While huge conventions snag most of the limelight, many Orange County meetings are staged by local companies and make up the backbone of group business for some hotels.
“About 40% of our business is group business with guest rooms and food and beverage,” said George Lysak, director of sales and marketing for the Balboa Bay Club & Resort in Newport Beach.
About 73% of all day business in OC comes from the corporate market, according to Hospitality Information Services, which tracks the most active hotels and clients in markets throughout the country.
For June, the last month for which figures are available, the OC hotels with the most such meetings business were: Irvine Marriott, Anaheim Marriott, Hilton Anaheim, Balboa Bay Club and Resort, Hyatt Regency Irvine, Westin South Coast Plaza, Newport Beach Marriott, Hyatt Regency Newport Beach, the Island Hotel Newport Beach and the Orange County Airport Hilton.
The most active companies and organizations for meetings that month included Irvine-based Allergan Inc., multilevel marketing company Mary Kay Cosmetics, Chicago-based Boeing Co., the National Athletic Trainers Association, the Internal Revenue Service, Ada, Okla.-based Prepaid Legal Services Inc., Aliso Viejo-based WorldWorks Inc. and New York-based Kaplan Inc.
Other oft-used hotels outside of Anaheim and Garden Grove (where most conventioneers congregate) include the Doubletree Orange County in Orange, Doubletree Santa Ana, Fairmont Newport Beach, Hilton Costa Mesa, Hilton Waterfront in Huntington Beach, Holiday Inn Buena Park, Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach, Hyatt Regency Newport Beach, The Island in Newport Beach, the Laguna Cliffs Marriott, Ritz-Carlton and St. Regis Resort in Dana Point.
Outside the Box
Companies often schedule training, sales and strategy sessions outside the local office to help attendees focus on the topic at hand without the internal distractions.
The Hilton Irvine gets a lot of such corporate business. With a lot of national accounts that have offices in the Irvine area, the hotel sees a lot of corporate, association or state government business, said Leah Harrison, director of sales.
“Three of our top five (feeder) cities are in California,” she said.
Kathy Williams, director of sales at the Hyatt Regency Orange County in Garden Grove, said the hotel hosts a lot of training sessions that last three to four days and bring in 100 people on average. Continuing education for the legal profession and food retailers are among the most frequent users, she said.
Next door at the Embassy Suites in Garden Grove, training, corporate seminars and multilevel marketing events dominate local business, according to Randall Goulard, senior sales manager. He said the average size of those groups is 100 to 150 people.
The Balboa Bay Club hosts local and national groups for clients in the automotive and pharmaceutical industries in particular.
“We’re a non-convention hotel that does great meetings,” Lysak said.
The waterfront hotel has received a lot of national attention in recent months while hosting fund-raisers for presidential hopefuls like Gov. Bill Richardson and former Sen. John Edwards.
It also provides meeting space for local customers like Toshiba Corp., Frito-Lay Inc., Allergan and Aliso Viejo’s Valeant Pharmaceuticals International.
“Driving distance is often their concern,” Lysak said.
Close to Home
The Fullerton headquarters of ThalesRaytheonSystems Co., a venture of Raytheon Co. and France’s Thales Group, has to consider distance and convenience for international attendees.
“We do them offsite because of lack of space at our offices,” said Ree Taylor, manager of customer relations for the company.
Thales Raytheon hosts about 50 international meetings in Fullerton each year. Though the meetings might only have 60 people attending, the international attendees need guest rooms, so Taylor uses the Embassy Suites Brea, Fullerton Marriott or Knott’s Berry Farm Resort Hotel for most groups. She tries to keep them within a five mile radius of the office, which also puts them close to major shopping venues they enjoy.
Dollars Count
Budgets and quarterly performance are often overriding factors in how or when such meetings are scheduled or how elaborate they may be. As a result, the corporate market tends to book meetings on short notice. One major OC manufacturer said its typical lead time for a dozen or so meetings is two to three months out. When they do meet, they watch every penny.
“Some properties think high-level meetings mean big bucks, but that’s not necessarily true,” says Kathryn Jurgensen, president of Premier Meetings in Irvine.
Instead, executives may be the most sensitive to return on investment.
“They’re living under a microscope now and (want to) lead by example,” she said.
In a recent survey by PKF Hospitality Research, 63% of planners said they were under pressure to control meeting budgets this year. In order to do that, about a third expected to reduce the number of offsite events; another third planned to reduce food and beverage costs, while a quarter planned cutbacks on audio-visual services.
Cheryl Rivas, a project manager for Newport Beach-based Meeting Sites Resource, says those that do go on may control costs by holding receptions instead of dinners or cut back on VIP upgrades or audio-visual usage.
Taylor likes to use one-day meetings packages offered by some hotels to shave costs.
Booking Patterns
Some corporate meetings must happen regardless of company performance. Those are often booked further in advance.
Rivas, who arranges meetings for anywhere between 50 to 300 attendees, books some meetings a year or more in advance.
“We are finding that since the demand for hotels is so high we must move quickly to make future plans,” she said.
While the company handles out of town arrangements for some clients, it also has arranged meetings, incentives and events at hotels and resorts in OC, including Montage Resort & Spa in Laguna Beach, the, Hilton Costa Mesa and the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel.
Hotels doing significant local and/or day business have to keep an eye on the vagaries of the market to make sure they have a good mix of industries that bring in revenue.
Some have lost business as a result of the subprime mortgage lending collapse. Mortgage lenders in their heyday regularly staged monthly or quarterly sales team incentive meetings or dinners at places like the Anaheim Convention Center, the Grove, Anaheim Stadium or hotels like the Hyatt Regency Irvine and Hyatt Regency Garden Grove. That business has evaporated along with the subprime mortgage industry.
Disney Institute Seminars Draw Corporate Market
The Disney Institute launched its “Open Enrollment” program at the Disneyland Resort early this year. The program is a multiday seminar that takes participants behind the scenes at Disneyland to see how Disney leaders translate management theory into practice.
Because the program varies between Disneyland and Walt Disney World, it also gives corporate groups a chance to send groups to either location,or both,for training.
The Institute’s Bruce Johnson said it has been a hit particularly with healthcare and financial services groups seeking to bolster their leadership programs and best practices. Corporate groups that have already taken part in the program include Alaska Airlines and Boeing Co.
The program uses the theme parks as classrooms where participants can have fun seeing how Disney’s customer service philosophy translates into actual park practices.
,Sandi Cain
