Event Marketing: How to Successfully Promote Events, Festivals, Conventions, and Expositions

to hours. For corporate meetings, this is rather routine in-

formation because travel arrangements are usually preor-

dained by the company. For fairs, festivals, awards dinners,

and association events, the issues become more problemat-

ical. Remember that the attendees are not under the control

of the sponsoring organization and will make their own

travel arrangements. Hotels typically maintain computer

records on all aspects of a guest’s stay, including arrival

times, types of rooms requested, no-shows, on-site pur-

chases, and departure times (including early departures).

The event organizer can request a flowchart from the facil-

ity’s computer with all this information, even on a daily ba-

sis, for analysis on site.

5. Patterns of Departure.Reversing the data needed for arrival
   patterns, departure patterns are equally important. If half of
   the audience is historically gone from the facility before the
   closing-night banquet, the marketing executive faces a chal-
   lenge. The solutions may be many: Beefing up the closing-
   night event, adding postconvention tours and features, or
   holding a major prize drawing or silent auction are exam-
   ples of effective responses to the problem. This is a chal-
   lenge for proactive marketers who can influence program
   planners for the event.

Regardless of the data to be accumulated and the methods

used, these patterns of performance must be archived, maintained,

and used to predict future patterns, as well as to improve the mar-

keting strategies and effect more acceptable negotiations with

event suppliers.

Data should be organized into charts immediately, in order to

analyze results quickly and continually. For example, registrations

received should be logged weekly (if not daily) and retained for a

“critical path” analysis over a period of years. This will influence

promotional timetables and techniques. Attendance at workshops

should be charted by topic, time of day, and day of week to es-

tablish patterns. Certain topics may not be popular with the audi-

ence attracted. On the other hand, they may be popular with au-

diencesnotbeing attracted, which raises even more compelling

marketing possibilities. Events at resorts often draw participants

in healthy numbers in the morning, while attendance falls off in

the afternoon due to the lure of golf and tennis. No details are too

186 Chapter 8 Trends in Event Marketing