In the past 6 months, a few new exciting hotels have opened their doors in Los Cabos, Mexico. The most anticipated opening was actually two hotel brands owned by the same owner, located only a few steps away from each other. Both properties are located on the Pacific side of Los Cabos in the Diamanté area, which is approximately one hour from SJD airport.
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When looking for the perfect hotel for your next event, it’s essential to have strong partnerships with individual hotels, third party sales teams, and regional corporate reps.
When planning your next incentive trip, corporate retreat, or industry conference we highly recommend from the start reaching out to the local tourist board, visitors center, tourism department, and/or convention bureau (CVB).
Attrition, what does it mean and how to contract it.
First, what does attrition mean in terms of hotel contracting? For this article we will focus purely on Rooms Attrition and not Food and Beverage Attrition. Usually F&B attrition will be in line with the rooms attrition. You can find an example at the bottom of this post.
The easiest way to understand attrition is that hotels have the right to charge a penalty if the actual event uses less rooms than originally booked in the hotel contract. The hotel contract will include an attrition clause which tells you the number of rooms you can release without penalty. Two things to pay attention to: the % or actual number of rooms you can release and the deadline or specific dates that those releases need to happen by.
With attrition, it is imperative to make sure the contract includes a clause stating that if the hotel is sold out then attrition is null and void and no penalties are to be paid. Also you may want to ask for the daily pickup report from the hotel to confirm how many rooms were in inventory that could be sold (they should not include rooms that are under construction or unable to be used), and how many were occupied.
Cabo has been a recent hot spot for travel from the US, especially the West Coast. There has been a recent boom in luxury hotel development in the past 3 years that isn't stopping anytime soon. Competition will be fierce for hotels to compete in filling their beds. There are 6 brand new properties that just opened their doors or opening their doors in the next 6 months;
Ritz Carlton Reserve, Nobu Los Cabos, Hard Rock Hotel Los Cabos, Vidanta East Cape, Four Seasons Resort Los Cabos and Villa Valencia.
The on site gifting experience for incentive trips is getting harder and harder. Unfortunately, the industry is behind in providing new creative ideas that are easy to deliver on site. Industry leader Maui Jim has perfected on site gifting and are a personal favorite but unfortunately you need additional options for repeat clients.
Each year we rack our brains for something different, creative, and personalized. For requirements, we want to provide attendees options to choose from and also want the ability to brand that gift.
This is a constant question we get! In fact, we blogged about this topic before but since methods are constantly changing we wanted to explore the topic again.
If you want to get ahead of the planning we recommend starting at least 18 months before your event for a mid-size incentive trip (75+ rooms per night room block) and 2 years lead-time for over 150+ room per night. Though 18 months sounds like a huge chunk of time, there are several reasons why we recommend this :
The attendee flight booking process has become a consistent point of stress for every President's Club trips we plan each year. Some of our clients use their corporate travel agency, some book flight blocks direct through airline, some use our recommended partner Direct Travel, and finally others let their attendees book their own flights direct to airline and expense them. We haven't found the perfect solution yet as there are a few important factors when booking flights for an upcoming President's Club trip.
Unfortunately emergencies do happen on President’s Club trips and that is why it’s important to have strong partners to help you through those situations.
I’ve sat through over 50 pre-cons over the years and never really paid too much attention to the Lost Prevention team. Usually being at 5 star hotels we feel so safe and comfortable that security presence doesn’t seem important. Most people never want to think of the 'what if' situations when they might need the medical team. Of course we use the on-call doctor almost every trip but to me we always took that for granted as it’s been a service that was always provided. Lost and found is a given, we visit that team at least 3-4 times a trip.
There are many important decisions when planning your next President's Club but location might be the most important. After a few years in the Caribbean and Mexico, attendees might be ready for a change of scenery and the opportunity to explore Europe locations. It's important to administer feedback surveys following each event that include a question allowing attendees to type in their preferred future President's Club trip locations.
You might ask yourself where do I start in terms of planning your first European adventure so we provided a few tips to help.