A Meeting Planner’s Nightmare – The Perfect Storm

Winter time. The air is crisp and the sun shines bright in the winter sky. Sounds like a perfect time of year. Unless you are a meeting planner. You see Murphy’s Law is quite prominent in the meeting planning world. And it seems to rear its ugly head more so in wintertime. Meeting planners spends a considerable amount of time planning for their meeting or conference. And many of these events include; transportation, accommodation, meeting rooms, social functions and tours. The full gamut as it were. So in a Meeting Planner’s world the perfect storm would literally be a winter’s storm. Event transportation is where winter can wreak havoc. Imagine trying to transfer several dozen, or a couple of hundred, guests in the span of one or two days to a meeting’s destination. And then imagine a winter storm rolling in just as that transportation is unfolding. A nightmare scenario to say the least. So what’s a planner to do? Well there’s very little we can do to combat weather. But wise planners will have a few tricks up their sleeves. The first step is that the planner won’t be having any downtime during the period when the transportation is occurring.

Being Prepared for a Meeting Planner’s Nightmare

Work with an experienced Transportation company. Sure they might be a little bit more expensive than others but ask anyone who’s been through a winter storm and they’ll tell you experienced ground operator  are worth their weight in gold.

Communication. It’s important to keep all parties informed of any changes or updates as they occur.

Contingency plan. This should be done well ahead of time anticipating things to go wrong. If most of your travel is by air, determine if alternate forms of transportation is feasible. Is it easy for guests to take trains or it be easier to rent a coach to transfer some of your guests in the event of inclement weather.

Obviously there’s little that can be done to combat winter’s weather. And if a meeting planner has a meeting occurring then the weather channel is often their best friend (or worst friend depending on the situation). An experienced meeting planner plans for unexpected situations and has a contingency plan ready, hoping he or she never has to use it. I guess that would be a perfect world now wouldn’t it?