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The Bellwether Group offers a service that helps admins with meeting planning. Their services are free to admins. From using meeting planning myself, I know from experience they have resources that are not available to admins, and can get the locations you want, most times at a cost saving. I interviewed Michael Reader, the CEO of Bellwether, to give admins a better idea of what a meeting planning service can do.
The
Bellwether Group is a full service meeting planning company which has
about 25 employees located throughout the U.S. and Canada.
The company significantly consists of former hotel sales
professionals. Meetings.com is simply our web site.
What is your role? [Michael Reader]
My
role as CEO is simply to navigate the functionality of the company.
The company's role is to provide meeting management services whereas we
save our clients a lot of money and time. By using the services of
Bellwether, an organization can be represented to the hotel industry by
a firm that plans hundreds of meetings each year. Our buying power
and knowledge of the hotel industry is the key to our clients
saving money.
For those who have never used a meeting
planning service what services do you provide?
[Michael Reader]
A
client can call us or visit our website and indicate their meeting
plans, such as: where, when, budget, and meeting space
specifications. We go to work by "shopping" the client's
meeting in the regions indicated. After a list of hotels are
identified that have availability and are within the desired
price range, we forward that information on to the client. After
the client chooses a destination, we negotiate with the property
concentrating on items such as room rate, meeting space rental,
complimentary rooms, attrition clauses and cancellation clauses.
This
is called the
Research
and Review
How do these services benefit admins, and those planning meetings? [Michael Reader]
Time
and Money! When an admin is given the task of planning a
meeting, they can simply call us and tell us about their event, sit
back and relax and we will have is wrapped up in a few days.
Another great benefit of our services is that Admins can earn point
while using our services for items such as airline tickets, rental
cars and cruises. This information can be viewed at Preferred
Planner Program
What is a RAR? [Michael Reader]
An
RAR
is a Rate and Availability request. When the
RAR
form is completed,
we "shop" the meeting and perform the services mentioned
above.
What in your experience are the biggest challenges facing meeting planning for admins? [Michael Reader]
Time.
Planning meetings is typically not an every day task to be performed.
If you pulled an event out of your brag book, which event and what did you do? [Michael Reader]
Siebel
Systems called us a few months ago in a frenzy stating that they needed
to get 300 people together in New York within 45 days. They had
tried a couple of other meeting planning companies with no luck.
We were able to locate a facility within 3 hours and setup a
registration web site within 2 days. The meeting went off with a
splash and we were commended as the heroes.
Thank you Michael, is there anything you would like to add in closing? [Michael Reader]
Our
services and streamlined and very easy to use. Try us! We
can assist anyone who has a meeting to plan On Land, On Line, or in The
Air.
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