Is your sales and catering team leading or following?

Today, we’re talking about…

The rise of non-professional meeting planners.

Sales and Catering Teams are having a moment right now.
Meetings are back, but not the way they were before. One major shift is that meeting planners aren’t just meeting planners. They are office admins, business owners, and team leads. They plan meetings...They just don’t do it for a living.

That means that they don’t shop the way professional meeting planners might shop. It also means that they don’t have the same level of expertise that your on-property teams are used to. These non-professional planners have day jobs, and little to no event planning experience, so they are going to lean hard on your sales and catering team.

That’s a good thing!
It really is! The last thing your sales and catering team wants is an inexperienced planner with LOTS of opinions. When your team takes a back seat to inexperienced planners, that’s when friction occurs. Inexperienced planners will ask for customizations or things that can’t be done. They may even ask for things that simply shouldn’t be done all because they don’t know any better.

Take the lead.
Non-professional planners are more willing to let your sales and catering team take the lead because they see your on-property team as the experts. And that’s exactly right. Your sales and catering teams are the experts. They can set the tone right from the start. They have the power to shape these events so that they not only work in the best interest of the planner but also in the best interest of the hotel’s bottom line.

For example…
Non-professional planners on average have less of an opinion on the menu. Your sales team can send them a recommended menu of your lowest-cost, highest-margin dishes. Sure, the planner might make tweaks, but they’ll love that someone did the work for them. Your sales and catering team can also do things like make sure that every company or organization holding an event that day has the same dishes served during meal breaks, reducing the time and cost to provision. Of course, these are just some simple examples, but…

When your  team can anticipate the non-professional planner,
They can reduce friction (on both sides) at almost every step by educating and recommending along the way.