Nancy Nachman on Finding and Contracting Hotels for Offsite Meetings

Nancy · 0:00

Hi, I'm Nancy Nachman, the Meetings Concierge, and today's leadership quote is by Robert Frost from The Road Not Taken. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

Speaker 3 · 0:27

The Leader Assistant Podcast exists to encourage and challenge assistants to become confident, game-changing leader assistants.

Jeremy · 0:44

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Nancy · 1:46

Thank you so much, Jeremy. I'm thrilled to be here and can't wait to share some meeting planning tips with Executive Assistants.

Jeremy · 1:56

Awesome. What part of the world are you in?

Nancy · 1:58

I'm in Scottsdale, Arizona, so I'm bragging about it in the good months, and we don't talk about our weather in the summer. But I happen to live in a gorgeous place. I love living here.

Jeremy · 2:10

Love it. Are you from that area?

Nancy · 2:12

No, I am from Omaha, Nebraska. In my travels and my hotel career, I say in every corner of the country and the middle, and I'm happily staying put in Arizona, but I've moved around quite a bit in my hotel career, and I loved it. I lived in some great places along the way.

Jeremy · 2:34

Nice, nice. Well, what is your favorite thing to do when you're not working?

Nancy · 2:40

Well, I always dreamed of being on the Food Network as a chef, but that didn't work out. I love to cook, absolutely positively. It is my joy. Going in my kitchen is my zen. I know it's not for everybody, but it's just my happy place. So that's where you'll find me in my kitchen.

Jeremy · 3:02

Love it. Do you have a genre you like to stick with when it comes to cooking?

Nancy · 3:08

I like making food that tastes high calorie, maybe in a bit fattening, but is so healthy and not fattening and so delicious. I think salad sandwiches, I'm really known for my amazing. I make airplane sandwiches for anybody that departs from Arizona going somewhere, and I'm known for my fabulous airplane sandwiches that I send people off on.

Jeremy · 3:36

Wow. Interesting. Do you cut them into little airplane shapes too for the kids?

Nancy · 3:41

It really depends upon the audience. I pack different food if it's a family or a couple, and I know somebody likes this and somebody doesn't like that. I take menu selections.

Jeremy · 3:56

Nice. I might have to fly to Arizona just so that I can fly back with some of your food.

Nancy · 4:00

Believe me, you'll never forget it.

Jeremy · 4:04

Love it. Well, it's great to chat with you. We're going to jump into really, you've been doing event planning, meeting planning, the meetings concierge, as you call yourself in the intro. How did you get into this world?

Nancy · 4:24

Well, the short story of the long story is unbeknownst to me, I guess I was a born traveler. Living in the Midwest, my dad used to pile us in the car in the summer and off we go into what I called the wild blue yonder and we would travel to see what Mount Rushmore, and all kinds of interesting places and visit family. When the day was over, there were a couple of choices of places to stay, a holiday inn on one side of the road and a Howard Johnson's on the other. The Howard Johnson's had a restaurant and amazing food. So I would always beg my dad, please let's stay at the Howard Johnson's because I didn't want to get back in the car and drive to dinner. Now, let's fast forward traveling in my childhood and whatnot. I go into college, I'm studying business, I have no idea what I want to do. My dad's like, go into business, like, okay, I'm going to business. But I accidentally found my sophomore year, a program called Hotel, Restaurant and Travel Administration. And I went to my counselor and I said, can you actually get a job and make a living doing something fun, like working in a hotel? And he's like, yeah, this is a well-known career. So I fell into that and graduated and then went off to work for a lot of different hotel companies in sales, taking care of people who were calling up, is it available? How much does it cost, et cetera? And my clients were executive assistants the whole way through my hotel career. And I always I'm a very giving person. I love to give things away like good information. And I couldn't tell my executive assistant clients these little secrets and tips that I have when you're planning meetings so that you never fall down and skin your knee. And your executives and guests always say, Oh, my goodness, that was an incredible meeting. And how did you find this place? And it was so well planned. And you don't forget anything. Because, you know, when you work for a hotel company, I'm supposed to charge the most I possibly can. And I don't tell you that your competitor is already booked in over your dates. Or I know my spa is going to be closed over your date. So I let you get to that signed contract. And then I'm like, well, I'm really sorry, but the spa will be closed, but we'll make do and make, you know. So anyway, long story short, I've really dreamed about having a service to help executive assistants who plan meetings to make it better. And that's the short story of the long story. And here I am. And so, yeah, I've got lots of things to share.

Jeremy · 7:11

Nice, nice. Well, let's jump in then about, you know, why do you find that executive assistants are often the ones handed the planning and the administration and the coordination of these events?

Nancy · 7:33

Well, the old fashioned Nancy and me that grew up in the 70s and 80s would say, because women know how to plan events, but now we're not just women in executive assistant roles, thank goodness, and thank goodness, the executive assistant industry is elevated way beyond planning parties. But I think it comes down to the fact that as an executive assistant, you're highly detail oriented and to plan an event or a meeting, you have to be highly detail oriented and most executives are not.

Jeremy · 8:11

That's a good way to put it, that's for sure.

Nancy · 8:14

Yeah, go ahead.

Jeremy · 8:15

Executives who are not detail oriented are not listening, right? So we don't have to worry about offending them.

Nancy · 8:20

If they are, then find an associate to help become your teammate or tell your executive, if somebody else is better at doing this than me, because don't take things on that you're going to fall down and stumble is my rule.

Jeremy · 8:35

Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. So what is the process then, you know, if I get a call or a text from my executive says, hey, I want to take the whole team to Scottsdale and I want to have a fun experience and we need to have a nice hotel with good food and an event space so that we can have a big meeting, ra-ra together. I just got that text. What's my first step?

Nancy · 9:08

Where do you begin?

Jeremy · 9:09

Yeah.

Nancy · 9:10

Okay. So where you begin is exactly like you were just saying. It's called an agenda and you cannot start planning a meeting or an event without an agenda. And the agenda contains exactly what you were mentioning, like the city you want to go to. You mentioned wanting a resort or a place that's known for their good food. So you kind of start making notes and then from there, an agenda has to develop, which drives executives crazy. But if you do not know exactly what's going to happen minute by minute, day by day, you really cannot ask a hotel, are you available or ask a hotel, how much will it cost? Because you don't know what you're asking for. So the hard part of an executive assistant's job is to sit down with their executive and literally say, are we arriving Monday, May 26th? Is everyone arriving that day? The boss will say, oh gosh, no, Sunday we're going to need some rooms because we've got international guests coming. So how many rooms will you need on Sunday? You literally have to plan out from the exact arrival day until the last day when your guests are going to be departing and no one's sleeping in the hotel any longer. Day by day from like 10 a.m., we're having a break and at 12 noon, we start our lunch with a speaker. It will end at 2 p.m. Breakouts will start in the afternoon. We need four. How many breakout rooms do you need? From what start and end time? That is a crucial thing when you're asking hotels for availability. You must know your start and end times for every single event you're going to put together. And the number of people at each event. And how you want your meeting room set. Do you want square tables or crescent rounds where you have a round table, but only there are five chairs around them? You have to know if you are wanting to have your food served in a buffet in the foyer outside of the meeting room, and your guests will take a plate and sit at their chair and desk and eat in the meeting room. Or, do you want to get out and give people a break and give them a separate room for lunch? Or are you not hosting a lunch? So, it's really hard in an executive assistant's position to get all these details so that you can check availability. But your job as a meeting planner slash executive assistant is to, I guess you would call it, elevate yourself to the C-suite. And you're much more than a meeting planner, you're more than an executive assistant, you are spending a good bit of money for the company, you're putting an event together, it kind of falls on your shoulders. So, you have to kind of learn that managing it is part of your role and be comfortable with that to make things happen. But what I wanted to share with you, other than having an agenda, of course, which is super important to check availability, are the top three things I always say you must, must, must have when you're planning a meeting. And there's a few more I'll share with you, but the top three are site inspections. When you have decided that you're going to Scottsdale and you've got four resorts that have offered availability and you're thinking all four could work, it's very, very important to not ever sign a hotel contract until you go and see the hotel for yourself. And I know some of you are listening and saying, absolutely, my company would never have a sign a contract without sending me on the site visit. And some of you are sitting there saying, no way would my company send me on a site visit. And I understand both, but I always use the analogy that you would not say I do and marry someone without meeting them. And what you see on the web and the hotel's internet, the hotel's website, blah, blah, blah, is not always the picture because a Marriott in one city can use a Marriott in another city's photos on their website. It does happen, I will tell you. You don't know a neighborhood without driving to that location. You don't know if there's a sewage system that runs behind the hotel, whereas the area has this funky smell around it. There are so many crazy things you don't know unless you go and look. So that's my number one advice. If you're spending all this money and you want it to be just so, go look, go look. And maybe if you can't find somebody in your organization, even a friend that you trust in the city, where you've got hotels, send somebody out for a look-see. The second thing is, I highly, highly, highly recommend that you as an executive assistant never, ever, ever sign the hotel contract. And again, I know some of you are saying, oh, I would not, my company would never let me. And others are thinking, I'm allowed to sign up to X amount of thousands of dollars in my company. But I've seen so many things happen over the years where the hotel salesperson leaves, the executive assistant leaves, and the hotel can sometimes even go after that executive assistant in his or her new job because your name is on the contract. And the company could say, well, we didn't authorize her or him to sign the agreement. I've seen it all. And so I always tell my executive assistants, get your executive to sign the contract. Don't put your name on a piece of paper that is worth thousands and thousands of dollars sometimes. Be very careful. And my last thing is a thing that you must, must, must have in every hotel contract. We'll talk about others, but this one, I think, is crucial, and it's called no relocation. The hotels might have it in the contract listed as no walk or our walk agreement, and walk is just a hotel term meaning your guest is going to take a walk and we're going to relocate them to another hotel if we're sold out. And you want to have a no relocation clause in your contract. The num, I, I just, just don't ever agree not to have it because again, like airline seats and hotels, places fill up and overbook and oversell. You don't want your executive, your guests, your speaker to arrive at midnight and be said, told, sorry, we just gave our last room away and we're putting you next door at the Ritz-Carlton. Yay. Well, you don't want to be next door at the Ritz-Carlton. So make sure you have that, that in your contracts.

Jeremy · 16:23

Super helpful. So site visit, don't sign the contract yourself and make sure that no relocation is included.

Nancy · 16:31

Very important.

Jeremy · 16:32

Yes.

Nancy · 16:33

Yes.

Jeremy · 16:34

Love those tips. Super practical.

Nancy · 16:36

You know, one thing I wanted to also say, Jeremy, is about change. You know, when you plan a meeting every day, somebody is going to say, let's add a breakout or why are we having a dinner or, oh my gosh, we forgot to invite these 14 or, oh gee, these dates aren't going to work anymore. So be flexible. You have to be very flexible when you plan events because you're going to get requests from your executives for changes. And then you're going to have to go to the hotel who has got to be your best, best, best friend in the whole wide world that you treat with tender loving care to get what you want and need. And the reason I say that is because everyone is harassed and hassled these days, has no time, and there aren't enough hotel salespeople back working in hotels and conference services people as there were before the pandemic. A lot of people lost their jobs, our industry went in the tanks for a couple years, and hotels lost so much money, they didn't hire a lot of people back. Thankfully, on the floors, like your service staff, your kitchen staff, thank goodness, are in full swing at every hotel in the world right now, and service is excellent. We don't hear any poor comments about service, thank goodness. But getting a salesperson to call you back, getting a conference person, salesperson to call you back when you're trying to find out if it's available, find out how much does it cost. Your boss is like, don't you know already? So be aware that educate your executives that things take longer now. And we have to be alone a lot more patient, not a little more. But you have to nudge people, constant emails, but very kind, because people will respond to kindness much more quickly than they will to, I emailed you a week ago and you still haven't called me, even though that's what we're thinking.

Jeremy · 18:35

Right, right. Awesome. Well, what is the best way to find these these hotels? So, yeah, you know, you you have maybe one option and you're going for a site visit, but how do you narrow it down to the best hotels before you even spend that money and time going to do site visits?

Speaker 2 · 19:06

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Nancy · 19:49

I'm thinking that there's a few, I mean, okay, I just have to say that there are independent meeting planning services out there that do this sort of thing for customers, and that's a huge advantage time-saving wise, because we have resources that not everybody has to quickly find information. But if you're just looking to find a golf resort in Scottsdale, Arizona, Google it. I mean, just, you know, your searches will bring up the top choices. And another great resource is TripAdvisor. And the reason I say that is I use it too. If a client's looking at like to go to London, I haven't been to three or four hotels, I'll look and see what are the current most five, six, seven, eight comments on TripAdvisor. And you can quickly find out. People will say, oh my gosh, don't go there, the neighborhood was really scary. Or, incredible service, everyone was so nice, I couldn't be happier, such a great view. So confirm you're looking on quickly on TripAdvisor. Another great free resource is every city, pretty much in the world where you're going to have a meeting, has a Convention and Visitors Bureau, not a convention center, but a Convention and Visitors Bureau, it's called. And if you just Google Tokyo Convention and Visitors Bureau, there'll be a link always on every Convention and Visitors Bureau's website called Meeting Planners, and you want to click on that. And through that portal, you will find hotels, you will find restaurants, you will find off-site activities, and a million things and a way to contact them. So that's another free service that's available to Executive Assistants or anyone who plans meetings to have this Convention and Visitors Bureau send out your request for proposal to hotels, and the hotels would respond directly to you. It's a free service. So that is, that's another way.

Jeremy · 21:57

And what's maybe some red flags when you're either on the phone with the hotel or on, you see it on their website or maybe you can see it in some reviews about that particular venue. What are some of your top red flags to kind of say, oh, you know what, this is, we need to find a different spot.

Nancy · 22:16

Location, location, location is what I say. You can have a three-star hotel in a fabulous location and have an amazing experience. You can have a four-star hotel in a crummy location and be like, oh, we'll never stay there again. So I think, I think researching location is key. Obviously, there's typical times where you have to be in a certain location. But if you're open to the city of Scottsdale, for example, you know, we have a lot of different great properties and a lot of different locations. So I think looking for locations. If you read on any reviews about the neighborhood not being good, which goes with location, another thing is the cleanliness. If you read things where it says, my sheets were dirty, there was hair in the bathroom, there was no maid service. Run. Cleanliness and location are key elements to at least getting the familiar feeling that you're going to be in a good place. And also through the Convention and Visitors Bureau, there are salespeople. You can ask them. There's ways to contact them and email them. It's very easy to find. You can ask them, you know, like, our group is this kind of group or our executives are these kind of people. This is the things we like to do. This is an area we'd like to be in. And they'll guide you and lead you to choices, which is great in their city.

Jeremy · 23:54

Yeah. Well, okay. So you've been doing this for a while. What are your favorite hotels or venue spaces in the US., for example?

Nancy · 24:10

In the US.

Jeremy · 24:12

Maybe like one West Coast and one East Coast, or if you have any?

Speaker 3 · 24:15

Okay, sure.

Nancy · 24:16

Oh gosh, I have so many. That's my problem. So for me personally, if I were choosing where I could stay anytime, I'm a five-star kind of hotel woman and I like a hotel that has amazing room service. Those are my things. My husband always asked me, I thought your meeting was on Tuesday. Why are you going Monday? And I'm like, because I want room service dinner Monday night. You know, there's a really fabulous resort in California that I just love. It's in Southern California. It's about 45 minutes from LAX, south of LAX, called Terranea, T-E-R-R-A-N-A-E. Yeah, Terranea. It's an independent property. It's sumptuous and fabulous and lovely. Absolutely love that. And then here in Scottsdale, we just have opened two new hotels. One is called the Global Ambassador. I know it's a strange name and I'm still trying to swallow that one. But he, the guy, is a Global Ambassador. Sam Fox is the owner and it's the coolest city hotel. And then Caesar's Republic just opened a property here too. So we have so many amazing resorts here and it's amazing. I'm surrounded by some fabulous properties here. Probably my number one Scottsdale resort would have to be the Fairmont Princess. It's just got it all. And then let's see East Coast. You know, I just automatically think of New York City because I love New York City. And I think my number one favorite hotel there right now has got to be the Mandarin Oriental. Love that. And then there's a really cool resort called the Inn at Blackberry Farm. It's in Tennessee, and it's a country hotel, but it's really high end. They have their own orchard and gardens and horses and you name it. So it's a fabulous place for like a retreat. Gosh, we could talk hotels all day and I wouldn't get tired of it until we started cooking and eating.

Jeremy · 26:37

No, that's great. Super helpful. Thanks for the recs and definitely people definitely have to check that out. Awesome. Well, is there anything else when you're okay? So let's say you found the hotel and you already talked about doing a site visit. You know, don't sign the contract yourself. Have your executives sign it. Make sure there's the no locations in there. What about the price? How is the how much negotiation room do you have when talking to these venues?

Nancy · 27:10

That is an absolutely excellent question for two reasons. Number one, everything is negotiable. And don't be afraid to negotiate, because when I worked in hotels and I would have executive assistants say, OK, to every price I quoted, I'd be like, gee, this is good, because my bonus depended upon you paying a lot of money for things.

Jeremy · 27:34

Right.

Nancy · 27:35

And then others would say, well, that's too much. Or my boss is trying to keep the rate under this or, gosh, we paid only this last year. How can we save some money this year? So salespeople are waiting for you and accustomed to discussing it. So people hear the word negotiation and they get like their throat closes and they don't want to ask for things or say things. But you're you're having a discussion. Just look at it like that. And it's a comfortable discussion because fortunately it's not your money. It's your company's money. So it's not coming out of your bank account. But you should treat it like it is. You know, you always want to save your organization money every which way you can while still putting on the wits, so to speak. So a little trick is if you get hotel room rates from a hotel and you really want a particular hotel, you can contact them and say, let's say they quoted $349. You can tell them, we really are trying to keep this no more than $300 a night. Shoot low, because if they come back and say, well, we can do $325, but that's the best we can do. There you go. You've won. And there's lots and lots of little ways to save money, and it's not just on the room rate. But here's the thing about what you really have to know about prices. The hotel room rates is where the hotel makes their biggest profit. So if the room rate is $300 a night, the profit to a hotel is about $250, because it can't cost more than $50 to have a housekeeper come in and quickly clean a room and change the bedding, etc. So there's a huge profit to hotels. Where there is less wiggle room and less negotiation or discussion is food costs. Because as we all unfortunately know, food has gotten insanely expensive and now you go to a hotel and it's like four times what it was two years ago. The cost to plant the seed, harvest the product, get it to the market, get it into the hotel, have it stored so it's fresh and ready for your guests, have it served with the lights on and electricity and freshly shampooed rugs and uniformed waiters with insurance plans and salaries and there's so many costs to get that steak on the plate, as we call it, and that there's not a lot of wiggle room. So don't try and wiggle room on food costs. Wiggle room on meeting room rental, you can try your best and you should. My philosophy is never pay meeting room rental. You've got my guest rooms, you've got my food and you're already charging me a fortune for the wine, etc. And I always try and discuss or negotiate no meeting room rental. If they, you know, sometimes a hotel is going to put the wall up and say, sorry, this is it, that's the best we're going to do. And then you'll talk to your executives and they'll say yes or no. But, you know, do your best to try and save money everywhere you can. The AV thing, let's talk about that really quickly, because I call that the budget killer. The audiovisuals, your screen, your microphone. It's insane what they charge. So hotels do not have storage closets, and so they're not owning that equipment that you're renting. Unless they're maybe have five LCD projectors, and they quit every day, every day, every day. But most hotels don't have a storage closet, and you don't want them to, because technology is always changing for the better, and the newer and the better and the smaller and the faster is coming out. So they outsource to an AV company in that city, and they bring it in and rent it for your time period, and then they charge you double, triple, quadruple what the AV company is charging them. But try to negotiate directly with the AV company. Ask your hotel sales manager, do I negotiate audio-visual pricing with you or with your AV provider? Some hotels have their own in-house provider, some do not, but try and get to the actual provider if you can. If you can't negotiate with the hotel, tell them what you need. Don't ask, you can ask for a price list, but there's 5,000 things on the price list. Tell them you need the microphones and the power strip cords, et cetera, and ask them for their very best discounted rate. That's another way to save money, is on the AV portion. The room rate, always negotiate the room rate until a hotel tells you, sorry, that's the best rate I can give you, then you'll know.

Jeremy · 32:41

Yeah, totally.

Nancy · 32:43

But look at it as a discussion, not a negotiation. You're just discussing things.

Jeremy · 32:49

Super, super helpful. Thank you so much.

Nancy · 32:52

My pleasure.

Jeremy · 32:52

This is great, great tips. And Nancy, this is lots of note-taking, I know, from assistants listening, and we as assistants get stuck with the event planning and negotiating and talking about the AV stuff. And so I really think this is going to be really valuable for assistants all over the world.

Nancy · 33:14

It is valuable because it's fun to plan meetings and events. I think it's for me, I think a lot of people who do it, they really, really enjoy it. It's a perk almost to your job if you enjoy it. But having all these little tips and tricks will make it a little easier for you and clear when you're asked to plan your next meeting.

Jeremy · 33:37

Perfect. Well, Nancy, what's the best way for people to reach out if they have more questions about this process, if they just want to connect and say hi, what's the best place and where can they find you?

Nancy · 33:48

I would say my website, which is meetingsconcierge.com, and I also of course have a LinkedIn profile, Nancy Nachman, The Meetings Concierge, and my email is nancy at meetingsconcierge.com, and I always like to say my advice is free. So come at me with your questions. I'm always, always happy to answer any question that you have.

Jeremy · 34:18

Perfect. Well, I will put all those links in the show notes at leaderassistant.com/288. Again, that's leaderassistant.com/288. Thank you so much, Nancy. It's been super interesting to hear all of the insights in this industry. And I've done plenty of event planning myself. I'm not a huge event planning fan, but I can do it. I love showing up to the event and not having to plan anything or worry about the details, but it doesn't always work out that way. So I appreciate you sharing your insight and look forward to staying connected. And again, for everyone listening, please reach out and say hi to Nancy. She's got lots of years of experience in this world and would love to help.

Nancy · 35:06

Thank you so much, Jeremy, and for all that you do for the Executive Assistant community. I really appreciate it.

Jeremy · 35:12

You're welcome. Thank you.

Nancy · 35:24

Please review on Apple Podcasts. goburrows.com.