Free Confessions of an Event Planner: Case Studies From the Real World of Events--How to Handle the Unexpected and How to Be a Master of Discretion by Judy Allen Page A

In-depth information on accommodation is covered in Event Planning: The Ultimate Guide. )
    Group Breakfast
    Q: What is the best way to handle group breakfasts?
     
     
    A: Group breakfasts can be handled several ways and you can either use one way for the duration of the stay or mix them up as a fit for the day’s event. You want to create movement and energy in all of your event elements. For example, if you have a group holding intensive meetings in a ballroom, you may want to consider arranging through the hotel or facility to have participants dine in the facility’s restaurant and have the charges for breakfast posted to the master account for the group. This way the attendees would have breathing room from feeling herded as a group from breakfast to a meeting room, to lunch, to an afternoon meeting and then to dinner as a group on- or off-property. If guests spend most of their day in a function room setting, they’ll be left feeling as though they experienced too much group bonding time.
    Group breakfasts can be held in a private setting both on-property and off-property (e.g., a cookout desert breakfast on a ranch in Texas, for example). They can take place in a private function room such as a ballroom, a garden courtyard closed exclusively for the group or other outdoor location that provides a touch more ambiance than a ballroom or a restaurant that may be closed to the public during the day (offering only dinner service), etc.
    You can also arrange for breakfast to be enjoyed at their leisure by making preparations to have the participants eat breakfast in one of the hotel’s restaurants, with open or private seating arranged for the group. You can either order off the menu or take part in the hotel’s buffet (if applicable), and have all charges go to the group’s master account. Or, you could allow room service breakfast to be included and posted to the master account.
    With breakfast, there is more flexibility and you can give the group a bit more freedom. You can accommodate the early risers and those who like to work out before having breakfast. With group lunches and dinners you need more time control; consequently, those meals work better in a private setting, unless you are doing a group meal as an evening dine-around program or privately taking over a section in an off-property restaurant or venue for the group.
    There are other factors to consider when looking at how to stage meal functions and what style of seating would work best where and when. Table seating can be strategically and creatively arranged to help companies meet both internal and external company objectives. Remember that the corporate client may wish to have specific people spending quality time together for a variety of reasons.
Assignment
Using a selected hotel or resort’s function space, hotel blueprint and facilities (found in hotel group presentation kits or on-line under groups and meetings), discuss various breakfast options for different size groups and which would work best when and why.
    Fictitious Meeting Space Request
    Q: What is the best procedure to follow if a client asks you to book a fictitious meeting for tax purposes?
     
     
    A: That is a matter that needs to be discussed with company owners and your company’s legal department. The hotel or venue will do as they are requested and paid for, as they will not know in advance that no meeting will take place, but if the event planning company is a knowing party to deception they put themselves and their company professionally and personally at legal risk. Event planning companies have been called in to testify when company heads have been taken to court for mishandling or misusing company funds.
Assignment
Read on-line newspaper accounts and allegations tied to Tyco ex-CEO Dennis Kozlowski and to Conrad Black and Livent (who are being charged with having duplicate sets of financial books and asking suppliers to submit invoices that would allow them to move expenses