What Keeps a Convention Planner up at Night?

There’s a trend that I see among my colleagues for whom I consider to be well-organized individuals. They all seem to worry about things, or job tasks, that rely on other people. It’s no secret that a successful convention planner needs to be an organized individual. Their job tasks involve making sure that meetings or events are executed successfully. And, usually for a meeting or event to be successful, conference planners have to rely on third-party individuals. As the title suggests, many conference planners get nervous in the planning stages of their conference or event. This is usually when deadlines play a vital role in executing the meeting or event.

A Convention Planner Usually Worries about Things Involving Third Parties

There are many areas and components to a program that requires a convention planner to work with a third-party company or individual. For example, quite often the convention planner will hire a local destination management company to help execute on-site components. After all a destination management company, or DMC, is considered to be a local expert. However, this is also when a convention planner starts to get nervous. The following are a few components to a convention that a convention planner will tell you they often worry about:

Convention Registration- of course the key to any successful convention is the ability for the convention planner to draw attendees. For many associations, conventions and meetings are one of the main ways that they receive revenues. So, obviously if attendance is low, then so is the revenue. You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to understand that without revenues it’s very hard to function as a resource for the Association in question. That’s why it’s crucial for a convention planner to develop an exciting itinerary for their convention. And it’s also why it’s extremely important to promote the convention as often as possible.

Transportation- transportation is used many times over during most conventions. Whether it be airport transportation, shuttles to and from the convention center, sightseeing tours, or dinner transfers, transportation comes into play often. You see, the number one factor with transportation is that you literally have to rely on a series of events in order for the transportation component to be delivered successfully. There are many things regarding transportation that are outside of anyone’s control. Traffic jams, equipment breakdowns are just a couple of factors that can throw transportation into chaos. And the first person that would get blamed (of course after the transportation company itself) is the convention planner. That’s the person that all of the delegates will go to if they have any issues regarding transportation.

Keynote Speakers- I was once working a convention that had one of the top newscasters of the day as their keynote speaker. I remember asking my convention planner (my client) what would happen if a major event took that newscaster back to New York. Their answer was that they always booked a backup keynote speaker in case of such event. I remember that struck me as a brilliant way to be sure that in some way shape or form the convention would have a keynote speaker as promised. The backup was always somebody, almost equally popular, as the initial keynote speaker.