Working with Hotels

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TRANSCRIPT:
Avish: Alright, chances are when doing a seminar most people end up doing in a hotel. And there are ways of working with the hotels to actually make your lives easier and save money, correct?

Fred: Yes. Well, before we actually talk about that, let me just say if you—if you don’t work with the hotel during your seminars and events, you’re probably have a few different choices. You maybe able to get a buddy of yours who has, you know, has a meeting room in his office that he is going to lend you, that’s great. You know I’ve done these in church basements, I’ve done them all over the place. But again you got to think about who your attendee is or whether or not the venue that you select is going to make them feel comfortable and feel like, you know, this is a legit location for doing a seminar. So, depending on what it is. You may—but for the most part, we’re talking about dealing with hotels, yes?

Avish: OK. And so when it comes to—I mean obviously different levels of hotels from the very low to the very high class. So, where do you think you should fall in that spectrum?

Fred: Well, I’ve done them in all places. I don’t think I’ve tried ever done one of the Motel Six but I have done one, years ago at a Super Eight, for Career Track. And you know, it all has to do with matching the venue to the type of client that you’re trying to select. So, if you’re trying to go after corporate senior VP’s, you don’t want to hold it at the Super Eight, you want to make sure it’s at the Wyndham or at the Hyatt or you know, or the one of the other fancy properties out there.

Avish: Got it. But if you’re doing it for a more of those like a blue collar audience or something like that, it almost, if it’s too nice a place it might turn them off, right?

Fred: Yeah, might actually be intimidating because if I hold something, let’s say for example I’m in Vegas and doing something there. And if I trying to go after a more casual blue collar audience and I hold it in a location that seems like it’s above their league, they’re going to be intimidated for a number of reasons, not least which is going to be price for the hotel room. So, you want to try and match the seminar venue to the attendee and make sure—now, if you to err, err on the side of being slightly above your attendee in terms of what you’re trying to do. So you know, even if you’re, you know, with the slightly blue collar crowd, you know and you end up at the Marriott Suites or whatever, it’s not going to be that bad. So, if anything be slightly ahead—above the crowd in terms of the stature but, you know, again try and match it fairly closely.

Avish: OK. So, the cost of picking a hotel you, you say you have to ask what name will be posted?

Fred: What I said, what name will be posted, if the— first, off a couple different things I had an experience years ago when I did a seminar in Tampa and actually this happened just not too long ago in Anaheim. Often times there are three Marriott’s with in ten miles of each other, in a city. So, you have to be very, very careful. So, that’s one of the things you make sure, make it very clear to your attendees which of the multiple properties that are in the area you’re dealing with.

The second thing, I said there to make sure what’s posted is that, what happens is if I’m with—my company name is FG Productions Inc. and my seminar is about publishing, people have no idea that my company name is FG Productions Inc. or may not have any idea that it is. Therefore, in the morning and in every correspondent that I have at the hotel I want to make sure that they post the seminar name as the name of the seminar, not the company name. Now, inevitably they will get this wrong and you have to run down there. So make sure that the night before and an hour and a half before the seminar start that you make sure that the posting of the seminar name is there and not posting of your name or your company name.

Avish: OK. That’s because the hotel often times is defaults the name of your company?

Fred: Correct, yes. I mean, they just state they don’t seem to follow instructions too well in this area. So it is something you have to be aware of.

Avish: OK. Well, the next thing is you touch upon this but I know you have a story which actually happen to you where like you said, there will be multiple properties in the same area and if you’re not careful people will go to the wrong one.

Fred: Yes. I mean, you know, in Tampa many years ago, there’s the Tampa Bay Shore Marriott and there’s a Tampa Airport Marriott. And those two properties are about four miles apart I think, maybe less. And we had people coming into one of them at ten o’clock and we started at nine, screaming at us.

Avish: Oh, no!

Fred: Yes, so you got to make sure and make it very, very clear. And by the way making it very clear isn’t just in your promotion materials. It’s when people register you want, especially if there are multiple properties make sure to remind them. So, that when they show up screaming and yelling at ten o’clock, you could pull out and produce a copy of the ad and the copy of the email, and have them highlighted which clearly shows it. So, there’s still be annoyed, but at that point they’ll be more annoyed at themselves.

Avish: OK. Now for seminars, a lot of times it’s good to have coffee or something like that. But you could end up, if you don’t do it right, you’re going to end up spending a lot money, correct?

Fred: You can. And so, you really have to make a decision. Let’s take the example of the seminar I did recently, in Anaheim, which was a publishing seminar. And that publishing seminar we were going after sort of authors and publishers who are notoriously, fairly thrifty and, so, we were charging them 97 bucks. At 97 dollars, you’re not going to be able to make any money if you offer people coffee in the morning, soda breaks and you know, and cookies at the, you know, at 3:30 that’s just not going to cut it.

So what you offer people in terms of additional, you know, items should be based on what the cost of the seminar is and what people’s expectations would be based on the cost. So, if I was having a similar event, geared to financial analysts and I’m charging 997 dollars for the day, we would have definitely have a boxed lunch, we would have coffee in the morning, we’d have a soda break. And we probably do have those, you know, chocolate chip cookies that come out of about 3.15.

Avish: Alright, so it depends on the audience and it depends on your registration process?

Fred: Yes, exactly. Now, the other thing is and this was what really pissed me off about this Anaheim seminar, which by the way, whenever you have an event, make sure that there is anything wrong that you make it very clear to the hotel and bitch like crazy. Because as a result of my bitching like crazy at this last event. And I’ll tell you why, and I’ll tell you first off if you bitch like crazy because they ended up giving you stuff, if it’s legitimate. And by giving you stuff, I mean, they gave me a whole bunch of extra Marriott points, it was great that I can use for various things.

But the other thing is this; let me give you the specifics of what happened. I told them that I was going to be having about 35 people in a room. They booked a room for me and charged me 650 dollars and it was the whole room, but it had three sections. Now, I could, the way that I would have set that up had I known what I was dealing with, is I would have taken at maximum two sections and as turns out all I needed was one section because I ended up asking my hotel contact, the person that was helping me when I showed up there, to close off all the other rooms. We just have one small room because we only had like X-number of people, whatever, I think it was twenty maybe twenty people. So we wanted to make those rooms, anytime when you’re dealing with a room you want to make it look full, no matter how many people are in there. So, what happen was they oversold me and by overselling me, not only did I have to pay more money but I also, if I would have stay with that just big room. It would have looked empty and I would have looked like a moron.

So, what I did was, you know, I just encourage everybody listening to this program. If they can possibly see the property that they’re got to be having a seminar, I think they’ll visit it in order to make sure that you don’t have this problem which involves two things: number one, paying too much and number two, getting a room size that it isn’t adequate. Now, you sometimes you don’t know how many people are going to show up in your event and I understand that. And everybody who gives seminars as always I mean to say this intentionally, it’s almost always more optimistic than they should be. So, the net result is, they get less people and they have them swimming in this large room and they’ve paid a lot of money. Let it be your biggest problem, you have to stuff people in the room A, or B, have so many people show up or have somebody of people trying to register that you need to hold an additional session.

So, try and keep the room as small as you possibly can to fit your, you know, moderate expectation and how many people are going to show up. So, all those things are critical. Now, if you can’t actually visit the property make sure that you take a look at the floor plans that you know. Now, the other thing to do is, it’s always nice to say to your personnel, “Look we need just a fairly small room for twenty people whatever, however, in the event that we get some a flood registrations, are you putting me in a room that we might be able to expand into another room?” So, in this case this would have been perfect example of the one that they oversold me on, they would have worked that way. Does that make sense?

Avish: Yes, absolutely. So, let’s talk about keeping the cost down, if you do decide to buy coffee, you recommend getting coffee by gallon? Or what do you mean by that?

Fred: Well, often times, you know, hotels won’t charge two different ways for coffee: by a cup or by the galloon. And if you have a sufficient number of people, usually over twenty, it make sense to buy the coffee by the galloon. But again make sure and ask, exactly. Now, the other clever trick that they use is, without asking you, they will refill your coffee and charge you for it. So, in the contract that you put together, that they put together, you have got to add some addendums to that which is, you’re going to add something that says, “Do not refill coffee with out first getting approval from the seminar leader.” So, that is important to do. So, coffee yes by the gallon in most cases depending, like if you really small group, it might actually make sense to buy it by the cup. Usually they charge you something outrageous like 3.50 – 3.75 a cup.

Avish: And what about AV equipment because most of the hotels will provide it but they’ll charge you quite a bit for that, right?

Fred: Yes. Well, here’s the problem that you have. In most cases if you’re doing seminars—we should, well probably talk about this in a separate section. You’re probably going to own a certain amount of your AV equipment. So, in every case, if you can do your own AV you will. Because the rule of thumb is this, if you pay the hotel that big hotels sometimes have their own AV group. Most hotels do not, they contract it out and they give it to a local AV company and they get a split. And either of those cases, by the time you rented the equipment, you know, three times, four times max you’ve paid for it. I’ll give you one example, I mean, I was going to be doing this big event number of years back town in Phoenix. And we got a quote from the AV Company on how much it would be to video tape everything and I’m not making this numbers up. The quote that we got for a three day seminar, multi-camera shoot, all this other stuff was thirty-seven thousand dollars.

Avish: Thirty-seven thousand?

Fred: Thirty-seven thousand dollars and when I saw that quote, I said, “Wow.” And I went out and I bought all the equipment necessary. Now, maybe it wasn’t the same equipment that they were using but it was certainly adequate. But I bought all the equipment, the video cameras, the tripods, the video switching, the audio—I got everything for eighty five hundred bucks. Now, what I needed was, I needed a few people. So, I flew a buddy of mine out, Kendall from New York, to actually manage the audio that was happening to make sure we did it right. But even if you have the pay somebody three grand, you know, a thousand dollars a day to run the event, you’re still going to be better off.

So, just assume and in most cases you’re probably going to. Now, here’s the problem that exist of each. In some towns there are very, very big union shops. They don’t allow you to bring in your own equipment.

Avish: Right, in those cases you don’t really have a lot of choice, right?

Fred: Yes, you don’t have a lot of choice so, my suggestion is: if you’re thinking of video taping events and if you’re going to do it in one of those kinds of towns, maybe you forego the video. If you video another place it really, really is, you know, it can become cost prohibitive. Now, what happens is in most cases, they will let you bring in your own equipment and do your own taping. But just be aware of the fact that some places will not. And so, before you go off half cocked make sure that you find out what the rules of the game are.

Avish: I think you can correct me on this but this works with the venue because Philly’s a big union town if you and I conquered for one we’re going together. But I think it also comes down to what venue is like, we’re in a smaller venue I don’t think it would have been as big an issue, so I would check with the hotel.

Fred: Yes, I think you’re right. And so, you know, that’s the kind of thing you have—you just have to know the lay of the land before you do anything. And it is venue specific often times, like yes, other places in Philly we probably wouldn’t have had that problem.

Avish: OK. So, let’s say you’re doing—you’re going to do multiple seminars in the city say, six months or your part. Do you think you should—if you have a good experience you keep working with that same hotel over and over again or should you move your seminar around?

Fred: Well, I would certainly always get quotes from different facilities every time, so that when you talk to the place that you’ve been multiple times, it’s always better to do it in the same place especially if you have a good relationship and they are charging you reasonable prices. But it’s always good to keep them in check by getting, you know, just say, “Hey? Phil, yes. Thanks for doing that, we’re doing another seminar, you know like always. I’m just going to get some competitive quotes so, here’s what we’re doing. So, just let me see what you’ve got and I’ll take a look at it.” So, I want to make sure that whoever I’m dealing with this is my hotel contact, that I keep honest by letting them know that I am going to ask for quotes for multiple facilities.

Avish: OK. And my last question is on working with hotels, seems like a no brainer but do you try to visit the facility in advance? And how far in advance?

Fred: Well, yes. We talked about little bit about that earlier. It’s always better if you can and the more time that you have in advance is better off you are, because you could make, you know, better decisions. So, if you can, you know, at these days a lot of the places have virtual tours that you could take too. But it’s still tough from those virtual to get an idea of precise sizes. So, if and all possible this is the facilities and in person. Often times when you’re bringing in a big event and this is something that everybody should know. You get a little of a joy ride out of this, too. Let’s say, for example I was going to be bringing four hundred people into Phoenix and I was talking to various hotels. If the hotels sales group or meeting planning group knew or catering group or whoever it is you’re using. If the hotel group was really believe me that I was going to do this event. I would probably be able to get three nights stays at three different places, in other words, three individual nights. So, I can stay one night at this fancy place, one night at that fancy place, one night at another fancy place and then tour the facility the next day, if I were to come into Phoenix in advance.

Avish: OK. Got it. So, not a bad way to go?

Fred: No, I mean if you’re going to do it, you might as well go, you know, have a little vacation out of it as well. You just have to leave usually every night and go to the next facility.

Avish: Right, right. OK, great! Any final words then on how to work with the hotel?

Fred: Yes, well. One of the things to remember is that, hotels are negotiable. Especially in, you know, in competitive times or more difficult times, economically. So, everything that they put on a contract, you should just not swallow without, you know, asking questions or trying to negotiate. If you do that basically you’re a chump because the hotel contract is meant to be addended. And that means, you as the seminar leader need to bargain for every single thing that you’ve got. Now, again, what happens is if you have a big group coming in, they will usually provide you with a free room, you usually get the meeting room for free if you do meals. There’s all kinds of things so, if you have a lot of people coming in they usually give you the meeting room for free and they even give you as the speaker, maybe a couple of your staff, hotel rooms. So, just remember that every single thing on that contract that they put in front of you is negotiable. Nothing is set in stone and don’t be fooled.

Avish: Alright, thanks Fred.