Yesterday, Jude
and I were down at the Birmingham Hiton Metropole, but this time not to run a
convention.
This time was
something else entirely, but (curiously enough) still convention related.
We’ve both
worked with Hilton Birmingham for many years on a number of different
conventions, from Eastercon to Expo, and we’ve been instrumental in bringing a
lot of other business to the Hilton over the years. So much so that Liz Watson,
the Commercial Director at Hilton, asked us to come down to speak to their
teams with a view to seeing how their approach works at the moment, and how it
could work better for conventions and conferences, particularly those that don’t
have a ready stash of money on hand to be able to pay for everything up front.
We talked about
Comic Cons, Eastercons, Fantasycons, Worldcons, Games Cons, Pens and Writing
conventions, and everything in between, we outlined the differences between
those cons that are established and have people that do this every year, to those
conventions that have a different committee every year and so no continuity of command,
and all the fun that that often brings when you’re coming at it new each year,
particularly from their point of view where the contact point changes.
The Hilton team
were very willing to listen to other options on how things are paid, moreso than
I’d thought they might have been, on when money might be available and on the understanding
that some conventions might be building the convention for years before they actually
get the bid, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll get the bid, so asking them
to sign for something before securing the space would be a pointless endeavour. Likewise with deposits, many conventions don’t
have the money up front, with a lot of the finance coming after the provisional
booking needs to be made. In particular,
we were thinking about the Eastercon model of having things optioned two years
in advance and how it would be all but impossible without using personal funds
to put a deposit down that far ahead, but that the venue needs to be secured in
order for the bid to proceed.
Flexibility is
the key, and going forwards, I suspect it’s going to be much easier to sort
bookings.
We also spoke about
service when the conventions are operating, the need for additional staff (we’re
looking at the bar here…), and the need to talk to the people running the con,
at the con, which is something Hilton have always been good at, but again they
were willing to take it all on board.
What was
supposed to be a single hour turned into a couple of hours, at the end of which
we offered assistance to the team where it was needed and as of this morning,
already have one email in that we’re helping with regarding a new convention
there.
Liz was very
pleased with how things went, which was really important to both me and Jude as
Liz has been a champion in the convention industry for decades, and it was
great to be able to help her as she’s helped us over the years, and given how well
it went, we’ll be going back to do this again in the future.
And as it
happens, I’m talking about three other new conventions tomorrow, but more on
those when I have the details finalised…