Successful Meetings - December 2007 - 50

Technology Report OFFICE FOR HIRE Hotels offer business centers in all shapes and sizes to fill the needs of planners and attendees alike By Michael Goldstein These days, meeting planners and attendees alike carry as much computing firepower in their briefcases and purses as the Apollo space program used to put men on the moon. “We’re good road warriors, with our laptops and do-everything phones, but even the best of us needs support,” says David Furnish, director of sales at Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center. For delegates keeping up with business back home and planners handling the needs of the meeting, the business center can be a life raft in a sea of stress. fax in my show office, because people didn’t know that number in advance.” Like many meeting planners, she regards the business center as a “necessary evil” for shipping and receiving packages, equipment rentals, printing, copying, collating, data entry, and file transfers. “Business center prices are still very, very high; they punish you for using it. The reason they don’t get more business is because of the cost—it’s the chicken and the egg. But Furnish rejects this “necessary evil” rap. “We’re up-front on what our charges are. It’s either an amenity that they can utilize or not. Sometimes planners can do it cheaper in a ‘war room,’ but sometimes they can’t—if they have to rent and ship in big printers for an executive meeting of 10 to 20 people, for example.” “I had a light-duty copier in my office, but it wouldn’t handle bigger copy jobs,” says the planner. “If we had a half day’s notice we’d ‘go’ to Kinko’s by sending the stuff electronically. A nearby Kinko’s makes me happy; it’s a trusted brand and you know what you’re going to get. But for short lead time stuff you go to the business center.” Delegates have slightly different needs. “They’ll work in their room, and only come mimegasite.com down for shipping or printing, whether it’s poster size or just a boarding pass. With our secure system, they can’t use a business center PC, so they have to bring their own laptop anyway.” The technical expertise of the people running a business center can vary from knowledgeable to capable of little more than simply running your credit card. (Although, to be fair, most hotels have further expertise a phone call away.) And while hotel business centers can be lifesavers, if your technology needs are even a little out of the ordinary, they may not be able to accommodate you. For example, it’s extremely rare to find a Macintosh computer in a hotel business center. The planner we spoke with had other issues. “Usually, the IT department is not managed by the business center, or viceversa—the business center might get you a laptop, but you have to go through the IT department to get Internet access. Planners want this to be a more streamlined process.” Internet access is often a bone of contention. “In too many hotels, there’s a guest room Internet access charge, a lobby or public space charge, and significant charges for providing access to data in meeting rooms,” the planner says. “It’s DECEMBER 2007 SUCCESSFUL MEETINGS BUSINESS CENTERS: A PLANNER’S PERSPECTIVE How do planners use business centers? One meeting planner for a large insurance company notes that her protected corporate network lets her and her delegates access email only from their company laptops. “So I get my e-mails in my room, e-mail them to the business center or download the files to my USB jump drive, run to the business center with my drive, and print. “I use the business center for last minute things, like agendas, numbers, data—we’re not printing gigantic syllabi. And at our sales meeting, faxes were sent to the business center, even though I had a 50

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Successful Meetings - December 2007

Successful Meetings - December 2007
Contents
Editor's Note
Special Report
Research
Industry Trends
2008 Meeting Events
Planner Spotlight
Websites of the Month
Mouth for Sale
Technology Talk
Food & Beverage
Pre-Event
On Site
Pre-Event
Tools of the Trade
Goodbye, Booth Babes
Five Tips to Improve Your Golf Events
When Crime Pays
Office for Hire
More Miles for Your Money
Places & Spaces
South Florida
Biloxi / Mississippi Gulf Coast
Fort Worth
Monterey
Beijing
Gurus
Special Supplement: Hawaii Island-by-Island Guide

Successful Meetings - December 2007