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SPOTLIGHT: MIKE MASON, VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES & MARKETING, GAYLORD HOTELS

Sometimes, meeting success boils down to where we meet and where to stay before and after we meet. When researching destinations, planners must constantly balance meeting facilities with attendee accommodations—and both components are explored in this Spotlight—interview with Mike Mason, Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Gaylord Hotels.

Mason, who has been with Gaylord Hotels since 1999 and is going on his third decade in the meetings and hospitality industry, certainly has the experience to provide an in-depth discussion on meeting trends. But he also was candid in his evaluation of the success of Gaylord Hotels, a unique entity in the market perhaps best described by one of its own taglines: "all under one roof."

Essentially, Gaylord Hotels has etched an interesting niche as a meetings and hospitality super store. All four of its venues (the Gaylord National in the Washington, D.C. area is due to open in 2008) feature upwards of 500,000 square feet of meeting and exhibit space and are 30 minutes or less from an international airport—attributes usually associated only with Convention Centers. However, each Gaylord location has more than 1,500 guest rooms and a range of amenities, such as a world-class spa and gourmet restaurants, thus easily classifiable as luxury hotels as well.

While these aspects position the Gaylord brand to attract larger meetings, conventions and trade shows and enable it to appeal to association and corporate planners looking to sign multi-year, revolving destination contracts—each hotel has a "hotel within a hotel," featuring separate and distinct meeting space, essentially creating a conference center catering to executive and other distinctly non-convention-sized gatherings.

 Gaylord Opryland, the flagship Gaylord property, in Nashville, Tennessee, (10 minutes from Nashville International Airport), opened in 1977, features 2,881 guestrooms and 600,000 square feet of meeting/exhibition space, five ballrooms, 85 breakout rooms, and The Magnolia, its "hotel within a hotel."

Gaylord Palms in Kissimmee, Florida (20 minutes from Orlando International Airport), features 1,406 guestrooms, including 115 suites, 400,000 square feet of meeting/exhibition space, 61 breakout rooms and the Emerald Bay, its exclusive "hotel within a hotel."

The Gaylord Texan, in Grapevine, (six minutes from DFW International Airport) features 1,511 guestrooms, 400,000 square feet of meeting/exhibition space, 68 breakout rooms, and The Lone Star Tower, its "hotel within a hotel."

The Gaylord National in Prince George’s County, Maryland (15 minutes from Reagan National Airport and 45 minutes from Dulles International and Baltimore Washington International airports), situated on the banks of the Potomac River, will be the largest combined hotel and convention center on the Eastern Seaboard when it opens in 2008, with 1,500 guestrooms, more than 400,000 square feet of meeting/exhibition space, 74 breakout rooms, and an as yet unnamed "hotel within a hotel" section.

In this edition of Spotlight, Mason, in a wide-ranging exclusive interview, discusses not just these four impressive Gaylord properties, but overall trends and developments in the meetings and hospitality industry—affecting both the where they’re meeting and where they’re staying.

FOL: What segment of the market seems healthier—smaller meetings or larger meetings?

M.M: We continue to see growth in all segments, however, the 200-600 peak room group seems to be leading the way.

FOL: What distinguishes a hotel geared towards meeting planners—and especially larger meetings—from other hotels?

M.M: Simply put, it must be their core business. By core, I mean that nothing gets in the way of meeting your customer’s expectations as long as it doesn’t impede on safety or security. In many hotels, a request as simple as "Can I hang this banner behind your front desk to welcome my group" is met with a "NO". Why? Because the group is sharing the hotel with a set of non-group customers (leisure, business travel, Frequent Guest award winners, wholesale customers) whom the hotel works hard to shelter from the conventioneers in fear that it will somehow detract from their experience. This protection ultimately means groups have to jeopardize the integrity of their meeting for the protection of the remaining mix of business in-house.

At Gaylord, we don’t pretend to be all things to all customers. We work very hard to be all things to one customer: our group customer. Does that mean we don’t have other types of customers? Absolutely not. Gaylord hotels are built with such wonderful experiences, each different customer loves staying with us. It just means that our filter for making decisions is based on our group customers needs and expectations.

FOL: How do Meeting Packages for smaller groups differ from packages for larger groups?

M.M.: As a small group, you are forever faced with the following dilemma: Do I pick a Big Fish/Small Pond option and give up all those great amenities a large hotel offers in lieu of a small hotel or do I go Small Fish/Big Pond and play second (or third) fiddle to larger groups and not get the service I deserve?

We believe we’ve figured out how to do both: give our smaller groups the exclusivity that a small hotel offers while also having access to amenities and activities of a large resort. We do this with our distinctive "hotel within a hotel" concept—at each Gaylord hotel, we have an area dedicated to small groups that houses all the rooms and meeting space in one area. Each offers upgraded room amenities and the ability to sleep, eat, and meet in your own 300-room hotel without giving up on the dozens of restaurants, bars, spa and shops that you wouldn’t find at a stand-alone 300-room hotel.

FOL: What are the new services, products or amenities that meeting planners now expect or are demanding that may not have been an issue three to five years ago?

M.M.: Clearly, technology plays a role like never before. High speed internet is a must as are wireless capabilities. Where T1 lines used to be all the rage, we’re finding bandwidth of T3 is more common than ever before. At each of our Gaylord properties, we have the ability to provide every major technology need and we do this through our technology sales department. Each hotel has a Technology Solution Provider who is our resident expert to help groups manage the many options available to them.

On the amenity side, you can’t be a meetings hotel without a spa. Each Gaylord property offers a world-class spa experience. We are also finding that groups are willing to get more creative in their menu choices for their meals. Foods like buffalo and ostrich are being served to thousands at a time.

FOL: In terms of the technology or other facility requirements—for the meeting rooms used for side meetings, seminars and education—what are meeting planners looking for?

M.M: Gone are the days of theater-style seating with a podium at the front of the room. Breakouts have become mini-general sessions in terms of technology. Our customers expect that the breakout meeting spaces will contain full technological capabilities with the convenience and comfort of their home office. Therefore, they expect not only to have high speed connectivity to run web based presentations and demonstrations, but the ability to network meeting rooms together on private networks exclusive to their group. We also see a greater demand for telecommunication services, especially the ability to provide conference based telephone service to accommodate anywhere from 15-40 participants.

FOL: What sort of new technologies or space designs are changing the standard Exhibition Floor?

M.M.: Function space is a valuable commodity in any hotel. Even though Gaylord hotels offer an industry leading meeting-square-footage-to-guest-room-ratio, our customers often ask us to get creative with how we utilize our exhibition space. The creative use of space is not dependent on the venue, i.e., convention center or hotel; however, meeting planners are often interested in relating one event to another within their program to increase interest, such as hosting food events in proximity of exhibits or building free-standing, portable breakouts within our exhibit hall. We’ve had groups build as many as 30 portable breakouts in our halls.

FOL: Is the trend towards Green Meetings just a fad?

M.M.: I don’t think Green Meetings will ever go away, rather, it will become part of the fabric of our industry. When you talk ‘green’ you’ve got two sides to consider; the actual "greenness" of the meeting itself and the hotels ‘green’ operation. For planners, I think being green tends to be a bit difficult as you are now having to change the behavior of your participants. For instance, we’ve seen meetings try to go paperless only to fall back on the copy machine because people aren’t quite there yet. For us, recycling, special energy-saving technology, and construction techniques are all a part of each new hotel we build. We have a responsibilityto ensure we’re doing everything we can to conserve energy and utilize the latest in technology to do so. The meetings industry is holding us accountable and we’re stepping up to the challenge.

FOL: Gaylord is in a unique position to sign multi-year deals with organizations that hold meetings in rotating cities. How important is the multi-year deal to your business strategy and what sort of organizations seem most attracted to a multi-year deal?

M.M.: The multi-year deal represents nearly 50 percent of the room nights we close each year. That’s significant and critical to our overall sales strategy. When we first developed our rotation strategy and multi-hotel selling process, we really thought the only key buyers would be associations, as they typically book further out and often contract more than one year. What we quickly discovered however, was that our strategy resonated with corporate customers too. In fact, corporations desire to book more than one year for all of the same reasons associations do; availability, consistency, ease of communication, etc.

FOL: What are some of the unique features and cost savings of the meeting bundle packages for planners with a multi-year, multi-city plan?

M.M.: Each deal is different and tailored to our customer’s needs. The value to doing a multi-year contract with Gaylord really steps beyond the discounts and focuses on our core business. For our customers, this means leveraging a hotel company that specializes in conventions. It’s a compelling proposition when you know that product and service level consistencies will be maintained year over year. Add to that our "All under one roof" experience and you have a proposal that’s hard to beat.

FOL: The meetings industry took a dramatic drip in the wake of 9/11, further fueled by the drop in travel and the recession of 2002-2003, and it is widely agreed that the market rebounded since (around) 2004. Could you explain how Gaylord has weathered these market conditions?

M.M.: The events of September 11th will forever be a part of our industry’s psyche. For me, I was five months from opening the Gaylord Palms. To say that the industry has ‘rebounded’ would say that it’s back to where it was prior to September 11—although group business levels are certainly back, the arrogance of the industry is not. Gone are the days of high-flying occupancies and attitudes of "Take it or leave it". Associations felt it the most as rates were being escalated 20-30 percent per year. Following the greatest year ever for the hotel industry (2000), customers truly felt taken advantage of by many hotels that could not see beyond the end of their P&L statements.

By mid 2001 the recession was already apparent and with the events of September 11, the industry hit bottom. The tables were now turned and the control was back in the customers hands. In short, those hotels that stood by their customers, benefited the most as the loyalty was now being reciprocated. The hardest hit hotels were those that played the hardest ball when the going was good.

For Gaylord, we were positioned well to weather the storm. We never forgot about our customers and the importance of our relationship with them. It was this relationship and the trust our customers had with Gaylord that allowed us to continue booking and break an industry record at the Palms of booking 1 million room nights one month prior to opening (this has since been broken by Gaylord National, where they just crossed 1 million room nights eight months out). We also ensured that we kept a high percentage of association business on the books.

There are by-laws within each association that require the association to hold an annual meeting. Clearly, those hotels who had the association base on the books weathered the recession better than those who didn’t. Case-in-point: Opryland ran 80 percent occupancy within 3 weeks of 9/11.

FOL: Is the post-2004 industry rebound continuing or has it reached a plateau?

M.M: I have no reason to believe business levels will not continue as they are now. I believe we have another 12-18 months of solid gains.

FOL: Do you have near-future plans to announce and begin a Gaylord project in other cities?

M.M.: We’ve got the Southeast and Central parts of the country covered. Our customers are telling us where they   would like to take their meetings and conferences to, so that is helping drive our site location decisions. Certainly there are issues of economic growth and appeal of destination markets that contributes here too. Our customers are telling us that a West Coast property would be their preference. If I were a betting man, I’d say it’s a good bet that Gaylord will "go west" and could have an announcement with in the next 6-12 months.