A guest post by Calum Maclean on plannerwire.net offers examples of simple ways events can change lives. In clear, simple steps Maclean outlines actions that he says are affordable, personal, accountable and have “a massive and immediate impact.” He also promises that they “will instill in your attendees a level of pride in your company or organization that is usually extremely difficult or expensive.”

When former ambassador Andrew Young spoke at our Marketplace conferences a few years ago, he called planners ambassadors to the world. He urged the audience to be proud of their roles as messengers of common human values that rise above ethnic, religious and political differences. He also encouraged them to include giveback activities in all of their events.

The pay it forward possibilities in every meeting you plan is huge. Watch the videos accompanying Maclean’s post and you’ll be moved by what you can do.

Read “Protecting Our Children” for another simple step you can add to your site selection process that might help save a child.

About:

Why: Evans has organized technology and health care events during his career, and he wanted to create a better way to connect planners with speakers. “Many events, especially those with small staff or volunteer program committees, are understaffed—and they are often overwhelmed by the information and choices for public speakers in today’s marketplace,” says Evans.

How It Works: Planners can perform standard speaker searches or publish open calls for speakers based on event openings. Speakerfile’s technology platform aims to match the speakers and their specialties with events that might work best for them.

Find Out More: speakerfile.com, @speakerfile

Nearly 3 million Americans have celiac disease, a disorder that hinders the digestion of gluten. Last year, restaurants and retailers sold more than $8 million in gluten-free products. Hotel chains like Fairmont Hotels and Resorts and Omni Hotels and Resorts, and properties such as the Hotel Palomar San Francisco and Hotel Monaco in Portland, Ore., have recognized the importance of offering gluten-free foods for travelers and meeting attendees. “The meetings industry revolves around food,” says Tracy Stuckrath, CSEP, founder of Thrive! Meetings and Events. “It’s the essence of what we do—we’re hosts, bringing people together to foster relationships, collaborate, nourish new ideas and instill knowledge. And, with that comes feeding them well and safely, no matter how many types of meals you’re providing.”

A PricewaterhouseCoopers report found that more than $25 billion was spent on food and beverage at corporate meetings in the U.S. in 2009. With 45 percent of attendees reporting they have special dietary needs, it’s important to know your audience and ensure those needs are met, says Stuckrath. Fairmont’s Mariano Stellner, corporate director of food and beverage, agrees. “Someone with diabetes, for example, or someone who has to eat gluten-free, should not have to indicate his special dietetic needs,” he points out. “As an industry, we should be ready for them.”

Fairmont’s Lifestyle Cuisine Plus Menu caters to guests with gluten allergies and other medical and dietary preferences. There are vegan dishes, raw food options, macrobiotic recipes, and heart-healthy and diabetes-friendly choices at each property. Instead of using a corporate menu, each chef was trained by San Francisco-based nutritionist Katya Baxter in developing meals for different dietary needs.

At The Fairmont San Francisco, Chef Foster has a hit with raw food devotees: a spinach leaf wrap filled with shredded Savoy cabbage, mango, carrot, cilantro and basil leaves, and topped with an almond butter dressing. At The Fairmont Olympic Hotel in Seattle, diabetics can enjoy poached local wild king salmon in a Northwest chowder. Foraged huckleberries are mixed in a special berry crème brûlée for gluten-free diners.

While some planners might find it difficult to create special menus for attendees with dietary needs, it is well worth the extra effort. According to a survey done by Stuckrath, 50 percent of people invited to a conference do not attend because of dietary restrictions. The same number don’t return to an event because their needs weren’t met. “They are embarrassed, feel asking for a special meal is impolite, do not want to be a burden, or have low expectations of our abilities to meet their needs,” says Stuckrath. “People with dietary needs deserve to eat the same quality of food that everyone else is served.”

Tracy Stuckrath Explains 
The planner and F&B expert answers your questions.

Are planners required to accommodate attendees’ food needs?
The Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act, which was signed into law in 2008, provides protection for those with special dietary needs. Not only were eating and learning added to the list of major life activities that must be accommodated, but the immune and digestive systems were added to the list of bodily functions, too. “This means that your food allergic and attendees with medically diagnosed diseases—diabetes, obesity, cancer, heart disease, celiac disease—who need to eat a specific way for health reasons, are now covered by the ADAAA,” says Stuckrath. “Therefore, we must provide safe, quality meals that meet their needs.”

How can a planner effectively meet attendee requests?
Attendees must not be afraid to communicate their dietary needs. But they must respect the host organization by informing them in advance and accurately. Meeting planners need to ask about dietary needs during the registration process, relay the information to their culinary partners as far in advance as possible, and work with them on the process in which these attendees will be served. Other suggestions include:
• Provide cards to the attendees that they can give to servers at their meal functions.
• Provide identical cards for the culinary teams to tag the meals as they are made.
• Ensure the needs are included on all BEOs, including those for off-site events.
• Ask the culinary team to provide a list of what they will be serving the guests with dietary needs.
• Ask about the process the culinary and serving teams will be using to serve the meals.
• If the group is small, introduce each of them to the banquet captain and/or the chef. A personal connection is key.

Sustainability has been a key focus during facility construction, and new builds will serve continuing purposes after the games are done. The city is minimizing greenhouse gas emissions, waste at project sites, and the impact of the Games on wildlife in and around the sports venues. The Olympic Park, constructed along the River Lea in East London, includes roads and bridges that will meet the demands of the games and the long-term needs of the community.

The majority of the Olympic venues are divided into three zones around the city. The Olympic Zone contains the new Olympic Stadium, an 80,000-seat stadium that will host the opening and closing ceremonies. Other venues in this area include the newly built Aquatics Centre, which will showcase the swimming and diving events, and the Basketball Arena. The 90,000-seat Wembley Stadium in the Central Zone is the site of the soccer final, while the iconic Hyde Park hosts the triathlon event. The River Zone runs along the River Thames and is home to Greenwich Park, which will be converted into an equestrian center with a competition arena for the horseback-riding events and a cross-country course for the modern pentathlon.

Also in the River Zone is the city’s 5,000-seat international exhibition and convention center, ExCeL London. With more than 1 million square feet of exhibit space and 17 meeting rooms, this recently renovated facility will host events such as boxing, table tennis, wrestling and fencing during the Games, and revert back to a top meeting spot for conferences and conventions following the Olympics.

With five international airports servicing 300 destinations worldwide, London is one of the most accessible cities in the world. To prepare for the games, it added more than 13,000 new hotel rooms, which brings the city’s total to more than 1 million.

Most of us feel claustrophobic in an airplane restroom, but consider the problem of a typical sumo wrestler. At weights up to 600 pounds, these VIPs can’t fit into airplane restrooms at all. To cope, they don’t eat or drink for half a day before flying to enable them to withstand a 10- or 11-hour flight with no restroom breaks.

Andrew Freund, founder of the California Sumo, has planned hundreds of events for sumos during the last 15 years and works to accommodate the needs of his larger-size clientele. Freund organizes the U.S. Sumo Open, an international sumo tournament involving 50 sumo competitors from 15 countries. He has also worked three different times on international events for Japanese professional sumo, each involving about 110 people, including 42 all-star elite sumos and another 70 or so coaches, referees and judges. He organized exhibition tournaments in 2005 in Las Vegas, in 2007 in Hawaii and in 2008 in Los Angeles.

One of Freund’s key objectives is to make travel as easy and comfortable as possible for sumos, especially during a long airplane ride, and to minimize travel time. Depending on the size of the sumo, ground transportation might include a taxi or a large-size van. Yamamotoyama, a 6-foot-4-inch, 600-pound Japanese sumo, recently came to the United States for several appearances. When traveling around, he sat flat on cushions on the floor of a Dodge Caravan, from which the middle seat had been removed.

When flying, two adjacent first-class seats work well for sumos, but if they’re unavailable, three economy seats in a row work as long as the arm rests fold up. First-class seats also may be too expensive, sometimes five or six times the costs, possibly beyond the budget of the organization paying for the ticket, says Freund. There are no weight limits for passengers on commercial flights, but some airlines require passengers to buy additional seats. “We’ve put guys who are 500 or 600 pounds on a plane, no problem,” he adds.

In Japan, professional sumos are well respected and enjoy high status. They expect the rock-star treatment when they travel, says Freund. For the Grand Sumo Los Angeles Tournament in 2008, Freund chose a hotel that was less than four miles from the competition venue. “For elite caliber sumos, the less they have to wait around and sit on a bus, the better,” Freund said.

Sumos certainly represent an extreme, but current trends suggest meeting planners will increasingly have to accommodate attendees of more diverse sizes in coming years. The size of the average American has increased substantially in the past two decades, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Proper medical care and adequate nutrition contribute to people getting taller, too, which presents its own challenges in travel and housing.

Luxury accommodations can often offset travel challenges for tall people, says Quartknee Kwatek, who manages heightsite.com, a website for tall people and the people who shop for them. Extra limousine legroom and luxury vans might seem opulent for standard-sized individuals, but for taller people, this additional space is a necessity. The National Basketball Association is likely the country’s largest employer of tall people, and it has the advantage of providing luxury accommodations to serve the needs of tall players. For tall people who don’t play basketball, such perks can be cost-prohibitive.

At 6-foot-4-inches, Kwatek has experienced challenges such as insufficient legroom on airplanes. His thigh bone simply doesn’t fit in the allotted space. The only possible relief is an exit-row seat behind another seat that doesn’t recline, but these seats are now being sold as premium seats that are first-come, first-serve for any traveler willing to shell out the extra cash.

In most hotel rooms, the furniture and other features are not built for tall people. “The minute I sit at a desk, I’m uncomfortable,” Kwatek said. Only a few hotels, such as several Hotel Monaco locations operated by Kimpton Hotel and Restaurant Group, offer “tall rooms” with features such as high ceilings and raised showerheads. Otherwise, hotel beds for tall people should be queen-size at least (on which they might sleep diagonally without having their feet hang over the edge of the bed). Better yet is a king-size bed or even a California king, which is slightly narrower than a king but four inches longer.

Ceilings and door heights can be a challenge, especially in older or smaller hotels where uncommonly low heights may be grandfathered in despite existing building standards. In most hotels, he adds, the mirrors are so low that he generally only sees his shoulders as he walks by.

Meetings can be particularly uncomfortable for tall people, Kwatek says. Chairs in a seminar environment are not designed for tall people. Long education sessions, such as a seminar that begins at 8 a.m. and doesn’t break until 12:30 p.m., can be a nightmare and put excess strain on a tall person’s legs. There are companies that manufacture taller chairs, but they aren’t commonly available at hotel venues. Many chairs also have weight limits; a standard 250-pound weight capacity is normal. And at teambuilding activities, Kwatek is always prepared to feel “weird and uncomfortable. You just try to make the best of it; there’s not much you can do as an option.”

Freund admits there are some special challenges to face when planning his sumo events. “But on the other side of the coin, sometimes concerns are exaggerated,” he says. “Generally speaking, it isn’t that difficult.” For example, concerns that a hotel bed will break are overblown, especially considering that a sumo is no heavier than the combined weights of a large couple. “A sumo might eat what two people eat, but they’re not going to take out the whole buffet. If you put some common sense into it, it isn’t that difficult. You just have to make the necessary adjustments.”

Kwatek feels similar about planning for large participants. “Tall people have been tall for a while, so they accommodate the environments,” he says. It’s nice for planners to consider a tall person’s needs, but it’s unnecessary to point out his or her special requirements in front of a large group. “As the tall person or the big person, you don’t want to always be the issue,” he adds.

“Gary was a kind and hard-working man for meetings and tourism,” said Newt Collinson III, founder of Collinson Media and Events. “Our industry will miss him. He led Orlando, empowered his staff, and he made a positive difference for the entire hospitality business.

“On a personal level, I lost a friend,” added Collinson. “Gary was always quick to give suggestions on our Marketplace events and compliment our magazines and editors.”

Visit Orlando Chairman and Hyatt Regency Cypress Gardens General Manager Paul Tang said in a statement, “Gary was a loving son, husband and father. Our thoughts go out to the people he most cherished, Gary’s mother Elizabeth Sain, wife Pam and daughters Vanessa Sain-Dieguez (Luis) and Olivia.”

Memorial Information from Visit Florida:

A public viewing will take place from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday, May 11 at Baldwin-Fairchild Funeral Home, and a celebration of his life and funeral will take place Saturday, May 12, at 11 a.m. at Northland Church. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for consideration of a donation to one of two scholarship funds established in Gary’s name:

UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management
An endowed scholarship has been established in memory of Gary C. Sain at the Rosen College of Hospitality Management for students majoring in Event Management with an emphasis in Destination Management. Gary spent his entire career in the hospitality industry and was passionate about supporting students desiring the same career path. He often spoke at the College and was a member of the Dean’s advisory board.

Destination & Travel Foundation
As an expression of remembrance and sympathy, the family requests contributions to the Destination and Travel Foundation in the name of Gary Sain. A memorial fund has been established to honor Gary’s leadership and legacy in the destination marketing industry. Destination and Travel Foundation. 2025 M St. NW Ste. 500, Washington, DC 20036.

SEC Championship games are obviously big business for the cities that host them. Tell us about how you decide where to take the games each year.

CM: We award championship events through a bid process. For football, we have contracts in place at the Georgia Dome through 2017. For basketball, we have sites through 2019 and baseball will continue to be at Regions Park [in Hoover, Ala.] for the next five years. We work years in advance to try and solidify these sites. It’s beneficial to us financially to do that and also to get a handle of the facility and get a good idea of what’s out there. For instance, for men’s basketball, we stay five years out at all times. Interested cities will contact us and ask for a bid package that’s always ready to go. In four to six weeks, they return it. We consolidate bids, present them to the conference’s athletic directors and committee, and vote.

What are you looking for in host cities?

CM: We look at everything in a city from the facility itself to the locker rooms to playing surface to hospitality space. In addition, we look at surrounding hotels to serve as team hotels and look at ease for fans to get in and out of the city. We rely a lot on local organizing committees, sports commissions and CVBs.

What does your planning staff look like?

CM: We have 30 staff members. Some work in championships full-time; others work in other full-time positions. Some work with media relations. We all wear a lot of hats when championships roll around.

KPS: I’m in my 16th year with the SEC. Before this, I worked at Hilton Sandestin Beach Golf Resort with front desk, group housing and convention services. I work a lot with hotels [for the SEC events], but I don’t do everything that works with hotels. I also plan our annual meeting in Destin and special events.

You organize football, basketball and baseball championships. What’s the easiest one to plan?

CM: Believe it or not, football is probably my easiest event. We’ve been at the Georgia Dome since ’94, and the biggest difference is that it’s virtually a one-day event and the basketball tournament is four. It’s about to be a five-day tournament. There’s a good bit more involved. It’s the same thing with baseball. We just expanded our bracket to a 10-team format [with the addition of two more teams to the SEC Conference]. It will be a six-day tournament this year. We will work through the night on Sunday through Monday to have the stadium ready to go on Tuesday morning. It’s the length of those events that make them hard to plan. With football, the teams come in on Friday for practice at the Georgia Dome, they play the game on Saturday and they’re gone.

The football and baseball championships don’t move around to different cities much, but basketball does. Why is that?

CM: For football, that time of year, we need to have an indoor facility. Atlanta has proven itself to be the city to host that event. Basketball differs somewhat because there are so many nice facilities to choose from. Most years, we’ve been in Nashville and Atlanta, but we’ve done Tampa and New Orleans. Memphis has the FedEx Forum, and Orlando has a nice facility with the Amway Center. We like to pick a city where the facility has entertainment and places to eat right there in walking distance.

There are a lot of people who love sports, and would love the opportunity to work in sports. What do you love about your job?

CM: After months and sometimes even years of preparing for an event, then getting on-site and seeing the student athletes and fans having a good time at the event that you helped plan and put together is pretty gratifying.

KPS: I enjoy that it’s not the same every day. I do a lot of the same things year to year, but I don’t do the same things day to day. I interact with our

bowl people, universities and the NCAA. There’s always a new challenge or a new opportunity that I wasn’t doing last week. I enjoy that it changes.

You never really have the issue a lot of planners have: getting attendees to return.

CM: No, for football, we have around 20,000 tickets that are sold publicly, and our renewal rate is 98 to 99 percent.

KPS: You see people [at the football championships] that have pins from the last 20 tournaments they’ve attended. Year after year, they’re going to go because they appreciate college athletics. They look forward to that every year.

Do you ever get to just be a fan?

CM: I don’t get to really personally enjoy the actual game that’s being played. All I’m thinking about are the potential things that could happen or what’s going on. At the same time, it’s gratifying to see it all come together.

KPS: A lot of my planning happens in advance. It’s a frenzy up until the game. Once it begins, [I] can take a breath and sit down and look around and appreciate the work that it’s taken to get to that point. I’ve always been a college sports fan, but never much of a pro sports fan. I love college baseball, and I try to enjoy the games when I can.

I had the pleasure of experiencing remarkable service last week at The Masters. Held every year at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Ga., the legendary golf tournament is a “tradition like no other” because of the lingering effect it has on attendees long after it ends. They broadcast their love of the event on social media (afterwards because no cell phones are allowed on property) and talk about the opportunity with friends and family for years to come.

#TheMasters are everything they say they are and more. Amazing day.

— Lauren Dyer (@laurenelizadyer) April 4, 2012

I understood why after attending a practice session days before the official tournament. I found amazing service and amenties at the club. From the perfectly manicured grounds to the attendants in the bathroom, every detail is covered. The exclusive club sells pimento cheese sandwiches for only $1.50, embraces a culture of Southern hospitality where attendees stay in homes rather than hotels, and welcomes attendees with friendly, smiling volunteers.

Sports events can take attendees for granted, assuming they come for the love of the game or to support a favorite player or loved one. Tournaments that go the extra mile, however, have the opportunity to turn fans of a sport into fans of their events. Teams come back year after year, families tag along and everyone spreads the word.

The Masters is one of more than 40 tournaments on the PGA Tour, but it stands out above the rest. What details could you pay attention to that would blow your attendees away? How can you turn attendees into fans?

Read more about planning sports events from horseshoes to table tennis to sumo wrestling to football in the May/June issue of Connect.

No one could have anticipated the extent of what happened during Hurricane Katrina. What were some of the major lessons you learned?
First and foremost, poor planning makes for poor performance. What we learned from Katrina is that you must plan for what might happen, not for what you can handle. There really are different scenarios and criteria and considerations to be made for a facility if you plan on being an evacuation shelter. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. What we learned from Katrina is to get the hell out of town. The best way to serve our citizens and guests is to get them out of harm’s way because you never know what is going to happen. We had talked about the levees being breached, but no one really wanted to think about it because it just wasn’t something we were prepared to handle. When we had Hurricane Gustav [in 2008], the plans went into effect. There was a scenario 48 hours out where it was going to be worse than Katrina in terms of the strength and size. There was virtually 100 percent evacuation of New Orleans and the surrounding parishes.

How can facility managers and meeting planners better prepare for disasters?
It’s all about planning and communication. You need to have a strong chain of command and know how you’re going to communicate and get messages out. The New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau came up with the New Orleans Tourism Crisis Communication Plan. It deals with what to do if we have a major convention in town and a storm pops up in the Gulf. It lays out how we communicate with the meeting planners, their attendees and guests. We can keep them up to date on whether there’s going to be an evacuation or whether the storm is just going to be a glancing blow and they should shelter in place. The plan was devised with the entire tourism community including the hotels, media, transportation companies and airport. Every meeting planner has access to it and they all need to develop their own crisis communication plan that meshes with their site.

How do you deal with turning a convention center into a shelter if you have meetings going on?
It’s tricky. As the storm approaches, you have a five-day time period to decide what you’re going to do and a three-day period to actually pull the trigger and get it ready. Fortunately, it’s a big facility, but you could have an electronics show here with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of exhibits. You have to see how you’re going to protect that and how much space is available for sheltering responders.

The convention center recovered from the disaster rather quickly. How did you pull that off?
The convention center had to be renovated and it had to be resupplied because virtually everything that was in the building—chairs, tables, carpet, all the office supplies—had to be discarded. We had to decontaminate everything, re-supply it with all the furniture, fixtures and equipment. But six months after Katrina, we hosted the American Library Association. We kept them updated with what was happening in terms of the recovery. They stuck with us, monitored us and they were able to bring a major convention back to New Orleans.

I imagine you had a little public relations battle to face after Katrina.
Yes, it took some convincing. Two or three years after Katrina, the media kept showing footage of the disaster. There were people around the country that still thought we had water in the streets. It took a lot of money and effort to counter that kind of exposure. It happened again with the five-year anniversary. It is very hard for people to try to forget it, especially when they are trying to decide whether to come to New Orleans or not in the late summer or early fall.

Do meeting planners tend to avoid booking during hurricane season?
There are some groups that will not meet anywhere in the hurricane belt during hurricane season and that includes Miami, Orlando, Tampa and New Orleans. As a matter of policy, they may have decided that it is not worth the disruption. It’s a shame because it takes a lot of nice sites for their meeting out of play unnecessarily. Except for the scare with Gustav in 2008, that’s all we’ve had in six years. Over the last 18 to 24 months, virtually every show and meeting that has come to New Orleans has had an increase or record for exhibit participation and attendance.

Morial Convention Center is one of the largest facilities of its kind in the world and it keeps growing and improving. How?
It really starts with a philosophy and the board making some very important decisions. There was a four-phase expansion underway when Katrina hit. It was postponed. The building had been in expansion mode since the World’s Fair [in 1984]. What we did was make a five-year plan to recapitalize the facility and make it the best facility it could be by upgrading the technology and replacing all those things that had been on the back burner.

What are some of the physical disaster and emergency assets you have at the convention center?
None. We are on one of the highest parts of the city and just by that we are protected by anything except for a Noah’s Ark kind of flood. We are doing some things with the glass that we have and the roof, trying to make them less susceptible to wind damage, but we are really in a good position to withstand the brunt of a major storm. We have two remote locations—one east and one west of here. We can pick up our entire administrative function and sales force and move and continue to communicate with our employees and meeting planners so that they know minute to minute what is going on. If one has a show planned a month after the incident, he or she will want to know if we are going to recover and be able to host that meeting. We have not only a disaster preparedness plan but a pretty exhaustive disaster recovery plan in place.