At the highest level, events can be either simple or complex. A simple event might be a person needing one room on one date to accommodate a meeting for a handful of people who don’t need any catering, A/V, or other resources. A complex event might involve multiple dates and rooms, large numbers of attendees, lots of resources, etc.
You would think it’d be easy to spot a complex event when the room request comes in. In practice, however, it’s not as simple as it seems. And it’s important to be able to identify more involved events quickly and correctly for a number of reasons, including that they:
As events professionals know, fail to identify a complex event and you are likely to find yourself in the middle of a fire drill! And, of course, your mad scramble to deal with this event can have a negative impact on your ability to give others the attention they deserve.
Complex events may be particularly hard for new team members to spot. Fortunately, there are some telltale signs that everyone in your department can be trained to look for.
When you receive a new room request, be sure to read it carefully with an eye for these attributes:
These characteristics don’t have to raise anyone’s blood pressure. They just mean that the gathering will require a heightened sense of awareness and an earlier start to planning and preparation. Scheduling departments that 1) are able to spot them, and 2) develop a well-defined and documented process for handling them efficiently will have no problem at all executing flawless complex events.
To learn more about how to manage complex event requests see The Ultimate Guide to Taking Online Room Scheduling Requests.
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