The City Council’s Group Sales Director can hardly contain her worries.
She is hosting a group of planners, including a meeting planner who plans to meet with 2,000 attendees. At dinner, she chose a restaurant rooted in local history and hand-picked a menu of specialties.
Rather than pouring a glass of wine from the bottle on the dining table, the planner pointed out a very expensive bottle in the restaurant’s fine wine collection.
“I had no choice but to ask it to not be stuffed, but I was shocked by his lack of etiquette.”
The erosion of trust
The behavior of unethical buyers like this is a supplier like Andy Ortiz, managing director of global incentive management at Cancun DMC. “In the hotel era, I went back to most planners I operated, and my last 15 years as the owner of a destination management company were professional and ethical. However, I met many others who just wanted to take advantage of their strengths, especially in destinations like Cancun.”
Buyers may request everything from room upgrades or extended accommodation to Comped Theatre or concert tickets. Sometimes, they don’t even do a serious business for a hotel or destination. Some have no customers at all.
Ortiz has been working to raise awareness of unethical site inspections for years. He said that this is the custom he mentioned.
“In the late 80s and mid-90s, there was more trust. Buyers would come to do the on-site inspections and you know if the business was going to your hotel. You know them too. have business. Something changed. ”
A few years ago, Ortiz created a website where vendors could report abusers, EthicalMeetingPlanners.com, but he has since closed it. “The vendors don’t want to be public,” he said. (His Facebook page is still operating, and he encourages people to join and post their experiences.)
Due diligence is key
What can the business activity industry do to avoid this? Marriott International Marketing Director Sales + Marketing John Klukan said companies can develop their own standard operating procedures. “Many Fortune 500 companies follow the gift and entertainment guidelines of the U.S. Council on Security and Exchange,” he said.
Klukan, whose long history as GM at several Texas Hotels, immediately shut down his immoral demands. “It will guide the combined room and the number of nights depending on the size and value of the program,” he said. “In the case of planners who want to arrive early or be late for a day, asking for a second room or anything else, for whatever reason, I usually don’t respect that requirement.”
Ortiz is diligent in screening. Not only does he need the planner’s meeting history (he recommends getting two years of events), but he also contacts each of the hotels they listed to see if they actually held a plan there.
“Some planners set up the entire website so they can do these trips and they don’t have a single business,” he said.
As a DMC, he also found himself in shackles when he was asked to provide free buses to support the family (such as other vendors, such as restaurants and attractions).
Sometimes, hotel or CVB hosts do not have enough review of attendees, or refuse to share a list of planners and how to choose them. “It’s hard to say no, because you don’t want to lose that relationship,” he said.
Ortiz also acknowledged that some unethical suppliers were part of the problem. “Some of these hosts are inviting planners to invite them to have business because they want to show off to their bosses, such as GM or the director of marketing.
“When they do this, they only achieve bad behavior.”
