Meeting Planner Careers

Boston is one of America’s favorite cities and she is host to a good many conferences throughout the year. If your team is located in New York and their destination is Boston (or vice versa), consider using the Limoliner service to shuttle them to a conference.

Limoliner is a luxury bus service that offers all the amenities of plane or train travel. Wireless internet, satellite television and radio, and leather recliners are included in the package. Evening passengers can enjoy a wine bar and as well as food and other beverages.

Travel time from New York to Boston is four and a half hours, which is comparable to Amtrak travel. Your team can get a little work done en route and there is a meeting area in the back of the bus. Cell phone and wireless connectivity is excellent and Limoliner offers a sense of privacy that isn’t found on public transport.

Avoid crowded terminals and utilize every minute of travel time to your best advantage. Limoliner picks up and drops off at the Hilton New York in Midtown Manhattan, Hilton Boston Back Bay, Framing ton, Massachusetts, and most recently, Hartford, Connecticut. Go in style and be productive with Limoliner.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. That’s what the old folks used to tell us as we were coming up. Like many of our grandparent’s old sayings, this one is right on the mark. Event planners need to consider the down time activities in order to make business meetings the most productive possible.

It doesn’t matter how many people gather for a seminar or conference, they are all going to need some time to de-stress. At the Claremont Resort and Spa attendees can take advantage of a number of physical activities and spa treatments to revitalize body and soul. Imagine how refreshed conference goers would be with a fitness break sandwiched in between sessions. A quick dip in the pool or a bit of yoga could give them a new perspective on the meetings.

The Claremont is located 12 miles from downtown San Francisco in the Berkeley Hills. This makes it far enough away to keep everyone’s mind on business, but not so far away that the thrills of San Francisco aren’t readily available.

Your clients don’t have to travel to downtown San Francisco to have a good meal or indulge in an adult beverage. The Four Diamond Jordan’s and the Paragon Bar and Café are located under the Claremont’s roof. The Claremont’s Real Deal Incentive package could be just what your next conference needs.

It is not difficult to start a career in event planning. In short, an event planner is responsible for the logistical details of planning parties, luncheons, and other organized events for both individuals and businesses. A professional image, both personally and as a company, is far more important than a college degree or formal training in event planning. There are a number of steps to help you get started with your new career as an event planner right away. The good news is it does not take a lot of startup cash to open your new business.

1) Decide on a business name and get a domain name. Image is everything in the world of event planning. Pick a catchy name and buy a domain for a web site. Your design can be simple and done using a Web template, or you could pay a few hundred dollars for the services of a web designer to create a really snazzy page. Read more…

Maureen Pickell, director of global accounts for ConventionPlanit.com shares tips for new meeting planners entering the profession around how to connect with industry partners and suppliers.

Reader’s Digest brought many light hearted moments to their readers with it’s popular Laughter: The Best Medicine section. How can an event planner use humor to her advantage?

One of the best ways is to find a motivational speaker who has a message and keeps a sense of humor. Why not include some lighthearted stories in a presentation? Everyone enjoys a few jokes, especially ones they can share with friends and family once they have returned home and the conference is over. A relaxed audience is a more attentive one. Life is too short to forget to smile.

Humor raises morale, which is a key element for a motivational speaker. Some psychologists say that people are motivated by the push of pain or the pull of hope. A good speaker will draw his audience in with a strong message that change is possible. Looking on the bright side literally changes someone’s physical make up. Humor relaxes muscle tension, lowers blood pressure, and allows all the body’s functions to proceed at a more healthy rate.

Laughter inspires confidence and makes the imagination shore. Many times one funny story leads to another in a domino effect. A good motivational speaker builds on that and leaves his audience ready to put forth a greater effort and take on the world.

Your client has come to you asking for an event that is fun, relaxing, and socially responsible. One of their top priorities, along with a successful presentation, is reducing their carbon footprint.

Can you sell your client on the idea of a green hotel? Of course you can! Green hotels save on energy consumption, reduce waste, and save water. A simple notation on a menu such as “drinking water served by request only” can save thousands of gallons of water a year.

Green hotels reduce water and product consumption in a number of ways that do not inconvenience their guest. Do you really need to take home all those little bars of soap and bottles of shampoo? Shampoo and skin care dispensers work just as well and do not contribute nearly as much to solid waste.

Clients who work to reduce their solid waste and recycle at home will be very responsive to green hotels. Some hotels offer stainless steel water bottles that can be refilled rather than plastic bottles that will end up in a landfill.

Going green does not mean the hotel is less luxurious than before, it simply means that the management team is being more creative and caring for the earth as well as their guests.

It is impossible for an event planner to control events such as natural disasters and pandemic flu outbreaks. What the individual can do is to create back up plans for as many scenarios as possible.

Begin with the words “what if?” and create a back up plan around the answer. What if one or many of the guests at your event had a medical emergency? Do you know which hospitals or minor emergency centers are closest to the hotel or convention center?

No one likes to think of natural disasters, but even a temporary power outage can ruin an event. Do you have the cell phone numbers for the key speakers and event leaders? Is it better to text key personnel rather than speak into a cell phone when privacy is hard to come by.

Keep a cool head. Conference with hotel personnel well in advance and find out what the procedure is in case of a bomb threat, tornado, hurricane, or flooding situation. Chances are you won’t need to use any of this information, but forewarned is forearmed.

In a time of crises, the event planner needs to be a leader and have the resources and knowledge to help clients over the rough patches.

by Clint Jhonson

Planning an event whether as an independent caterer or as an employee for a corporation is not easy unless you know some tips and tricks. Meeting planning software can be a real blessing and can help you lessen your burden in your attempt to organize a perfect event. So, what are you options?

Some of the well known meeting planning software is the “Conference Matrix Grid View”, “Conference Resume”, and “Complete Conference Specifications”. The Conference Matrix Grid View is 67kb in size, and it also has a quick view HTML version for you. Businesses are using the HTML version of corporate meeting planning software increasingly, which provides them with the advantage of holding meetings with people geographically apart. All that the participants would need to have is a laptop with internet. It provides a summarized one page view of large, multi-session, and multi-day meeting. The software provides you with information, such as what the meeting room assignments are, and at-a-glance view of what is going on presently in the meeting. Read more…

When you get out into the world, you may be handed an assignment to plan an event outside your city. For the sake of illustration, your boss or client may say, “We need to hold a meeting, but we want it to be in Las Vegas so we can have some fun, too.”

TARP notwithstanding, you imagine yourself trying to coordinate everything from your small office in New York city, destined to work from 1:00 a.m. until midnight every day for the next two months. However, it will not be that way because you will have a destination management company on the other end.

Destination management companies specialize in organizing meetings on the other end. You will be calling on this company to help you work out the logistics of travel, accommodations, conference centers, and other details long before the event’s doors open.

Destination management can be one of your best friends as a planner, especially if you are just starting your career. If you have been in it awhile and have just been handed your first off-shore assignment, they will be even more important–you have to deal with travel restrictions, alerts, possible language and culture barriers, and unanticipated passport/visa entry restrictions.

Sometimes a good way to find your perfect best friend is to ask around. Get some references and word-of-mouth advertising, which is something we all rely on to help us get the word out.

Many of these blog posts have been about the various meeting planner careers that are available to you. It doesn’t matter whether you want to plan events for nonprofits, weddings and honeymoons, corporate meetings, or incentive travel for top employees–there is a career to match your creative streak.

However, do you know what the job prospects are for your chosen profession? The Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook has many of the answers you’re looking for. Even with the recession and government frown in the direction of meetings and planners, it says that this profession is expected to grow faster than average between 2006 and 2016.

It also says that some of this will be due to natural attrition–some people will retire, some will move on to other professions, and some may switch professions within the planning category. That said, the handbook also tells us, “Unlike workers in some occupations, meeting and convention planners often can change industries relatively easily, so they often are able to move to different industries in response to the growth or declines in particular sectors of the economy.”

This is important to consider when choosing your specialty. Think about the days when you might want to switch, or pretend that you are only planning a five-year-long career. If you think about where you want to go, and it’s within the meetings profession, you can start planning for it while you’re working and training now.

Thinking ahead should be one of your strong points as a meeting planner–use it for yourself as well, and be on top of things when you need a change.