Remember! Imagine! Achieve!

10 Mar 2006

Each year Sundial Group sends a contingent to the annual conference of the International Association of Conference Centers (IACC). This year, it led us to the Cheyenne Mountain Resort at Colorado Springs.

Despite the images that a ‘conference about conferences' may conjure up, the three day event is actually truly inspiring, and reassures us all of our belief that dedicated conference centres, in whatever shape or size they appear, really do offer a better solution to corporate customers than hotels through the sharing of knowledge, experience and opinion.  Of course, being in the USA, it is immaculately presented, and perhaps, at times, a little over the top but, if you allow for the natural exuberance of our hosts, the content is really very fascinating and there's much that we learn each time.

Of course, that's not to say that we head over as the backwards cousins from over the water, completely in awe of all we see.  Naturally everything is on a much larger scale (a hundred-bed property is considered small over there), but there are many areas in which we feel we are ahead of the thinking over there.  American hospitality, quite rightly, has a reputation for being very customer focused and incredibly generous, but, as with everything over there, it does come at a price and we feel that users of UK conference centres probably get ‘more for their buck' than a US-based planner would.  Dolce, a large international firm that operates superb venues in Europe and the USA, recently produced an extensive guide for US-based meeting planners in which pages were dedicated to allowing for ‘gratuities', ‘health club fees' and other miscellaneous, service-based expenses that don't incur additional charges over here.

Where a UK venue provides excellent hospitality (and the feedback we receive suggests that we do at Sundial -; over 90% of event hosts surveyed so far in 2006 say they would recommend us), it is to a higher standard perhaps than in the US because, over here, it is truly genuine.  Where the USA beats us hands-down is at the lower end of the market -; bad service is exceptionally rare over there.

Cheyenne Mountain Resort

In the marketing forums, where venue providers were invited to list one item that makes their venue unique, many of our hosts struggled: suggesting that concept is still catching on over there.  When we were asked, we were able to point at our Sunetic Walls and Goody Bags, as well as the Cookbook, the Chudbus and the whole family story behind Sundial Group.  Putting the fact this is the Sundial Group website aside for just a minute, most of the UK and international representatives over there had a much stronger awareness of the need for uniqueness than all but the very best of the Americans -; possibly because the conference ‘center' concept is a little better developed over there.

The Copper Skillet, an international cooking competition where each chapter's winner competes in the grand final at the conference, has become the conference's best-attended event and is a spectacular occasion.  Sundial Group is heavily involved in this: the global conference chef competition is the legacy of Tim Chudley's presidency of the association, while Jerry Toth organises the UK qualifier each year.  We can't take all the credit, but the UK was out in front when it came to realising the importance of food to an event too.

We firmly believe in IACC and in the conference centre concept, and invite you to learn more at http://www.iacconline.org.