Part One of TwoGranted, there are lots of foreseeable challenges involved in the event management business. But what happens when something completely unforeseeable occurs?
Prior to last fall at the Global Events Partners (GEP) annual "Best Practices" meeting in Dallas, one of our destination management company partners related an unfortunate situation connected with an event held in one of his local markets. The situation involved a meeting planner who had contracted for a DMC's services and, following an accident, was left to pick up the pieces.
The story resonated with many of our partners and our clients, and we realized that the issue of risk management was on the minds of many in the industry.
We wondered whether it would be possible to articulate a standard for ensuring proper risk coverage connected with eventsone that would remove that burden from the shoulders of planners and ensure that all parties are adequately protected.
We invited Steve Levin, a senior vice president at travel and meetings industry insurer The Berkely Group to address the Best Practices session. His presentation was enthusiastically received, and the feedback was immediate. U.S.-based DMC partners in attendance agreed that a uniform standard governing risk was a good idea, and the contours of the standard quickly began to take shape.
Here is the standard for U.S.-based DMCs, which was unanimously adopted by GEP's Partners America's Advisory Board at the Dallas meeting, and that, moving forward, all domestic GEP DMC partners must adopt. It's a set of criteria that every meeting planner should apply to every DMC they work with:
* Maintain the current certificates of insurance of all your key suppliers for a minimum of $1 million in liability.
* Require key suppliers to name the DMC involved in an event as additionally insured.
* The DMC should conduct at least one annual meeting with key suppliers to reiterate safety and service expectations and to review insurance and vendor agreements.
* Require a signed supplier agreement asserting compliance with all laws, ordinances, licenses, permits, rules and regulations, and service levels commensurate with the highest standards of the industry.
The standards are clear, and so is the business benefit: When a meeting planner enters a new or unfamiliar market as the client of a domestic Global Events Partner, he or she no longer needs to worry about whose liability is attached to the subcontractors engaged by the DMC. The liability standards are clearly articulated and detailed up front.
What does it mean in practice?
It means, for example, that any transportation provider engaged by the Global Events Partner will need to meet the standardand should an accident occur, the planner will be covered.
It means, potentially, greater flexibility in planning programs. With risk management clearly understood up front, program options can open up wider and include activities the planner might not have otherwise considered.
It means, finally, peace of mind: The planner can "check off" the risk management box in her planning notebook and move on to other things, like working with the DMC to plan and execute the best possible event!
In Part Two of this column next month, some of our DMC Partners will take you inside the process, and talk about what the new standard means to event planning practitioners in the trenches.
Chris White is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Global Events Partners (GEP), a partnership of destination management companies (DMCs) worldwide. For more information on GEP and a complete list of all GEP performance standards, please visit
www.globaleventspartners.com/gep-worldwide-partners.php.Originally published April 01, 2008For more ideas, tips, and tools for better meetings and events,
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