Whether a group is a small fish in a big pond or just the opposite, there are trade-offs. But you can be sure of one thing: Even the largest hotels and resorts are taking small meetings more seriously these days.
“Small meetings provide a bigger percentage of business for larger hotels and resorts than people realize, and properties put a high value on them,” says Gary Schirmacher, CMP, senior vice president, Western region, for Experient, a meeting planning firm headquartered in Twinsburg, Ohio.
Hotels are smart to value small groups, he adds, pointing out that with their shorter lead times, small groups fill in the gaps between the larger pieces of business.
“In many cases, small meetings can be more profitable than large ones,” he says. “They might spend more per person than an association, providing good solid food and beverage business. And they are more likely to use the in-house AV and not bring in their own.
“Larger properties have figured this out,” he adds. “They’ve always gone after smaller meetings, but they are now more focused in their approach. They are openly saying, ‘We love small meetings.’”
Schirmacher also observes that many hotels are assigning dedicated staff members to respond quickly to leads from small meetings in order to “turn and burn” this type of business.
Similarly, Connie Bergeron, CMP, vice president-global sourcing at Benchmark 360, an Atlanta-based meetings and events company, says her company sees a trend for more hotels to aggressively target smaller, short-term meetings.
“With the slowing of RevPAR (increases) and the increase in the hotel room inventory in most major cities, smaller meetings are getting noticed more,” she says.
Bill Briscoe, Naples,Fla.-based chief industry relations officer for the site selection firm HelmsBriscoe, says his company is handling an ever-increasing number of small meetings these days and the hotel industry is receptive.
“In general, the hotel industry has learned the value of small meetings,” he says. “The small meetings are wonderful because they can fill out the calendar. They can make or break the success of a hotel.”
Gaylord Thinks Small
Although Gaylord Hotels is best known for its convention-oriented properties, it is among the hotel companies that are seriously courting small groups these days.
The company currently has three super-sized hotels: the 2,881-room Gaylord Opryland in Nashville, the 1,511-room Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, Texas, and the 1,406-room Gaylord Palms in Kissimmee, Fla. Next year it will add the 2,000-room Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center at the Potomac River outside Washington, D.C.
Gaylord promotes that its properties have everything under one roof with no need for shuttles or to put people in hotels across town. According to its website, it primarily targets groups that generate 600 or more peak room nights for an event. Booked two to four years in advance, these large groups generate 63 percent of Gaylord’s total room nights.
However, Mike Mason, senior vice president of sales for Gaylord Hotels, says 80 percent of groups meeting at Gaylord properties average 200 or fewer rooms, and no hotel can survive with only big meetings. Several years ago Gaylord launched a number of initiatives to better serve the smaller meetings market.
“We have taken steps to make ourselves a better fit for small groups, Mason says. “We have our hotel-within-a-hotel concept for groups that need between 10 and 175 rooms. To do this, we have taken several towers or wings in our hotels and upgraded them. The small group is put in the same area of the hotel to create a feeling of intimacy.”
Gaylord Opryland puts smaller groups in its Magnolia wing, while the Grapevine property offers the Texan Tower and the Palms offers the Emerald Bay wing. In each case, the wings offer their own meeting space. Gaylord National has been designed with the same concept.
Mason adds that Gaylord’s service and staffing are also designed to make small groups feel at home.
“Each group has a conference coordinator to act as a liaison between the group and the hotel,” he says. “Withsmaller meetings,what defines us is our level of service and the conference coordinator. It’s that person we assign to the group all day long who becomes an extension of the planner’s staff,” he says.
According to Mason, Gaylord has seen a rise in its small meetings business as the result of these initiatives.
“We’re getting more association board meetings and our corporate business has increased,” he says. “You can feel at home in a larger hotel and enjoy the spas, the pools and other amenities.”
Road to Mandalay
Even hotels in Las Vegas, the ultimate mega meetings destination, are working to make things comfortable for small groups.
A prime example is Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, a 3,309-room property with a 1 million-square-foot convention center—the fifth-largest in the nation—where the ballrooms range in size from 31,000 to 100,000 square feet. How does a small group fit into an outsized landscape such as that?
Quite well, as a matter of fact, according to Bryan Gay, executive director of sales for Mandalay Bay, who says the resort regards any meeting using from 15 to 200 rooms on peak nights as a small meeting.
“We call them executive meetings,” he says. “They account for 70 percent of all bookings. People are surprised to hear that. The percentage is pretty consistent year after year, and they are extremely important to our success.”
Gay adds that the resort’s huge number of over-the-top amenities, including two spas, restaurants operated by such celebrity chefs as Michael Mina and Wolfgang Puck and a swimming pool with an artificial beach, appeal to groups large and small. In fact, some on-property areas such as the Shark Reef are best suited to serve as venues for small groups.
“People want a wonderful experience and we can offer the best. We get lots of groups of 20 and have lots of places for team bonding,” Gay says.
Like Gaylord, Mandalay Bay offers a hotel-within-a-hotel concept, in the form of its 1,120-room tower, THEhotel, which was added to the property in 2004. Gay points out that THEhotel has four floors of meeting space, including more than 30 rooms accommodating 10 to 50 people. In addition, the convention center offers meeting rooms for 10 to 200 people.
For executive meetings, the resort has a dedicated team of five managers in sales and marketing, plus dedicated teams in catering.
Gay says previously, individual meeting managers would handle both large and small groups, but that has changed within the last year. Now an executive meeting manager either handles larger groups or executive meetings.
“It is working out excellently,” he says.
He adds that another recent staffing innovation that has been well received is the PDA—the professional detail associate—who is on the floor at all times for planners who need immediate assistance.
Big Boutique
Another good example of a large hotel that caters to small groups is the Atlanta Marriott Marquis in downtown Atlanta, which has 1,663 rooms and suites and 48 meeting rooms totaling 120,000 square feet. Groups using up to 50 rooms on peak nights at the hotel are considered small meetings.
According to Chris Anderson, the hotel’s director of sales and marketing, 75 percent of groups meeting at the hotel are in this category.
“We like to position ourselves as a large hotel with the accoutrements of a boutique hotel—we have the restaurants and health club but we also have boutique services,” he says.
According to Anderson, small in size doesn’t mean small in importance.
“Remember these are high-profile corporate meetings, and we have to keep this in the front of our minds,” he says. “We could have a pharmaceutical group of 1,500 but then we could also have a group of 40 franchise owners or CEOs, and we’ve figured out how to put them in small spaces.”
Anderson also emphasizes the importance of diversifying the mix of groups meeting at the hotel.
“What if you lose a large group? It’s always our plan to have many small groups,” he says.
In many cases, he says, there are advantages that a larger hotel might offer over a smaller property. While a small hotel may have primarily transient business and not be used for groups, a larger hotel that handles lots of meetings is more likely to have a professional staff and offer more services.
Meanwhile, the Marriott Marquis is expanding its meeting facilities. Currently in the midst of a $140 million renovation, it completed work on all rooms and suites last year. Work is underway on meeting space, with its 16,000-square-foot ballroom completed and its 29,000-square-foot ballroom next in line. When work is finished next year, the hotel will have a new third ballroom measuring 25,000 square feet, new restaurants and a new health club and spa.
Aiming to Please
In recent years, several hotel chains have launched company-wide initiatives to attract and serve small meetings. Among them is Crowne Plaza Hotels and Resorts, which has several specific services designed just for small and midsize meetings that, according to Kevin Kowalski, vice president of brand of management for the Atlanta-based company, generate 40 percent of Crowne Plaza’s overall revenue.
“Small meetings are our bread and butter,” Kowalski says, adding that the company has seen double-digit growth in the number of small and midsize events in recent years. “Starting in 2001, we saw a shift toward smaller, more regional meetings, not so much because of 9/11, but because of the sluggish economy. Corporations cut back on the big expensive events in favor of smaller meetings.
“Now, even though meetings demand has come way back, corporations are still doing smaller, more regional meetings,” he adds.
After seeking input from meeting planners across the country, Crowne Plaza rolled out a meetings services package that is available at all of its properties worldwide. Its three key components include a two-hour response guarantee to RFPs, the services of a Crowne Meetings Director who acts as a point of contact throughout the meeting, and a daily meetings briefing document with updated totals on expenses that include contracted billing, budget consumed to date and estimated final billing.
Wyndham Hotels also specifically targets small groups with a website, www.wyndhamsmallmeetings.com, that includes an online request form for anyone planning a small event, whether it’s a family renunion, seminar, training session or corporate meeting.
Regional Shop
Some hotel companies are also handling small meetings on a regional level, offering one-stop-shop service that covers several hotels. Such is the case with Marriott hotels in Hawaii, which includes the 1,310-room Marriott Waikiki Beach and the 387-room JW Marriott Ihilani Resort & Spa, both on Oahu, as well as the 345-room Kauai Marriott on Kauai, the 473-room Maui Wailea Beach on Maui, and the 533-room Waikoloa Beach on the Big Island.
Mark Barnes, director of marketing for JW Marriott Ihilani Resort and area director, group sales for the five properties, says at all the hotels, groups of 50 rooms or fewer are considered small meetings. All such meetings are served by members of the group sales team who handle only small meetings.
“Small meetings are our bread and butter, our lifeblood” Barnes says.
Although, for example, meetings account for only about 25 percent of business at Ihilani, the resort heavily depends on corporate groups and incentives in the first half of the year and in the fall.
