The press release said it all: For its September national summit – limited to 50 top producers – Realty Executives International chose Montage Resort & Spa in Laguna Beach, CA, as the venue where the three-day meeting will unfold. This is no incentive.
It’s a shirt-sleeves-rolled-up, think-tank session. Montage, with a gorgeous seaside location and a movie-star clientele in Orange County, CA, ranks as one of the country’s priciest hotels – and attendees will pay their own way. (An online reservations search turned up a $695 per-night room as the best deal at Montage in late September.) Even so, Realty Executives expects the meeting to sell out – and it also expects the high-class dialog that occurs at the session will help kick-start new successes in a tough real estate marketplace, for the company and attendees alike.

Right there is a powerful example of what picking an unusual venue can deliver for a company in the hunt for ways to reinvent its meetings. Think differently about venues and that’s a fast way to break out of a rut. Every meeting does not have to occur in the same cookie-cutter facilities and, increasingly, those who look for new-style venues are hitting pay dirt. Listen to Chuck Salem, president of unique venues.com, whose Website offers specs on some 7,000 places to hold off-beat meetings: “We get over 3 million hits monthly, and we process over 30,000 leads yearly. Attendees are telling planners it’s stale to meet in the same places over and over. Our motto is, ‘That which is different is inherently memorable.’”

Underlining this quest for new venues is a recent poll, conducted by the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International, which found that 63.7 percent of meeting planners are looking for new places to hold meetings. The “same old” just isn’t cutting it in 2007, and the upshot is intensified interest in reinventing the “where” of meetings.

But don’t think only ultra-expensive venues such as Montage count as unusual. The fact is that there are different and memorable venues – ships, ranches, spas, and riverfront properties. They provide high-value accommodations for meeting planners on the prowl for sites that will shake attendees out of complacency and into high-powered creativity.

One If by Sea

Case in point: Cruising is enjoying new, intensifying enthusiasm on the part of meeting planners who, in many cases, are particularly attracted to Disney Cruises because of the line’s no-gambling policy, says Anne Hamilton, a Disney vice president. On Disney, there are no slot machines, no roulette tables, no poker, and some groups like that more wholesome environment. Another Disney plus: Its ships offer short three- and four-day itineraries that particularly appeal to meeting planners, who often have problems working with the more common seven-day itineraries that are the shortest offered by many other lines.

A testimonial for Disney Cruises is offered by Steve Milo, director of sales for Landry & Kling Cruise Event Services, an event planning company, who reports on a recent event on-board a Disney vessel on behalf of a leading software company (you know the name of his client even if you have only one chance to guess it). “It was a complex meeting involving lots and lots of break-out sessions, and Disney had the facilities we needed for this client.” Milo adds that “the brand was a draw” – that is, the Disney name works magic, but participants did not drift away from scheduled events. “Many break-out sessions were standing room only.” Milo underlines one other plus: “Safety and security are extremely high on a ship.” Boarding guests pass through metal detectors and, additionally, ID cards are swiped as guests leave the ship, so it always is easy and fast to know the whereabouts of attendees. For any company that wants to keep its secrets safe from strangers, meetings at sea are a top choice. “You get significant privacy on a ship,” says Milo.

Note: Disney is not the only beneficiary of a boom in at-sea meetings. Other leading lines – among them Carnival and Princess – also report heightened interest. In that regard, Marianne Schmidhofer, director of charter, meeting, and incentive sales for Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL), says that her company specifically built the ship Pride of America – which sails Hawaiian routes, calling on ports of various islands – with meetings in mind. A conference area that seats 550 people and six dedicated break-out rooms (seating from 10 to 260) give attendees a variety of options about where to meet. Pride of America is a U.S.-flagged ship (one of very few in the cruise industry) and this both brings tax benefits to companies conducting business on board as well as allowing Pride of America to sail a more compact Hawaiian route (with no need to sail to Fanning Island, a Pacific atoll that is an independent nation and where many other cruise ships are forced to stop to comply with the Jones Act, a federal law that prohibits foreign-flagged ships from stopping at two consecutive U.S. ports). Schmidhofer is so confident of her product that she issues a challenge to planners sketching out a Hawaii meeting: Price out her all-inclusive rates against Hawaii hotels and be prepared for a surprise. “We are very affordable,” says Schmidhofer, who indicates that usually NCL will be the better deal. The big obstacle that keeps many companies from meeting at sea? “They simply don’t know it is an option,” says Schmidhofer, who adds that NCL has become very active in Meeting Planners International (MPI) with the specific aim of raising awareness.

Thinking about something smaller? The Tides Inn, in Irvington, VA, reports steadily mounting interest by groups in its Miss Ann, a 127-foot yacht that entered service in 1926. “Initially, it mainly was leisure travelers who wanted to sail on Miss Ann, but now many groups that meet at The Tides have at least one event on board,” says Peter Regan, director of sales for the resort. Up to 100 people can comfortably climb aboard this stately, immense yacht and, says Regan, groups use the vessel for everything from cocktail receptions to meetings far out in Chesapeake Bay (and presumably far removed from wireless carriers). The Tides also is getting flexible about how it lets groups incorporate Miss Ann: “With some, we even let them use it as a break-out room,” says Regan, who admits that participants usually are wowed by the idea of a floating breakout.
“This is a room where you definitely get a million dollar view,” says Regan, who guesstimates that 60 percent of groups include Miss Ann in their meeting plans at The Tides. “It’s become an identifier for the resort,” says Regan, who adds that The Tides has slim competition when it comes to offering meetings on yachts in the mid-Atlantic region.

Want a stationary option that nonetheless offers the magic of the sea? The USS Midway, the longest serving Naval carrier in history (1945-1992), opened as a museum- event venue in 2004 and is actively courting meeting planners. Docked in San Diego, the Midway delivers all the pluses of San Diego’s prime location, but this is a huge venue with a massive history. For instance: It was the flagship of naval air operations in Desert Storm. Midway can accommodate meetings and events for up to 4,000, but this ship has many rooms and can accommodate groups of many sizes. A caution, issued by Scott McGaugh, marketing director for Midway, is that this is a venue that already is in demand, with over 200 group events per year, and popular dates are booked three years out.

Spas Are In

Skepticism ruled in many quarters about the viability of spas for corporate audiences, but listen up: Spas are definitely in for 2007. But the real news is that spas are going way beyond massages to include what might be called “lifestyle education.” Body rubs alone aren’t enough, but programs that help executives live smarter and that are easily integrated into otherwise busy meeting days are winning fans. A prime example of a new-style spa that is getting noticed by meeting planners is La Costa, a San Diego County property owned by KSL. It is finishing a $150 million renovation that essentially reinvented this California classic resort. La Costa recently unveiled its Executive Learning Center, a dedicated, state-of -the-art meeting center built to fully comply with International Association of Conference Centers specifications and, says Associate Director of Sales Bob Harter, 68 percent of La Costa’s business comes from meetings.
Put bluntly: meetings matter at La Costa, which offers 50,000 sq ft of indoor function space and another 50,000 sq ft outdoors. A unique La Costa offering is the Chopra Center for Well Being – operated by best-selling author/physician Deepak Chopra – and more groups are incorporating Chopra Center sessions, which focus on achieving a balance of body, mind, and spirit. A healthy sales executive just may be a better-producing sales executive – that’s a thought La Costa encourages us to ponder.

Another venue that is promoting smart living is Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain in Paradise Valley, AZ, says Jo Ellen Felmann, director of group sales. The result of a recent $85 million renovation, this boutique property sparkles, and, says Felmann, “the wellness factor” has become a centerpiece of the resort’s sales pitch. This extends to a spa-influenced menu, concocted by celebrity chef Beau MacMillan, a victor on Iron Chef America (he defeated Bobby Flay in Battle American Kobe Beef). Sanctuary also builds on its southwest location by offering geographically appropriate activities such as teepee building (a variation on the standard “build a boat” team-building interlude). Also popular, says Felmann, are “yoga breaks” – yoga instructors lead brief five- or 10-minute stretches that help to break up a meeting’s monotony – and there is mounting interest in meditation moments, where attendees quickly are taught the basics of meditation and then are encouraged to spend five or 10 private minutes silently monitoring their own breath. Devotees say it’s a no-cost tool for lowering stress.

The bottom line about spas: Properties that know how to closely integrate spa perks with a meeting – still the reason the group is together at all – are the ones that are winning business from corporations, say the experts. Spa for spa’s sake is not ringing this cash register, but spa as a tool for competing longer and smarter in business is winning fans among meeting planners.

Mixed Bag

From this point onward…almost anything goes when it comes to unique venues.

For instance: Chuck Salem of unique venues.com says that he is seeing heightened interest in dude ranches which, indeed, were very popular 15 years ago, but then they seemed to plunge into oblivion. They are back now, he says, and they also are getting good at hosting meetings and executive retreats. An example is Tanque Verde, in Tucson, which offers deluxe accommodations along with high-speed Internet and state-of-the-art audiovisual. It is keen to win business meetings. Particularly intriguing is the possibility of actually meeting while on horseback – but even if a group uses the ponies for recreation only, a dude ranch venue is sure to win fans. One caution: Many dude ranches are extremely spartan. Always double check the quality of food, meeting rooms, and sleeping rooms. Some ranches, such as Tanque Verde, earn high ratings. Others are more like Boy Scout campgrounds with stables. For some groups, the latter is just the ticket.

But don’t be surprised.

Waves as tall as skyscrapers and whales are the draws that make Benchmark Hospitality’s Turtle Bay Resort on Hawaii’s north shore a unique venue, at least in the December through April time frame when both are plentiful, according to Michael Wilkins, Turtle Bay’s director of sales and marketing. His resort also houses the Pacific Rim Conference Center, meaning it is very meetings-friendly with a state-of-the-art facility, but at Turtle Bay “every room has an ocean view,” says Wilkins, who adds that this is a location attendees won’t forget. “You sit on your lanai, watching the whales. That’s special.” Also special are the “in Hawaii only” activities offered by Turtle Bay such as a private luau – “you really must do a luau when you are here. This is Hawaii at its best,” says Wilkins in describing this combination picnic-dancing-music.

Or think Cold War – that’s the draw of the legendary bunker at the Greenbrier in West Virginia. Tryg Brody, executive director of sales at the resort, says that this once top-secret bunker – built to provide safe harbor for members of Congress in the event of atomic war with Russia – just keeps getting more popular with groups. “About 50 percent of our groups make some use of the bunker,” says Brody, who elaborates that the fundamental appeal of the facility is that meeting there is, in fact, to be a witness to history. No resort has anything comparable to these rooms – totaling over 100,000 sq ft, and perhaps 700 feet below the earth’s surface. Tours of the bunker began in 1995. Before 1992, official policy was to deny it existed. But in 1995 the Washington Post revealed its existence and soon thereafter it was declassified. In recent months, the Greenbrier has carved out five meeting rooms in the bunker. Don’t think a meeting there has to be staid. The Greenbrier can assist with hosting parties in the bunker using James Bond, M*A*S*H, or spy themes.

Sometimes nearby places also work as unique venues, a point put forth by Randy Misko, a sales executive with Skytop Lodge, a sprawling 5,500-acre resort, with 193 guestrooms, that sits high up in the Poconos Mountains. It is also comfortably within a two-hour drive from New York City and Philadelphia. Opened in 1928, the resort is a national trust historic hotel, but it also has been thoroughly modernized to house today’s meetings (and its facilities include a 30,000 sq ft meeting room). Skytop pricing is keen, Misko says. CMP (complete meeting package) pricing inclusive of rooms and meals rarely tops $350 per head on a group rate – and a plus is that this location lets groups participate in wholly different kinds of team-building activities. For instance: A very popular program teaches attendees how to track (game, people, whatever) in the forest. Misko assures that this is a property that goes the extra mile to make groups happy, and he cites a meeting by a major security company that wanted its executives to really get in the shoes of the company’s security guards – so Skytop let them use an old supply closet as a break-out room. More common are groups that want to use the outdoors – “we often let groups meet by the side of a stream,” says Misko – but the bigger point is that at Skytop a group probably will find the off-beat experience it craves.

Big rooms, bigger views – that’s what Harrah’s New Orleans gives guests, and although the property offers 7,000 sq ft of well-designed meeting space in the main building, the gambling action is in fact in a different building across the street. This is one casino hotel where there is no need to walk through banks of slots to get to a break-out. The other pluses offered by Harrah’s New Orleans include an extraordinary location that offers easy access to both the French Quarter and the rapidly gentrifying Warehouse District (which houses Emeril’s restaurant among other must-stops) and gorgeous views of the rolling Mississippi River from many rooms on higher floors of this 26-story property. Extraordinary pricing sometimes is available too, with midweek hot dates occasionally tagged at under $150, even for small groups.

Bottom line: Groups are tired of “been there, done that; they want new experiences,” says Disney’s Hamilton. This is a message meeting planners need to get – particularly when it is so easy to quickly source a growing list of unique venues that are geared up for meetings. When the urge to meet differently arises…just follow that instinct and watch the memories multiply among attendees as they continue to reminisce about “that special place.”

Tips and Trends

Hasta Mañana

Want really unusual? Benchmark Hospitality, the conference center leader, just may have the answer with a Latin flair. That’s because company CEO Burt Cabanas, in an exclusive Selling Power interview, acknowledged that Benchmark currently is looking at 12 possible conference center projects south of the border, including a jaw-dropping four possibilities in Chile and another three in Costa Rica. Cabanas, himself a Cuban immigrant, insists this expansion into Spanish-speaking America is driven by market opportunities. As businesses expand – particularly in Mexico, Chile, and Argentina – the need arises for world-class meeting facilities and, to Cabanas, that means Benchmark-style conference centers. Cabanas doubts all 12 projects will come to fruition in any reasonable time frame, but in the same breath he says that he fully expects to see three Benchmark conference centers operational in Central and South America within a few years. Note: Local businesses probably will be the bread and butter of these centers but, says Cabanas, there will be a trickle of business from U.S.-based companies that are looking for something very different, yet very close.

Rock the Casbah

Morocco is the place to watch, say attendees at the recent Arabian Hotel Investment Conference (AHIC). According to them, Morocco has the ingredients to become “the next Spain,” that is, an area of intensifying travel interest as well as rapid investment. The North African country received some 6.5 million tourists in 2006, up 700,000 from the previous year. Morocco has committed some $1.4 billion to the so-called Gateway to Morocco project, a multipronged effort to upgrade the tourist infrastructure. At least one hotel – Octogone TERRE Resort & Spa, outside Marrakesh, the storied Moroccan city – is busily trying to snare meetings by multinationals, and its pitch is that meetings can be held in tents (with air conditioning, of course)! Talk about a different meeting. Think China The global nature of 21st century business continues to inspire huge dreams on the part of destinations that really never factored into meeting planning before. Exhibit A is China, which nowadays is loudly talking about its plans to have 120 world-class conference centers by 2020. India also is making noises about wanting to be perceived as a meetings destination but, so far, that country’s infrastructure shortfalls (poor hotel supply, poor meetings facilities, and congested roads) are conspiring to keep India off the radar screen of most planners. Those same planners do take China’s ambitions seriously, however, and high on the to-do list of many planners working with Fortune 100 companies is researching venues suitable for meetings not just in Hong Kong, but also in Shanghai and Beijing.

Global Getaways

Can you name the globe’s top 10 meetings destinations as determined by foreign (primarily European) meeting planners? Stay tuned for surprises. According to data released at EIBTM, the annual global travel trade show, the top 10 meetings venues are: Vienna, Barcelona, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Budapest, and Stockholm, as well as the United States, South Africa, and Thailand. The most popular destination of all: Spain, with France also in the chase for the lead. Of course, EIBTM stands for European Incentive & Business Travel & Meetings, thus the heavy emphasis on the Continent. The useful take-away for U.S.-based meeting planners is of course how locals view their own turf (and aren’t you surprised that Vienna tops the list of cities?). •

Think Green

Watch 2007 emerge as the year when meeting attendees begin to demand that events be held at “green hotels.” Don’t scoff. There is even an association for member hotels – and the rallying cry is to create hotels that are environmentally friendly. How? “Green hotels” do little things such as serving drinking water on request only, to big things such as installing new, energy-efficient HVAC systems. Driving concerns are minimizing waste (using ceramic cups for coffee, not plastic cups), while minimizing unnecessary energy use. The Green Hotels Association even makes life simpler for meeting planners by providing a detailed questionnaire to submit to possible venues. There are 43 questions, covering the expected (“Does your property have an in-house recycling program?”) as well as the unexpected (“Will your property use chips or coins rather than disposable paper tickets for coat checking and auto parking?”). More proof that this is an idea that is cresting: already there’s a magazine devoted to covering this beat, the United Kingdom-based Green Hotelier. Know this: As environmental concerns rise, pressures on meeting venues will rise and many properties will scramble to become greener.