July/August 2005
17 tips for planning hotel shows

Producing a show at a hotel rather than a convention center presents some unique challenges. Most can be managed with proper planning and careful strategizing. Here’s how.

By Julie Ritzer Ross

Your exhibits are open and your educational program is in session, but instead of going to booths or workshops, attendees head upstairs to their hotel rooms. You planned an event for 500 delegates, but 750 people arrive, creating a shortage of food and beverages at meal functions and a standing-room-only situation in the back of every breakout room.

These are among the challenges that organizers can encounter when holding a show in a hotel rather than a convention center. “Hotel events are great; they create a strong sense of community and have high-level networking appeal, to name a few benefits,” says Scott Temple, Vice President of Reed Exhibitions (www.reedexpo.com), Norwalk, CT. “However, they also pose challenges.” Fortunately, most obstacles can be overcome with proper planning and careful strategizing. Here’s how.

Challenge: Hotel layout and parameters

1. Handle fire regulations head-on. Waiting until the last minute to put together and submit a show layout for the fire marshal’s approval can cause a major headache, says Dave Scypinski, Senior Vice President of Industry Relations for Starwood Hotels & Resorts (www.starwoodhotels.com) in Washington, DC. “For one thing, the fire marshal isn’t necessarily going to OK the plan the first time around; for another, more than one revision may be required,” he says.

To facilitate matters, Scypinski suggests discussing the fire marshal’s mandates with the hotel’s convention services manager or another senior hotel executive before signing a contract to use the property. Generally, these individuals maintain good relationships with local fire authorities and are familiar with some, if not all, of their requirements.

If hotel authorities are uncertain about what fire marshals may or may not allow, go straight to the source, urges Brian Stevens, President and CEO of Los Angeles, CA-based Conference Direct (www.conferencedirect.com), which booked just over 3,000 events into hotels in 2004 for its association and corporate clients. “In some cases, a hotelier will tell us in good faith that we can put exhibit booths in X amount of space, when the fire marshal will not accept booths in more than Y square feet of space,” he says. “Consequently, don’t sign on the dotted line until you’re certain what the fire marshal will and won’t permit, and you can live with that.” 

Scypinski also recommends asking that the hotel staff employ room-diagramming software, which most hotels have in-house, to diagram exhibit hall arrangements prior to sending plans to the fire marshal. It may save revision time later on.

2. Book all space, rather than only what you think you will need. “This gives you the flexibility of switching breakout room assignments around if you have a larger-than-anticipated crowd,” says Rand Baldwin, President of The Sanford Organization (www.tso.net), an association management company based in Wauconda, IL. It also eliminates the disruption and confusion that often occur when two or more groups book a hotel for the same dates.

If booking all space is impossible or cost-prohibitive for your group, inquire ahead of time how much room re-arrangement flexibility your group will have and how subsequent changes in audiovisual equipment requirements will be handled, says Temple.

3. Maintain open lines of exhibitor communication. If space constraints force you to place some exhibit booths outside the ballroom or exhibit hall, advise the affected parties well before the start of the show and provide some sort of compensation, sources advise.

Challenge: Directing traffic flow
4. Employ ample signage. Conference Direct posts oversized signs outside hotels’ main exhibit areas, as well as outside every room and in every corridor that houses exhibit booths. “When a show is spread out all over a hotel, no one wants to be standing somewhere wondering what’s behind room door number one, room door number two, etc.,” Stevens says.

Multiple signs should also be used to point attendees in the direction of every exhibit area, breakout room and ballroom. Creativity works well here: For an event held at a Chicago hotel, The Sanford Organization positioned life-sized cow sculptures along the route to the ballroom and breakout rooms. “Thought balloons” reading “This way to the ________” were affixed to each sculpture.

5. Add a personal touch. Some hotel chains, including Starwood, offer floor managers to direct traffic on individual levels of the property, guard against bottlenecks and ensure good flow. Reed augments directional signage with staff members whose job entails answering questions about room locations, and either directing attendees to their destination or accompanying them there. The latter “really makes delegates feel appreciated” and keeps aimless wandering to a minimum, says Temple.

6. Strike up the band. Baldwin says entertainment “works wonders” in marshaling traffic through hotel corridors. For a recent show, The Sanford Organization hired a brass band to lead a parade of delegates from the general session to the opening of the show floor. Several hundred people participated — and no one got lost, says Baldwin.

Challenge: Getting attendees out of their rooms
7. Wow them with programming. “Killer programming is the best incentive for keeping people engaged during the entire show and discouraging them from going up to their rooms in the middle of the day,” says Jeff Sacks, Vice President, Midwest Region for Conferon (www.conferon.com), Twinsburg, OH. Conferon's parent company, Conferon Global Services, plans over 3,000 events annually, more than half of which are hotel-based. The richer an event’s educational content and the more networking opportunities it presents, the less delegates are inclined to escape to their rooms, he says.

Paul Bowers, Group Vice President of Westport, CT-based Cygnus Media (www.cygnusb2b.com), cautions against being so considerate of attendees’ free time that the program does not include sufficient sessions to encourage participation. This past April, Cygnus launched the Airfield Operations Area Expo at a Milwaukee hotel for readers of the company’s Airport Business magazine. Each day of the event featured one morning session that lasted about one hour and 15 minutes, plus two afternoon sessions of the same duration. The sessions were well attended, but Bowers believes fewer delegates would have skipped them had another one or two sessions been incorporated into the schedule.

8. Offer incentives for visiting all exhibit booths. Reed plans to distribute a “Passport For Prizes” to every attendee of an upcoming medical conference in Chicago. All delegates whose “passports” have been stamped at every booth are eligible to enter a prize drawing. The grand prize will be an American Express Gift Cheque worth $500.

9. Position popular exhibitors’ booths as far from the exhibit hall entrance as possible. “Once people are in the hall to see the big draws, they’ll almost certainly stay around to see what else is there,” says Sacks.

10. Lure them with food. Sources suggest serving meals and holding coffee breaks right in — or worst-case scenario, at the entrance to — the main exhibit area. “This makes sense because needing to grab a bite is probably the No. 1 excuse for leaving the exhibit hall, and other distractions in the hotel may prevent a return,” Bowers says.

11. Bring the business center to attendees. While it isn’t always feasible, show managers can sometimes negotiate with hotels to set up business centers on the exhibit floor, says Scypinski. Certain properties may even consent to providing wireless exhibit floor “hot spots” from which delegates can access their e-mail and the Internet using handheld devices.

“Obviously, a business center of this kind is going to take up space,” says Scypinski. “However, it’s worth the sacrifice if people do not have to go to their rooms to attend to business during the course of the day.”

Challenge: Grappling with food and beverage
12. Develop contingency menus. Temple strongly recommends working with hotel food-and-beverage staff to devise a list of menu items that may be prepared at the last minute should a show attract a significant volume of unexpected on-site registrants.

“Know what the kitchen can handle with 20 minutes’ notice,” he says. “For example, there’s no way to come up with 500 baked potatoes in a short time, but 500 plates of French fries are a different story.”

13. Negotiate server ratios. “Remember, what hotel management thinks is adequate and what you want and need may not be the same at first blush,” says Sacks. “It can compromise the quality of service.”

Challenge: Addressing security concerns
14. Seek an experienced provider. If necessary, hire only a security firm whose personnel are familiar with guarding a hotel ballroom that has been turned into an exhibit hall. “The differences between a ballroom-turned-hall and a convention center exhibit hall are (such) that convention center experience doesn’t count,” says Temple.

15. Consider hiring extra guards. Investing extra money in private guards for the many entrance and exit points can be a worthwhile endeavor. Many hotels don’t have sufficient security staff, sources say.

16. Lock it up. Request that the security company be permitted each night to secure all unattended entrances to the exhibit hall, using its own chains and padlocks. Most hotels don’t have these chains and padlocks, so it’s a good idea for extra security.

17. Remind exhibitors to remove all portable items of value from the hall at the end of the day. Although it may seem obvious, “such equipment as laptop computers should definitely not be left unattended overnight,” says Scypinski.