Have you ever needed to get a work crew together in one room to go over the project specs? Or maybe your sales and marketing teams need an off-site powwow to align their efforts. Face-to-face meetings aren’t only for huge enterprises with thousands of attendees. Smaller businesses also drive learning and economic growth from meetings on a smaller scale. But arranging small meetings still involves all the same elements of planning and managing the meeting and group travel. To assist our business clients with these tasks, Covington is pleased to offer a new Small Meetings department.

Why Small Meetings are Problematic

First, it’s a fact that unmanaged travel lends itself to budget overruns and travel policy non-compliance. However, employees outside of company travel departments typically coordinate most small meetings and groups, often putting them in the dreaded “unmanaged travel” category.

Secondly, coordinating meetings is a time-intensive task. The meeting planner must negotiate rates and compare bids, all while ensuring compliance and savings (reference problem number one). Unfortunately, most hotels are slow in responding to RFPs, so the meeting coordinator must follow-up. It takes an average of eight days to complete a booking for a small meeting.

Finally, the whole process of sourcing, booking, and tracking small groups is largely a manual effort using phone, email, and spreadsheets. Automated sources aren’t well equipped for multi-room bookings and group air reservations.

Benefits of Covington Small Meetings Management

Because so many of our corporate accounts actively (and wisely) make use of small meetings, Covington created a new Small Meetings department with dedicated staff able to assist in participant registration, travel reservations, hotel room blocks, and meeting rooms, as well as logistics, communications, and reporting.

By using our resources, you’ll save time, increase compliance and control, and reduce risk. Specifically, benefits include:

• Easily get competitive bids from hotels
• Better productivity for travel arrangers
• Quickly compare and negotiate
• Track spend and increase compliance
• Capture Expenses
• Custom Registration Sites
• Duty of Care

Are you ready to reign in your small groups and simple meetings? Contact Covington’s Small Meetings department to find out how we can help you.