A meeting facility is often knocked out of contention because it falls just a few seats shy of being able to hold a particular group. But what if that facility were able to add enough seats to comfortably accommodate your attendees, while still adhering to fire codes and not adding to your budget?
Increasing Capacity, Decreasing Headaches
The savvy meeting planner can request an improved room setup even if the facility does not include it in its brochure or spec sheet. If you really know your stuff, you can advise the meeting facility's sales and marketing staff, as well as convention operations, that they can accommodate your group in spite of what they see as a spatial limitation. A little wager with the facility on space utilization might even get you a discount, especially when the facility gets immediate gains in the form of a booking with you and the ability to accommodate larger groups. One example is illustrated in the diagram above, which shows a standard straight row theater setup and a simple curved row seating arrangement. The space is identical, but the results are that set in straight rows it seats 80, while curved row seating accommodates 94. That is a gain of 17.5 percent in capacity.
Everybody wins. You become a hero to your boss and organization because you secured meeting space at a lower per-attendee cost without having to engage a larger, more costly meeting space. You provide your participants better lines of sight and the ability to connect with clients, members, or colleagues in an intimate space. The facility fills more beds and makes more on food and beverage.
If you work with a facility that will make such an adjustment, encourage it to update its meeting specifications sheet and publicity to document the higher numbers of attendees it can host and entertain. The space itself remains unchanged, but the staff have learned how to set it better—not only for more capacity, but for line of sight, opportunities for networking, access to chairs, and closeness to the presentation as well. The facility will be up and running with a new branding advantage even before the brochures come back from the printer.
Photographs of the space with the improved seating configurations will help the meeting's stakeholders to better visualize how their group can use the space more productively. They will also help new facility staff to grasp the setups if spec sheets have not been updated to indicate the increased seating limits. Photos are far superior to the typical computer-generated outlines of chairs in various configurations set within the room diagram. And the facility can easily put those photos on the website for clients.
Through the Grapevine
A meeting facility that provides real customer service generates its own word-of-mouth marketing. Meeting planners want as few hassles or surprises as possible in putting on their meetings. Facilities accommodating larger numbers of groups, while maintaining quality services, will win raves from planners.
One Michigan Society of Association Executives meeting planner member, when she heard that Grand Traverse Resort knew how to provide room sets like this, commented, "Oh, what a relief that they know how! I'm holding a meeting there, and I'll request these setups."
Paul O. Radde, Ph.D., is a practicing psychologist, speaker, and author of Seating Matters: State of the Art Seating Arrangements (2009), available at www.thrival.com. Dr. Radde can be contacted at (303) 682-4330, [email protected].