Welcome to Holly’s Hot Spot—your source for all the news pertaining to the ConferenceDirect LA Office!
Change is in the Air
Summer has proven to be a season of change for the ConferenceDirect LA office! We recently acquired several new additions to our staff. We’ve also begun using a new phone system, which we are very excited about. In addition, for all of our sales associates, did you know that you can now have your very own ConferenceDirect associate home page? Change makes some people scared and nervous, but never fear, I am going to outline all of the changes and what to expect!!
NEW STAFF MEMBERS
First, we have several new staff members in our office! Our happy little family is growing. The addition of these new people should make our company run even better. We’ve added a new Accounts Payable person, a financial analyst, an office clerk and an Accounts Receivable person. In addition, Brian Stevens has a new assistant!
Nick Yonkovich is from Fullerton, CA—a California native! Nick attended St. Mary’s College in Moraga, CA. He graduated this past May with a B.S. in Business Administration. Nick likes to golf in his spare time and loves pumpkin pie! Nick will be helping out on the Accounts Payable side with Jose Cardenas. He will be ensuring that all of your commission checks get processed as soon as possible!
Jesette Fortuno is originally from the Philippines! She attended the University of the Philippines and obtained a B.S. in Economics. In addition, she took several accounting classes at UCLA. Jesette loves chocolate and going to the beach. She is currently looking to move closer to our West Hollywood office and is looking at apartments near the beach, we wish her good luck in her search! Jesette is working with Brian Stevens to provide reporting and assistance on the financial forecasting side of our business.
Sylvia DeGraff is our newest team member, she is our office clerk! She is helping to assist everyone in our office, so our accounting duties can run smoothly. Sylvia attended Queensborough College in Flushing, NY. She took classes dealing with administrative duties. Sylvia has 15+ years of administrative experience and is already proving to be a valuable asset to our team. Sylvia loves Italian food and crossword puzzles!
Ryan Walsh is our newest Accounts Receivable staff member. Ryan is originally from the Philadelphia area. She attended Fordham University and has a degree in Communications, that’s why she is so good at emailing all of our associates about their commissions! Ryan is working with our associates and hotels to collect commission payments. She has really added to our receivables team and made things run a lot more smoothly!
Mitchell Drinkard is a new team member who is helping to assist our CEO, Brian Stevens. Mitchell is originally from Missouri but moved to Chicago and attended Loyola University. Mitchell has a lot of business experience and even co-owned a spa in Chicago. Mitchell recently organized a get together for the LA office, so we could all get to know each other! It was a great success and everyone had fun—Thanks Mitchell!
NEW PHONE SYSTEM IN LA OFFICE
We have new phones!! Our new phones are really great, they have caller ID, several ring tones to choose from and a lot of other cool features! In addition, we now have direct lines. Our new phone numbers are below:
Jose Cardenas (323) 302-4369
Nick Yonkovich (323)-302-5516
Ryan Walsh (323) 302-5149
Holly Driscoll (323) 302-5343
Kini Akaka (323) 302-5460
John Edwards (323) 302-5459
Cathy Brown (323) 302-5342
Frances Sarabia (323) 302-5461
Terry Wise (323) 302-5462
Don’t worry, the main line still works, and we can be reached via that number as well!
NEW EMAIL SIGNATURE LINES
We are also rolling out new signatures this week. Your signature should follow the below sample:
Catherine A. Brown, CAE
Executive Vice President
ConferenceDirect®
PO Box 69777
Los Angeles, CA 90069
phone: 425-703-5980
fax: 425-936-7329
cell: 310-977-7876
www.conferencedirect.com
Twitter: ConferencDirect | Facebook: ConferenceDirect, LLC
LinkedIn: ConferenceDirect Team
The new signatures will contain all of the new social media outlets that John Edwards has been managing. If I do say so myself, John has done a great job in getting ConferenceDirect up to speed with all of the social networking sites that are out there.
· We have a Facebook profile, we can be found by searching ConferenceDirect LLC or by direct link at www.facebook.com/conferencedirect . John updates the site regularly with news from our offices, or news and articles pertaining to the meeting planning and hotel industries. We enthusiastically welcome your comments! This could really prove to be a great resource for brainstorming about our business. Also, there are reminders for things like client gift deadlines, so it is helpful to check up periodically!
· We have a Twitter as well. The Twitter can help with deadline reminders as well as articles and news pertaining to our industry. We can be found at www.twitter.com/conferencdirect (Notice the “e” at the end of Conference is left out). Become a fan of us, and we will we reciprocate! We would love for you to read our news, and we also want to know what is going on with all of you wonderful meeting planners!
· Finally, we have a LinkedIn profile. This will link us all together as one unified team, even though we are located all over the country. It is a great way to network with each other for business purposes as well as to get to know each other. There have been many great discussions thus far on LinkedIn, and we hope to get more people involved! Search “ConferenceDirect Team” to find us!
ASSOCIATE WEB PAGES
· Associates can now have their own ConferenceDirect web page! This can help clients get in touch with you and learn a little bit about who you are. In addition, we can get to know each other better through these sites as well. Here is Frances Sarabia’s associate webpage to use as an example: www.conferencedirect.com/francessarabia. We are asking that all associates submit their information to Magdalena Beneito by September 1st! You can view Frances’ site for a blueprint for what you need to tell her. Basically, we just need your contact info and a little bit about who you are and your background in meeting planning and/or the hotel industry! We will take it from there and have our outside, professional website person do the rest! I am personally excited to get to see and read about all of the people I work with on a daily basis but have never met in real life!
See! Change isn’t so bad, is it? I think that all of these new additions and changes are going to make us an even better company than we already are! Until next time… !
Holly Driscoll ConferenceDirect Corporate Office, Greater Los Angeles
Piracy is alive and well in 2010, and I’m not talking about Jerry Bruckheimer’s latest box office hit. I’m talking about “group housing piracy,” or more specifically, the fly-by-night companies that poach the attendee and exhibitor lists of meeting planners across the events industry.
A “housing pirate” can be defined as any unauthorized room block marketing company that misleads or misrepresents its involvement in the housing process to a meeting’s attendees or exhibitors. That company is not authorized to represent the meeting group, but will acquire room blocks at the hotels around a conference either through wholesalers or even through the hotels themselves.
Meeting planners and their attendees face real damages when victimized by these companies. The most glaring example of damages comes in the form of attrition should these companies lure a large enough group of people away from your contracted block. However, other damages need to be factored in as well. Missed rooms not only increase your attrition exposure, but also have a negative impact on your complimentary rooms, upgrades, meeting space and other concessions.
You can take a number of important steps to help insulate your organization from housing piracy. Here are some best practices to follow:
- Protect your exhibitor and attendee lists by not exposing them to the public. If you must display this information, do so in a secure manner by requiring an existing registration or log-in to view the information.
- Place clear warnings on your meeting website that caution exhibitors and attendees about the dangers of doing business with companies not associated with your organization.
- Send out proactive e-mails informing your attendees and exhibitors of the approved booking channels available to them.
- Protect yourself through strong language within your hotel contracts. Clauses that define a lowest rate guarantee, the ability to conduct an audit and the right to apply rooms found in an audit to your block could all help protect you.
- Provide your exhibitors with protected sub-blocks within the main block to ensure that they will have access to rooms.
What should you do if you become a victim of housing piracy? All is not lost. However, you must take certain steps to quickly recover:
- Immediately have your attorney draft a “cease and desist” letter to be sent to the offending company.
- Notify your contracted hotels of the situation and request their assistance in assuring that they do not enable these companies with competing blocks of inventory.
- Send out a communication to all registered attendees informing them of what has happened. Provide them with the correct booking channels and remind them of the importance of booking within the approved block.
Housing pirates are not going away. In fact, the number of companies involved in these practices seems to be growing on a daily basis. This requires all of us in the meetings industry to be extra vigilant in our preparations for overcoming housing piracy if and when our meetings are targeted.
“Missed rooms not only increase your attrition exposure, but also have a negative impact on your concessions.” - Adam Briggs, Vice President of Housing & Registration (reprinted courtesy of ConferenceDirect Meeting Mentor; Summer 2010; Vol. 1, Issue 2)
** Don’t forget to check out the latest Summer Issue of Meeting Mentor Magazine, now available online! ** http://www.meetingmentormag.com
Companies should let high-potential employees serve as mentors because research shows these employees are adept at developing others, Dan McCarthy writes. “People who want to get ahead and learn are going to gravitate towards high potentials. Details inside.
Chief Operating Officer, Jerry Horan, celebrates 10 Years with ConferenceDirect this month. Happy Anniversary, Jerry!
ConferenceDirect will be represented as one of several industry leaders at the 2010 Taste of Tahoe Symposium which aims to showcase beautiful Lake Tahoe and the surrounding areas as a premiere destination for event planning and travel.
Meet With Our Associates!
This is your once-a-year opportunity to meet personally with more than 160 ConferenceDirect Associates. Our Annual Partner Meeting features a unique reverse tradeshow format where our Associates are the actual exhibitors. Conveniently grouped by state and region.
ConferenceDirect Associates are ready to meet with you for planning, networking, relationship building, or just about any item on your agenda. Sign up today!
For more information, please visit our website: http://www.ConferenceDirect.com
A look back at ConferenceDirect’s 2009 Annual Partner Meeting held at the brand new Hilton San Diego Bayfront. The opening video module was courtesy of Matthew Chevalier, Corp. Theater Content Producer, and kicked off our wildly successful General Session.
A new study breaks down how associations responded to the recession and what they expect in the coming year.
Henry Ford once said, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80.” ConferenceDirect, one of the world’s fastest growing meeting solution organizations, wants its associates to always be learning. By offering a myriad of both mandatory and optional training programs, ConferenceDirect continually offers skill development opportunities to its associates. The ultimate purpose is to benefit the ConferenceDirect customer by providing them with an associate that has the tools to offer measurable cost savings results when booking their meetings.
Unfortunately, training is a term that is often thrown around loosely by some organizations. How often have we begun a new job having heard “We have excellent training!” only to discover that the “training program” consists of a brief sit-down with someone for a couple of hours, being handed an employee handbook, patted on the back and wished the best of luck?
Today, ConferenceDirect is one of the only companies in its field that has a full-time dedicated executive to oversee and develop its training programs. Joining ConferenceDirect in 2006 as vice president of training and development, Jim VanDevender brought with him years of experience from the hotel industry as well as a passion for seeing others succeed. “Training is about what is ultimately best for the customer. ConferenceDirect’s commitment to training is unparalleled in our industry.”
When an associate is secure with the proper knowledge and appropriate tools to accomplish the job at hand, the customer being serviced by that individual benefits. Upon joining ConferenceDirect, each new associate must successfully complete a mandatory three-day New Hire 101 Training Program. Held every three weeks in various cities across the United States, this program allows ConferenceDirect to train the associate on the fundamentals of customer management, outline expectations and teach the hallmarks of excellence that the company feels are crucial to its continued success. During the program, associates focus on eight core modules including customer relationship skills and contract negotiation. They are tested on each module, must pass each test and must complete role play exercises after each as well.
Associates are offered other training opportunities at ConferenceDirect as well including technology training and the ConferenceDirect University (CDU) program. CDU, held three times a year, is offered to bring associate skills to an even higher level. The course is designed with an “active listening” format, which is a communication method that encourages open discussion of ideas. It enables the trainer to establish trust and rapport with participants. The trainer doesn’t make any value judgments, but carefully adjusts and clarifies the ideas being expressed and reflects these back to the participants.
Looking toward the future, ConferenceDirect will be taking its training opportunities to a new level in 2010. It is developing a rigorous certification program in the area of contracting that will set new industry standards. Demonstrating expertise in handling attrition is an example of one of the competencies that will be measured for demonstrated excellence.
Executive Vice President Cathy Brown states, “ConferenceDirect remains committed to assuring that our associates have the best practices to achieve the best possible results for our customers. Our internal certification program with a defined eligibility requirement will demonstrate that our certified associates are the best in the field.”
ConferenceDirect’s leaders grew up in corporate environments with excellent learning initiatives that can still be found thriving today in a company that is committed to achieving excellence on behalf of its customers. — Jim VanDevender, Vice President of Training (Reprinted courtesy of ConferenceDirect Meeting Mentor, Spring 2010)
