Five sure-fire steps to corporate outing failure

Most facilities start taking reservations one year in advance – and companies often pounce on their desired date for the following year immediately after the event, if they want the same venue. But not always.

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“A lot of people don’t have an understanding of the time frames involved, and they end up having to back off on the dates they wanted,” said Ann Hadley, president of JC Marketing Associates, a marketing and event-planning firm in Wakefield, Mass.

For instance, Whispering Pines Conference Center in West Greenwich, a popular venue for executive retreats, meetings and conferences, is filling up fast for spring and summer dates.

“We’re really busy,” said Ann Marie Marcotte, conference coordinator for the facility. “We’ve seeing a real impact of people planning ahead and booking early.”

While many dates for the summer already are taken, Marcotte said there still is plenty of availability – as long as planners are flexible with their dates. If you call with a firm date in mind, expect to be disappointed, facility managers say. Planners instead should target a couple of different weeks, ranking their preferences in case the venue already is booked.

In some cases, procrastination is not the fault of the planner, but, rather, the company’s budget director.

“Lately, corporate-outing budgets aren’t being approved until the 11th hour,” said Maia Merill, editor of New England Corporate Events magazine in Peabody, Mass. “Unfortunately, for companies planning golf outings, most courses are booked at least a year in advance.”

Preliminary head counts are, as a rule, fuzzy – and nobody knows that better than facility managers. Even so, host facilities expect at least a reasonably accurate number with which to work.

Merill said that corporate event planners often feel the pressure to lock in their date with a facility early. But many times it’s before they’ve done their homework, so they throw out a guess for a head count – a number that invariably changes, making the process for facility managers that much harder.

“A facility coordinator doesn’t want to take you unless you have a firm number,” Merill said.

Karl Augenstein, general manager of Triggs Memorial Golf Course in Providence, says most corporate or charity outings run without a hitch because most groups are repeat business – 90 percent of the 60 groups already booked for this year are repeat clients, he said. But if a snag does happen, it’s usually a numbers issue.

“Sometimes a group will have difficulty getting the number of players they had scheduled to fill out the group, and it’s usually because they didn’t start the process early enough,” Augenstein said.

The Rhode Island Convention Center hosts events of all shapes and sizes, from 10-person corporate meetings to conventions and trade shows that attract thousands. Although convention and trade-show planners usually have the process down to a science, corporate-event planners occasionally let small details slip.

“Sometimes, there are certain things that corporate planners don’t think we need to know,” said Deborah Tuton, director of operations for the Rhode Island Convention Center.

For instance, companies might tell vendors simply to show up at the convention center and drop off equipment, which can cause a problem because the convention center’s union workers are expected to handle specific duties, Tuton said. Another small example: the convention center has strict guidelines for the use of helium balloons because of its high ceilings – which could come as a surprise to a company that shows up with 500 balloons emblazoned with its corporate logos.

Tuton said the convention center assigns an event manager for all events, regardless of size. While managers try to anticipate everything ahead of time, it’s impossible to ask clients all the right questions.

What helps, she said, is what many trade-show and convention planners do: submit a detailed production schedule, outlining exactly what will happen and when.

Nothing will slow the momentum of a corporate outing more than empty food trays, said Hadley of JC Marketing.

“Running out of food at a company event is probably the worst thing you can do,” she said. Hadley said RSVPs can help gauge numbers ahead of time, and it might be best to overshoot the estimate.

But with a good caterer, planners shouldn’t have to worry about running out of food, said Al Giuliano, co-owner of Giuliano’s Catering in North Providence. Giuliano said that even companies with a tight budget should work out a contingency plan with the caterer ahead of time.

“A lot of groups will underestimate the number of people that are going to show up,” Giuliano said. “But caterers should be able to adjust and work something out with the company.”

For company picnics, planners usually schedule rain dates. But that doesn’t mean a sunny day can’t turn soggy in a hurry. For an outdoor outing, facility managers suggest having a contingency plan – either an indoor backup or tents with side flaps.

“Companies will have rain dates, but they don’t have a plan for what to do if it starts raining,” said Kathy Chiaverini, event coordination manager at Rhode Island Rentals in Warwick. “We get a lot of Saturday morning calls from people looking for tents at the last minute.”