By Nicci Grotefendt, founder of Travel GHR
The event ends, the attendees fly home, and most planners disappear. This is when I do some of my most important work. I reconcile the room block against the contract, line by line, before the hotel sends the final invoice. Hotels make mistakes. I check for double-charged room nights, missing concessions, and attrition calculated on the wrong dates, because every correction is money back to my client.
People ask what it is like to work with me, so here is the honest version of the first fifteen minutes. I ask about the event you are dreaming of, and then I ask about the one you are afraid of. The second answer tells me everything. It is usually about the room block, or a speaker, or the year something went wrong and nobody fixed it.
Let me show you the clause that costs planners the most money, because almost nobody does this math until it is too late.
I work with AI every day. I use it to draft, to research, to pressure-test my plans. Anyone who tells you AI has no place in event planning is selling something or scared of something.
Sixty-five people need to eat breakfast at the same time, in the same room, and be seated for a session at 9. This is a math problem dressed up as hospitality.
There is a kind of night in Orlando every event planner knows. The sprinter is the wrong vehicle. Twelve people, luggage for a week, and a sprinter that looked right on paper and wrong in the parking lot.
Someone once told me: you are the person who always has the camera focused on someone else, but you forget to feed yourself.
The educator I work with is generous with his time. Almost too generous. Attendees love him, and sometimes they don't notice when they are standing between him and the ten minutes of quiet he needs to be at his best for them.
When I review a hotel event contract, I read it like the person who used to sign the other side. Because I was. I spent years as a hotel general manager, which means I know exactly what each clause is designed to protect, and for whom. Here is what I check first, and what I wish every corporate planner knew.
Let me tell you about the dinner that didn't exist at lunch. Every planner has a version of this night. Here is how it usually goes.
Something I believe that does not make me popular at planner conferences: Most event planners are order takers. They set minimums that make their own lives easy, send a PDF, and disappear until event week. The work that looks "extra" is usually the work that matters most.
I spent the weeks before the event doing something most people would find deeply boring. I was moving hotel arrival dates around one by one. Each change meant a new confirmation, an updated rooming list, and an email to the hotel's group housing coordinator.
