At a recent event in the Dylan Hotel in Dublin, MeetingsBooker.com caught up with Anne Ridyard of the Malaysia Convention & Exhibition Bureau for a chat about booking events in Malaysia.
With a number of locations throughout the region from Kuala Lumpur to Sarawak, the Malaysia Convention & Exhibition Bureau can cover any event imaginable in the area. Ideal for conferences, workshops, incentive travel and meetings.
Meetingsbooker.com recently met the Mövenpick Hotel Amsterdam, Meetings Manager, Mariska Denkers who explained what the hotel has to offer meeting planners.
The Mövenpick Hotel Amsterdam City Centre can accommodate conferences for up to 450 meeting delegates in its 12 flexible Amsterdam meeting rooms (912 square metres). In cooperation with the PTA (3,000 square metres), to which the hotel has an internal connection, they can organise Amsterdam conventions conferences for up to 3,000 event attendees.
All meeting rooms are equipped with the latest technical equipment, such as wireless internet and all modern AV equipment. All facilities in the room can be controlled by a small touchscreen remote control making it perfect for business meetings.
In the first of our new series of video interviews, we speak to Aishlin McLoughlin of Iberostar hotels.
We caught up with Aishling at a Moulden marketing dinner at the Dylan Hotel in Dublin. We spoke about Iberostar’s conference hotels worldwide including venues in Spain, Tunisia, Morocco and Tenerife. Aishling explains why conference planners book their Spanish conference hotels and properties around the world.
With over 100 4 and 5-star hotels, IBEROSTAR Hotels & Resorts offers a selection of fantastic conference hotels and facilities in Spain, the Mediterranean and Caribbean. Ideal for conferences, workshops, incentive travel and meetings.
We’re delighted to be shortlisted for Best Venue Finding Service at this years Conference Awards.
The winners will be announced on 7th June 2013 at the Conference Awards lunchtime ceremony at the Brewery where 500+ industry professionals will be hosted by BAFTA award-winning comedienne Jo Brand.
Thanks to the impressive judging panel made up of Directors of some of the most successful Conference organising companies in the UK for adding Meetingsbooker.com to the finalists shortlist.
Meetingsbooker.com are delighted to be exhibiting at the ITM National Conference next week in London. ITM (Institute of Travel and Meetings) includes a broad membership including from suppliers, venues and corporate travel managers. This is our first time taking part and we also recently joined as a members as well.
We are really looking forward to the conference, they have a great selection of speakers covering a wide range of topics from meetings procurement, meetings technology, travel expense management and much more.
Yesterday at CONFEX, I met John Thompson who is the Executive Director of the Historic Conference Centres of Europe. John explained that the group includes venues throughout Europe who all have to be over 100 years old and have certain conference and meeting facilities in order to be eligible to join.
I thought it was a excellent initiative and certainly can see the attraction of holding events in these venues which are full of history and charm. You can find out more details concerning their members on their website www.hcce.com
We have been working with many hotels for a number of years now delivering them enquiries, bookings and marketing their conference space. So recently we thought it would be a good idea to get their feedback on working with Meetingsbooker.com as member venues.
A few weeks ago we went to Amsterdam and Brussels to meet up with Mariska Denkers from the Mövenpick Amsterdam City Centre Hotel and also Megan Manin from The Marivaux Hotel in Brussels. This short video clip provides you with some of their thoughts on why they are working with Meetingsbooker.com.
Meetingsbooker.com is a online conference room booking portal. We work with thousands of hotels around the world delivering conference bookings for their meeting space. We expect to do some more videos in the coming months chatting with hotel partners in different countries.
We love working with hotels in key cities who offer strong conference facilities and are willing to quote good rates to people using Meetingsbooker.com. When hotels respond quickly with good prices they can recieve very strong conference booking revenue from us. We end up developing a close relationship with conference hotels as we are in daily contact with them regarding requests and proposals from companies using our site.
I recently discovered an amazing App called Zkipster, which is tool used on the iPad for event guestlist and registration management.
As any event professional will know, dealing with large numbers of registrations can be a stressful and time consuming process, especially when you’re dealing with five clipboards, 20 pages of names, black scribbles and yellow highlighter! Needles to say, I was delighted to find a solution!
The Zkipster App allows you to easily browse through streams of names, check them in, search for names, add new names and the best part is that it uses cloud technology to sync with other iPads to give you a real-time figure of your attendees. Not to mention that the iPads look cool!
Watch the short video on how it works:
I’ve used this App for a number of large events including conferences and live brand events and I would certainly use it again. It impressed both the guests and the client and eases the stress of the event staff managing the registrations.
The downside however, is that the service comes at a costs, but it’s a small price to pay to avoid a build up of long lines and angry guests.
If you have any feedback or experience with Zkipster we would love to hear about it , leave a comment below!
Almost three quarters of all workers like to check their social media feeds on their smartphones during business meetings and conferences according to a new poll.
The survey by meeting space provider MeetingsBooker.com, found that 71% of staff regularly checked feeds from sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn on their phones during meetings.
Reasons given included wanting to check in to location services such as Foursquare (18%), keeping up with breaking news (12%) and keeping abreast of what friends and connections were doing (55%).
The poll found that almost a half of all conference delegates now rely on their smartphones to connect and find information prior to events with 47% saying they turned to Facebook and Twitter for details.
But Twitter is the preferred platform for live debate around events with conference organisers increasingly encouraging delegates to use Twitter hashtags and 28% of those polled considering themselves regular in-meeting tweeters.
But despite the widespread use of social media for professional purposes an honest eight per cent of those polled admitted their smart phones allowed them to opt out of dull moments.
However it seems most of us draw the line at using our phones to play games with only one per cent willing to admit to using their phones for secret gaming sessions during work meetings.
When asked about the number of social media channels checked during meetings, a fifth said they looked at just one, 11% said that they looked at, on average, two sites in a meeting while only four per cent of individuals admitted to checking three or more.
Much fewer workers however, admitted to actually updating their social media channels during meetings.
Only seven per cent of respondents owned up to tweeting in a meeting, whilst three per cent said that they had updated their Facebook status.
MeetingsBooker.com founder Ciaran Delaney said the survey showed how social media was having an increasing impact on the working and meeting environment.
He said: “We have seen over the last four years a significant increase in requests for conference venues with strong internet access. Our users are also now specifically requesting venues that also offer free WIFI. Meeting planners obviously focus on price and location when deciding on their venue but good Internet access is now a key consideration.”
“Interestingly, this is common now in most cities we work with around the world from New York to London. Meeting attendees use their smartphone on a daily basis like the rest of us, so when they want to share information or connect during a meeting the first place they will go is social media.”
“Smart conference organisers embrace this and use hashtags and Facebook pages to build a community for their attendees and also promote their events. There used to be a fear factor in opening up such a open forum of discussion during an event, but now I think most people recognise that its better to be involved and provide a solution rather than let people create it themselves.”
The survey looked at the smartphone habits of 1000 office workers. Almost all (97%) said they regularly took their phones into meetings with them with almost as many (95%) saying they muted their devices.
Apple iPhones accounted for 42% of all smart devices in the poll with phones using the Android platform being used by 55% of those surveyed.
One male respondent commented: “I sometimes pretend that I am checking my emails when actually I’m looking at Twitter. There are some meetings which are just so dull that you need it to help pass the time.”
Another respondent said: “Often meetings drag on longer than they need too and it is so tempting to grab your phone and check Facebook.
“I have attended conferences where the use of social media sites, particularly Twitter, has been openly encouraged. Sometimes its easier to ask a question via the Twitter hashtag rather than put up your hand in front of 100 strangers”
We are delighted to have launched our very first Facebook competition today!
The generous team at The Gresham Hotel in Dublin are offering one lucky winner a two night stay in their beautiful penthouse suite. The Gresham has some of the best conference facilities in Dublin, providing 20 conference and meeting rooms and can cater for up to 300 people. Not to mention the incredible location on Dublin’s O’Connell Street!
