Outsourcing Meeting and Event Planning FAQs
We have meeting planners in-house and contracts with local hotels and vendors. Why would we use an outsourcer?
Even if you have professional meeting planners on staff or have some of your own negotiated contracts, outsourcing to WME for some or all of your event needs does not pose a threat to these jobs or existing vendor relationships. WME acts as an extension of your staff and provides an increased level of expertise, creativity, service and support that would not otherwise be available. Outsourcing allows you to leave some of all of the planning duties to the experts, freeing up your staff to focus on what matters most to your event – program content. All of our experience gained from planning hundreds of other events can be applied to planning your event.
We already have special rates negotiated with vendors. How can we be sure yours will be competitive?
WME conducts a large number of events each year for businesses all over the state. We have preferred partnerships with numerous vendors including hotels, transportation companies, venues, caterers and more. Based on our volume with these vendors, we can secure a better rate than any direct corporate account could attain.
We want our staff to be involved in our event planning. Can we use WME for only some of the services?
Yes, WME has a menu of services that are available a la cart. We can do some or all of your meeting and event planning. However, we do recommend that you involve us early in your planning because it’s difficult for us to guarantee a successful event if we are not engaged from the beginning.
We want to increase attendance and profitability of our events. Is that something WME can help with?
Yes, WME not only manages all the planning and logistics for meetings and events but we can also oversee all aspects of marketing the event from the inception of the project to completion. We can create an event website, build an online registration process, create a social media strategy, whatever it takes to help you reach your desired audience and attendance levels. In addition, we use metrics to measure your event’s ROI so you can be confident it was a worthwhile investment.
How do you determine your fee?
Once we know the scope of your event, as well as your event needs and goals, we can estimate the amount of work the event will require and provide you with a cost for the project. All vendor and entertainment costs are passed directly on to you and are not included in our fee. During the course of the project, each WME staff member tracks the number of hours that they spend on that project. We use this data to continually check out estimated costs for projects so we have a good idea of how long various types of projects take and can quote them accurately.