One + July 2011 - (Page S14)

“W ury hotel.” 14 e ended up having a wonderful and intimate experience in a luxury hotel and paid less than we would have paid for suites at another lux- Double Up When Australian planner James Fielder was putting together an incentive trip for a group of high-performing auto dealers in conjunction with the National Automobile Dealers Association conference in San Francisco last February, ﬁnding a bargain was actually the last thing on his mind. “These are 20 top-performing auto dealers, highly successful executives that were to be rewarded for their work,” said Fielder, CEO of Performance Incentives. “So there was no intent of pinching pennies on their accommodations; the goal was to make sure they had a wonderful time in America and felt rewarded.” But in performing the due diligence to ﬁnd just the right ﬁt for his relatively small group, Fielder discovered something else as part of the search—a relative bargain on room rates. “We like the Fairmont brand and looked into The Fairmont San Francisco, but as we looked at this magniﬁcent property, we realized that our little group of 20 would feel absolutely swallowed up in it,” he explained. “So at the recommendation of the Fairmont San Francisco, we tried the lesser-known sister property, the Fairmont Heritage Place, Ghirardelli Square, which is located in the historic Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory Complex.” The 53-unit, ﬁve-star hotel is made up entirely of residential suites, all offering kitchens and living rooms and all offering a view of San Francisco Bay, which lies just outside the hotel windows. And by using the two- and three-bedroom suites, and putting one group member in each of the bedrooms, Fielder realized a signiﬁcant savings on the per-attendee rate. “We have perhaps the highest rates in San Francisco, if you count one suite as being one room,” said Michal Karen Gordon, area director of travel industry sales for Fairmont Hotels & Resorts. “But if you house your group in two-bedroom suites, and occupy b both bedrooms, suddenly your group of 20 just needs 10 accommodations instead of j 20.” 2 What Fielder’s group got was an intimate setting, where the individual executives stays ing in the suites would gather in the kitchen i or the shared living room and enjoy the o camaraderie without having to go to the bar c or a common area of the hotel. There were o also balconies just outside the suites, where a the group members could gather overlookt ing the bay. i “We ended up having a wonderful and intimate experience in a luxury hotel and i paid less than we would have paid for suites p at another luxury hotel,” Fielder said. a Like Family L The in-house planners for a Canadian oil T company were a bit surprised when Janice c Cann, VP of sales for Vancouver-based CanC trav Services, a DMC, suggested the Four t Seasons Hotel Vancouver as the site for their S upcoming corporate event. u “They simply thought they could not afford it,” Cann said. “But when we started a to communicate in detail about the group’s t needs and goals for its event, we found that n the Four Seasons could put together an excelt lent event that was in fact in line with the l group’s budget.” g To do that, Cann says, the Four Seasons used bundling, a method in which all the varu ious services the group needed were factored i into a total budget that allowed the group to i get a break on room night costs. g Paul Li, director of sales at the Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver, says the bundling s technique is frequently used by upscale hotels t these days. t “It’s the rage in consumer marketing these days, like bundling of telephone and t Internet by a service provider, for instance, so I we in the hotel industry have started using w bundling as a method to offer cost savings to b our customers,” Li said. o The oil company group also held an L one+ 0 7.1 1 SUPPLEMENT

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of One + July 2011

One + July 2011
Contents
Energy of Many
Impressions
Paradigm Shifts, Part II
Web Watch
Agenda
Thoughts+Leaders
Ask the Experts
Recognizing Community and Organizational Excellence
Overheard
Art of Travel
The Prism Effect
Top Spots
Connections
Irrelevant
Using New Tech for Old Purposes
So You Think You Can Dance
Don’t Use Tech You Don’t Understand
Are You In It to Win It?
Anything is Possible
Night of the Radishes
Well Played
When People Come Together, Magic Happens
Size Matters
Building a Better FAM
One Bar at a Time
MPI + CSR
Industry Insights
Your Community
Making a Difference
Until We Meet Again

One + July 2011