bedding-and-everything-else wars.) And with more cities banning smoking in public areas and big-league corporations giving up trans-fats, 2007 is shaping up to be the healthiest year in a long time.

So get with it! The health and wellness trend is just starting to hit its stride. And with a rapidly aging and largely overweight population, the United States has a potentially huge market for meetings and events integrating mind-body awareness and activities (no pun intended).

We’re not saying you need to book clients into a hotel for a full health check-up or redesign the office to boost employee wellness, but it couldn’t hurt to research heart-healthy options for your clients.

Athletic-Minded Traveler is a fee-based, online resource with tips on everything from finding the best local hotel gyms to identifying healthy restaurants in your price range; it also has a corporate services division. Personal trainers are expanding their sphere of influence, catering to the corporate market, and hotels, such as the Houstonian, are using in-house personal trainers to create customized physical challenges and competitions for groups.

Now don’t forget to feng shui your space and clean your aura. Happy (and healthy) New Year!

The National Foreign Trade Council estimates the United States has lost $31 billion in international business between 2002 and 2004 due to tightened entry regulations that went into effect post-9/11. Bloomberg News predicts new U.S. visa requirements will mean even bigger losses as companies abroad choose to meet in countries that are easier to enter.

If you are a planner dealing with international meetings and events, let us know how U.S. visa requirements have changed the way your clients do business.

Need validation for what you do for a living? A recent story in none other than The New York Times used “God” as a synonym for “meeting planner,” kind of. The article, Event Planning, Doing-the-Impossible Division, recounts the often hair-raising, last-minute rearrangements that make meeting planners seem like miracle workers: A meeting for 500 moved from South Carolina to Texas, only hours before it was to start, to get out of a hurricane’s path; an ill performer replaced with another first-class act, booked at the last minute to go on before an audience of 1,500 sales representatives. Not all things can be worked out: The power goes out at a particularly precarious moment (read the story) during the closing session of a national sales meeting and, alas, the event planner admits, finally, that her powers are limited — maybe.

Have you ever felt like God on the job? Tell us your hair-raising story.

Ever since Michael Jackson took shelter in Dubai, it seems as if the city’s hospitality industry has been racing to become an international Neverland Ranch, with wacky multi-million- and billion-dollar projects such as palm-shaped island resorts, festival cities … even a marine world.

Plans for the $500-million Hydropolis Undersea Resort in Dubai, however, have stalled. Fans of sleeping with the fishes needn’t worry, though. Bruce Jones, head of U.S. Submarines (builder of custom luxury subs), is planning to build a Poseidon Mystery Island off the coast of northeastern Fiji. The world’s first bottom-of-the-sea luxury resort is scheduled to open by September 2008.

Check out the promo film:

It’s no secret technology has revolutionized how we communicate, research ideas and do business. At the same time, technology’s advances have resulted in multi-task job descriptions, increasing stress levels and employee burnout as fewer people are expected to do more and put in longer hours for less pay. Add to the equation ridiculous commutes, and it’s not surprising that employee satisfaction and productivity levels keep sinking.

Best Buy has taken a revolutionary approach to the workplace dilemma, converting one department at a time to a “results-only work environment” (ROWE), where employees are evaluated on how much they do, not how often they are in the office. BusinessWeek Online has published a great article on how ROWE transformed Best Buy’s workplace from an infamous stress factory into a place where people look forward to working. They’ve even started a subsidiary, called CultureRx, to help other companies break the workday mold.

Meeting and event planning is definitely a job that can work outside of a bricks and mortar office environment. But are you still tied to your desk from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.? How would a schedule based on ROWE impact the work you do every day? Weigh in below and let us know.

Surfing the net turns up some interesting stuff. Being a wordsmith, I love to look up definitions. Here’s the job definition for meeting and convention planner from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Meeting and convention planner is a relatively new and growing occupation.

A meeting and convention planner coordinates all the activities of staff and convention personnel to make arrangements for group meetings and conventions, working as the intermediary for the client (e.g., a professional organization or a political party). (U.S. government occupational coding: O*NET SOC code: 13-1121.00)

A more thorough definition (though it reads like a high school guidance counselor’s manual) is found on the occupational site iseek.org. It details occupational tasks; work conditions; physical demands — gotta love this one — “People in this career frequently: Sit while filling out contracts”; skills and abilities; knowledge; preparation/education (even lists helpful high school courses); licensing/certification; and wages. Here’s what they have to say about that last one: “Nationally, the median wage for meeting and convention planners is $3,260 per month ($18.78 per hour). Half of all meeting and convention planners earn between $2,560 and $4,220 per month ($14.79 and $24.35 per hour). They also estimate that about 36,900 meeting and convention planners work “in this small occupation.” And, if you’re ambitious, it cautions: “Advancement is limited … and often takes the form of planning larger, more difficult events.”

Kind of makes you think twice about your line of work, doesn’t it? Yet, many of the planners I meet say they love their job. Some advantages often cited: meeting interesting people, traveling, being creative, setting your own schedules, being independent, and pleasing clients with results.

What do you love about your job?

More than 200 meeting and event planners mingled with representatives from the food & beverage, entertainment, audio/visual, hotel, special facility, event product and service industries at the Plan Your Meeting’s Oceans of Opportunities cocktail party and trade show June 22, held in the Georgia Aquarium’s Oceans Ballroom.

Steve Houser, vice president of sales and marketing for the Georgia Aquarium, introduced planners to the venue’s meeting space, although its charms were evident. Two floor-to-ceiling viewing windows in the 16,400-sq. ft. ballroom thrilled attendees, giving them glimpses of exotic fish and marine animals, such as the playful, and rare, white beluga whales. In-house caterer Wolfgang Puck provided ocean-blue “Tidal Wave” cocktails and exotic island- and seafood-inspired foods.

The Oceans Ballroom accommodates up to 1,600 attendees and is divisible into three smaller ballrooms. For larger functions of up to 10,000 attendees, the entire aquarium may be used as a special events facility. Kosher catering also is available. For more information about the aquarium visit georgiaaquarium.org.

Plan Your Meetings (PYM) Editor-in-Chief Christine Born welcomed exhibitors and planners, reviewing the numerous “oceans of opportunities” PYM provides from the annual planning publication, to monthly e-news, luncheons, trade shows and the soon-to-be-expanded national online resource directory. Born also announced that “Beyond the Basics” is the theme for PYM’s 10th Anniversary Southeast Expo at the AmericasMart in Downtown Atlanta.

“Plan Your Meetings always delivers the basics of meeting planning in its annually updated publication with ‘The Practical Guide to Meeting and Event Planning,’ which has become the bible for meeting planners throughout the Southeast,” Born says. “But we’ve also urged planners to go beyond the basics with articles about planning meetings on the water to incorporating chef demonstrations and wine tastings. This year, we carried an article about using spas and spa treatments to pamper attendees. We want to continue the theme by treating our member planners to mini-spa treatments and other surprise indulgences at the Expo.” Seminars, luncheon round-tables and exhibitors will all demonstrate how planners can go “Beyond the Basics.”

Planners made the most of the “Oceans” trade show, networking with 65 exhibitors representing some of the most innovative products and services, caterers, special events facilities, hotels and entertainment available from Florida to Colorado. Additional refreshments were served by exhibitors such as Cool Daddy’s and Boi Na Braza Brazilian Steak House.

Entertainment was provided by Kingsized, a versatile Atlanta-based band fronted by 6’8” singer Mike Geier, which plays everything from Elvis-themed rockabilly to Rat Pack-style swing to tongue-in-cheek Hawaiian luau shows. Joined by the va-va-voom Dames A’Flame dancers, who design interactive go-go and burlesque shows as well as teambuilding dance lessons for corporate groups, Kingsized kept the room swinging. Artist Eric Waugh captured the excitement of the event, painting an original work of aquarium art as the crowd watched.

Oceans of Opportunity ended with a raffle drawing of prizes donated by the exhibitors, giving planners the chance to experience first-hand some of the golf and spa resorts, airplane flights, special services and catering expertise available for their future meetings and events.