Latest / Event Industry News Podcast / Creating Immersive Events: Inside Hilton Birmingham Metropole with Eventologists' Rita Chandarana

Transcript

Creating Immersive Events: Inside Hilton Birmingham Metropole with Eventologists' Rita Chandarana · Event Industry News Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Event Industry News podcast with me, James Dixon,
• 0:10
  wishing you all a very good morning, afternoon or evening, whenever or wherever you tune
• 0:14
  into today's podcast from.
• 0:16
  And you will notice that I am not sat at an upright piano in my living room with a laptop
• 0:21
  camera in front of me.
• 0:22
  I'm in a beautiful space today.
• 0:25
  We have been afforded the luxury of an invitation down to the Hilton Birmingham Metropole.
• 0:30
  They are celebrating 50 years operationally here, of course, on site at the NEC.
• 0:38
  And they've invited us down to record some episodes of the podcast at the hotel.
• 0:43
  And they've given us this beautiful space in the Brightsmiths restaurant and bar overlooking
• 0:48
  the lake here at the NEC.
• 0:50
  It's a beautiful day.
• 0:52
  And it's a sort of it's a genuine privilege to be sat in comfortable surroundings and
• 0:56
  being able to chat to people about events here at the at the hotel.
• 1:00
  My guest on today's podcast is Rita Chandorana.
• 1:04
  Rita is from Eventologists.
• 1:06
  And well, I'm not going to explain or introduce about things.
• 1:10
  First of all, Rita, welcome to the podcast.
• 1:11
  Thank you so much.
• 1:13
  And this is a beautiful space.
• 1:15
  It's a wonderful hotel.
• 1:16
  It's a big old space as well.
• 1:18
  Tell us about Eventologists and what you do here for the events that take place.
• 1:23
  Well, first of all, this is home.
• 1:26
  I feel really comfortable.
• 1:27
  I've been working here for gosh, as the Eventologist for many, many years, about 12 years as one
• 1:36
  of the provided suppliers.
• 1:38
  So real privilege to be here.
• 1:40
  But I started my life working at Hilton Metropole.
• 1:44
  So almost 30, 35 years ago.
• 1:47
  So Eventologists is the creative production team behind some of the magical spaces that
• 1:53
  you see on Instagram, on LinkedIn.
• 1:56
  So we are actually preferred suppliers here delivering the most amazing creative events
• 2:01
  from an absolute transformation to some of the smaller events that you see in Brightsmiths
• 2:06
  here where we are, where last night we were doing a lovely event for 90 people, nine table
• 2:13
  centers.
• 2:14
  It was really smart, kind of suited the vibe.
• 2:17
  So it's a mixture of events, but you know, everything from Christmas to some of their
• 2:23
  showcases that are managed with us.
• 2:26
  My first instinct is what an exciting business to work in, your role, being able to come
• 2:33
  in to what are already great spaces, but effectively turn them into something based on what the
• 2:39
  client wants it to look like or feel like or what they want their attendees to experience.
• 2:44
  It literally must be every day, it must be starting with a blank piece of paper from
• 2:48
  a creative point of view.
• 2:49
  Well, you have to, because at the end of the day, we are living in this world where we
• 2:54
  want immersiveness, we want theater, we want much more than just a mundane.
• 2:59
  And I think we live in a world where conferences, corporate events are now demanding much more
• 3:06
  than the kind of sterile environment of a sort of a box.
• 3:11
  And whilst Hilton is beautiful, it's an amazing hotel, and I'm just so privileged to work
• 3:16
  here and I love it.
• 3:17
  And I love every space, but at the end of the day, that's not enough to get repeat business
• 3:23
  that we need to provide some real stimulating spaces.
• 3:28
  And that's what we do alongside Protech to create a space where people just don't want
• 3:33
  to leave and they digest the information so well when it's much more theatrical and immersive,
• 3:39
  because that's what the recall is.
• 3:41
  It was that event where we talked about the future, but it had like spinning globes and
• 3:48
  bright flashing lights.
• 3:50
  That's what people remember of events, so that's what we're creating.
• 3:53
  It's a real sensory experience.
• 3:55
  So for me, no one event, if you look at my warehouse, it's every product is repurposed
• 4:03
  and changed to make sure that we're constantly renewing and reviving products, but also delivering
• 4:10
  very different experiences, not just for the customer, but also for Hilton and the Hilton
• 4:16
  team because they don't want to see the same every day.
• 4:18
  And that's what we pride ourselves in.
• 4:20
  I'm pleased that you mentioned Protech because we were lucky enough to speak to Simon Gelli
• 4:26
  from Protech on a previous episode of the podcast that we recorded here about their
• 4:31
  role as technical production partners.
• 4:34
  And it was going to be one of the things I was going to ask you is about how your role
• 4:41
  within an event dovetails with what they do.
• 4:44
  And presumably you've got to work together, haven't you?
• 4:46
  Because if you've got a great idea for the look, the feel, any sort of set dressing or
• 4:50
  theming, it has to work with the lighting and the actual technical build, doesn't it?
• 4:55
  Absolutely.
• 4:56
  So, you know, everything works hand in hand.
• 4:58
  And it's a really unusual model that Hilton have got here, obviously one of the busiest
• 5:03
  hotels in the country for corporate events.
• 5:06
  And then you've also, therefore, it demands people who know the spaces, people who know
• 5:13
  how to work with each other.
• 5:15
  And obviously, from a just pure administration point of view, the fact that our sales and
• 5:19
  Protech work together, we kind of know how each other works, but also that there is always
• 5:25
  an expectation saying eventologists are doing this.
• 5:29
  So therefore, we need to be ready to light this element or that element.
• 5:35
  But also, even in the pre-planning, there's a lot of work that we go in to say, this is
• 5:39
  how this product comes to life.
• 5:42
  Or actually, I'm thinking of building something quite unusual.
• 5:45
  So one of the showcases I did last year, we actually had a spinning, rotating bond silhouette,
• 5:53
  which was really cool.
• 5:54
  But actually, how do you light something that's black and rotating and how do you create drama
• 6:00
  with that?
• 6:01
  So we have to work together.
• 6:03
  And obviously, every customer event is so different.
• 6:06
  So lighting, it holds hands with what we do.
• 6:10
  And we can't work without Protech.
• 6:12
  And Protech, whilst they can work without a lot of theming, but theming brings everything
• 6:20
  to life.
• 6:21
  And by that, I don't actually mean Willy Wonka or Alice in Wonderland, because most people
• 6:26
  kind of think theming it, they must be just doing Oz or Wicked.
• 6:30
  Yeah, Christmas theme.
• 6:31
  Christmas.
• 6:32
  Let's put trees everywhere and some fake snow.
• 6:34
  Absolutely not.
• 6:35
  Even conferences these days need to be a bit more exciting than trestle tables and a blank
• 6:42
  screen.
• 6:43
  So we will enhance.
• 6:46
  Sometimes we're there as just the enhancers to AV.
• 6:50
  And sometimes we're there in its own right and creating theatre because we're doing a
• 6:57
  proper theme.
• 6:58
  And of course, on the subject of conferences, for example, historically, conference organisers
• 7:05
  would have gone, oh, we don't need all that.
• 7:07
  We just need a room.
• 7:08
  And we want everybody to pay attention to what's happening on the stage.
• 7:10
  But of course, if you've got a boring space that doesn't inspire the people who are sat
• 7:14
  there as attendees, by two o'clock, that's when they're going to be nodding off.
• 7:19
  They're going to be checking their watches for when's the next coffee break.
• 7:22
  If you have a space that as soon as somebody walks into, they go, wow.
• 7:27
  If it's inspiring for the people sat in the audience, you're going to get more engagement
• 7:30
  from them.
• 7:31
  So you need to have happier attendees at your business event.
• 7:35
  Absolutely.
• 7:36
  So, you know, obviously, we're bombarded, you know, I grew up in the years of four channels.
• 7:42
  We're now bombarded with hundreds and hundreds of channels, hundreds of touch points for
• 7:47
  a marketing point of view.
• 7:49
  So actually, when you've got a conference, you've got people who are checking their Instagram,
• 7:54
  checking their emails, and you can't stop that.
• 7:58
  But also at the same time, you've got an environment that they're just not learning
• 8:03
  in.
• 8:04
  They're not like digesting any information because basically, it's just not stimulating
• 8:08
  enough.
• 8:09
  But by creating a space where it inspires them, they feel, whether they feel relaxed
• 8:14
  in that space or whether they're completely powered up, it's not just the content and
• 8:20
  this presentation that you're putting together, it's everything.
• 8:22
  It's the lighting and how that changes the music.
• 8:25
  It's a complete sensory overload that you need to create.
• 8:30
  And then when they walk away, and the key to a great event is if they're still talking
• 8:35
  about that event in a week, in two weeks, and in a year's time, which often when we're
• 8:41
  collaborating with, you know, Simon and his team, we often manage to achieve, then we've
• 8:48
  done a great job.
• 8:49
  And also from the hotel's point of view, they need people, very much so, who understand
• 8:57
  the audience, the way to actually engage with the audience and actually deliver events.
• 9:02
  Because I often say that when an event is absolutely brilliant, you don't actually know
• 9:09
  which part of the jigsaw has created that.
• 9:12
  You know, the jigsaw just fits.
• 9:14
  So between us, ProTech, and Hilton, you create such a stitched version of an event, automatically
• 9:22
  the customer wants more and wants to come back again.
• 9:25
  So there's benefits as a venue to create this collaborative thinking.
• 9:31
  There's benefits not just logistically, because actually they don't constantly need to sit
• 9:36
  on us to check that we've done our paperwork.
• 9:40
  The paperwork's always there because we're suppliers.
• 9:43
  But also at the same time, there's not the nervousness about, well, how's this going
• 9:49
  to turn out?
• 9:50
  Because we all know what our roles are, take our roles really seriously, and we're constantly
• 9:56
  driving to deliver an executionally perfect, smooth-running event.
• 10:02
  So therefore, from the customer's point of view, it was so perfect that there's no reason
• 10:07
  why they don't want to book again with Hilton.
• 10:09
  Absolutely.
• 10:10
  Yeah, yeah.
• 10:11
  The last thing I want to ask about is spaces and how spaces have changed over the years.
• 10:17
  Because we're seeing more and more events take advantage of spaces in venues to do different
• 10:24
  things.
• 10:25
  And I'll give you a couple of examples.
• 10:27
  Wellbeing areas, where they want a quiet space.
• 10:29
  If it's a really intense program for the attendees, a lot more places are creating these wellbeing
• 10:34
  areas where people just go for a bit of peace and quiet maybe for an hour or so.
• 10:40
  There are spaces that are being created to almost like sort of business zones, but dedicated
• 10:44
  for attendees of a particular event so that if they're here for two or three days, they
• 10:48
  can go somewhere for an hour to just check their emails or have an online meeting with
• 10:53
  their office.
• 10:54
  Are you seeing more and more organizers doing that type of thing?
• 10:58
  And then obviously, that filters to you to then say, right, how are we going to create
• 11:02
  that space that they want?
• 11:04
  Absolutely.
• 11:05
  So, neurodiversity is a big issue in terms of there's lots of people who actually genuinely
• 11:11
  don't like the noise and the hubbub after about an hour, an hour and a half of a really
• 11:15
  busy party.
• 11:16
  So, therefore, actually creating quiet chill-out spaces.
• 11:20
  And actually, there's a lot of people who don't want to like drink all night and party.
• 11:25
  There are people who genuinely just want to chat and catch up with colleagues.
• 11:29
  So, the chill-out area, well-being areas, and then like cool bars, but like mocktail
• 11:36
  bars.
• 11:37
  And then like we're constantly creating spaces where it could be a photo zone or a game zone
• 11:43
  where actually creating, going back to the point that I made earlier, it's got to be
• 11:49
  multisensory.
• 11:50
  But it's not just multisensory in terms of sounds and noises, but you need to look at
• 11:55
  the audience and go, okay, what are the audience requirements?
• 12:01
  And therefore, create zones and spaces.
• 12:03
  And more and more within one event, we might be dressing and creating different zones.
• 12:10
  So, there is the party space or at a conference, charging is a great thing.
• 12:17
  Of course, yeah.
• 12:18
  Everyone has charging anxiety.
• 12:19
  So, actually, just having somewhere you can check your emails, charge your phone, come
• 12:24
  back, and then you're back into like conference mode.
• 12:28
  And it's nothing worse for an organiser to have people going up to their bedrooms or
• 12:33
  in their cars, and then you kind of lose them for hours upon end.
• 12:37
  So, actually creating these spaces are so important.
• 12:40
  Yeah.
• 12:41
  And it's the charging thing, you know, I remember when we first started to bring in sort of,
• 12:46
  you know, stations, exhibitions, because we're like, well, we need somewhere for people to
• 12:50
  charge their mobile devices and things like that.
• 12:54
  One thing that I wanted to touch on is that I think it's important in events that we acknowledge
• 13:01
  younger people today, they have different attention spans, but they're more discerning
• 13:07
  in many, many respects, more so than I think a lot of people give them credit for.
• 13:11
  There are a lot of young people now who are choosing not to drink.
• 13:14
  They just don't want to drink alcohol.
• 13:15
  There are a lot of young people who, from a business point of view, don't just want
• 13:18
  to follow the old method from 25 years ago, which is, let's do the trade show, the conference
• 13:22
  during the day, and then it's just a big old booze up in the evening.
• 13:26
  You know, you have to offer, as younger people and the younger generation are coming into
• 13:31
  any form of business, we have to acknowledge the different tastes and the different lifestyle
• 13:36
  choices that people are making nowadays, and we have to be prepared to offer those within
• 13:40
  our events as well, rather than the sort of the old tick box exercise, give them a load
• 13:45
  of booze, throw them into a room and put a DJ on, it doesn't work anymore.
• 13:48
  No.
• 13:49
  And it's really important for hotels and venues to understand that, because actually for conferences
• 13:56
  and whether you call it a gala dinner or is it a different kind of gala dinner, basically
• 14:03
  for hotels and venues to be relevant to that conference market, actually offering something
• 14:09
  that suits that customer need is so important.
• 14:12
  So you're absolutely right.
• 14:15
  These young people are much more conscious of their well-being, you know, their well-being
• 14:21
  is sort of food and drink related, but also generally their mental health.
• 14:25
  So they need spaces to quieten down.
• 14:28
  They don't want to drink so much.
• 14:30
  So therefore, what else can you do?
• 14:32
  How can you create an inspiring space without the booze?
• 14:35
  And also from a revenue point of view for the hotel, if booze is not like, if alcohol
• 14:40
  is not the big part of their event, what else can you offer to kind of plug that gap?
• 14:46
  And I guess that's where you've got, that's where you've got, you know, me and Simon working
• 14:53
  together to go, okay, what can we create that's really interesting, that allows them to still
• 14:59
  have the same revenue streams, book the rooms.
• 15:03
  And therefore, you know, we have to think really creatively as producers to go, it's
• 15:09
  not about sitting down and having a three-course meal.
• 15:13
  It might be casual dining, street food.
• 15:16
  Okay, what can you do?
• 15:17
  How can you fill this space in a different way?
• 15:20
  You could create a swagger room for some of these MLL brands, you know, they are relying
• 15:24
  on people and membership.
• 15:26
  So therefore, how can you create a really cool swagger room where they're collecting
• 15:30
  things and doing things?
• 15:31
  So they're still engaging in a really fun environment.
• 15:35
  They love, obviously, they love photo opportunities.
• 15:37
  Of course, yeah.
• 15:38
  How can you do all of that within the confines of a hotel?
• 15:42
  Otherwise, what you're going to have, what's going to happen is over time, hotels are going
• 15:47
  to find it much more difficult to book spaces because there are a lot, you are competing
• 15:53
  with a lot more spaces, whether it's a bar or a really funky, like chill out space.
• 15:58
  So there's lots of that.
• 16:00
  So for us as producers, we need to keep up with the trends and also the changes in dynamics
• 16:07
  and socio-economic like changes.
• 16:09
  Yeah.
• 16:10
  And I mean, for example, there you mentioned photos, you know, time was where you'd have
• 16:16
  your event photographer and your photo wall, and maybe that photographer would go around
• 16:20
  snapping pictures of people as they enjoy their evening.
• 16:24
  Everybody at your event now is your event photographer.
• 16:27
  And so does that incorporate itself into the design of spaces now where you want to take
• 16:32
  advantage of that because then that's great publicity and marketing for the hotel, for
• 16:37
  the spaces?
• 16:38
  Yeah.
• 16:39
  And not just for the hotel, absolutely photo opportunities, spaces where they can do really
• 16:44
  cool stuff.
• 16:45
  And it's not just having a photo.
• 16:46
  It's also the engagement of how you get interaction, how you get people like remembering why they
• 16:54
  were there.
• 16:55
  And even if it's just a, I don't know, the future is now or grow, grow, lots of those
• 17:00
  kind of things that you need to kind of have that engaging interaction.
• 17:03
  But, you know, obviously from that point of view, it's the photo opportunity, yes, to
• 17:09
  talk about the hotel and the venue, but it's also really important for the organiser to
• 17:13
  go, well, how is this person who is bombarded with, by the time I walk out, I'm bombarded
• 17:20
  with that many Instagram messages and TikTok and everything else.
• 17:23
  How are they going to remember why we invited them?
• 17:26
  And it was not just for the food and the alcohol or whatever else you're applying.
• 17:32
  It's the crux of the message.
• 17:34
  And so therefore, yeah, the more stimulating it is.
• 17:39
  And then, you know, from our point of view, it's like, what is it?
• 17:42
  It's always starts, a brief always starts off with what is the marketing objective?
• 17:47
  It's not, and often I kind of laugh at it.
• 17:51
  People just think, oh, yeah, well, I need some chair covers and table centres.
• 17:54
  Well, actually, it's beyond that.
• 17:56
  As event producers, we need to think about what the marketing objective is and therefore
• 18:01
  going, what else do you require?
• 18:03
  It may be that at the end of it, you just need chair covers and table centres and a
• 18:07
  nice gala dinner.
• 18:08
  But let's start off with, okay, what else does the event need?
• 18:14
  Sure.
• 18:15
  Yeah.
• 18:16
  And how much does, I guess, with some of the clients that are coming in here, they might
• 18:21
  be very, very well-known brands or they might have a very strong brand identity, even if
• 18:25
  they're not publicly well-known.
• 18:27
  How much does their own brand then lead your sort of thematic dressing and creation of
• 18:32
  the event?
• 18:33
  That they might have sort of certain iconography or colour schemes or logos, you know, even
• 18:38
  sort of company mascots that may then lead you to thinking, well, we could take that
• 18:42
  element of their own branding and actually use that as the base of the theme.
• 18:46
  So you've got like a kind of 50-50 split.
• 18:50
  There's a lot of people who want really branded stuff and then we're creating, I did a really
• 18:55
  lovely event in February here and, you know, everything was about the brand and we did
• 19:00
  this time tunnel, which was really fantastic and actually quite immersive, lots of people
• 19:06
  taking pictures whilst they're going through the time tunnel.
• 19:09
  And then from there, the table centres were really cool and very branded.
• 19:13
  And then equally, I did an event last week where they went, look, they actually know
• 19:18
  what the brand is and why they're here.
• 19:20
  So actually subtle on the brand, big on the impact and the visual aspects.
• 19:26
  So we went, it was actually a gala dinner and we created a Buddha bar kind of Marrakesh
• 19:31
  kind of vibe for them.
• 19:33
  So it was very like heavy on the experience and the environment and the stimulating space
• 19:38
  that we created.
• 19:40
  So it's a real mixture, but obviously brand is everything.
• 19:43
  We have to be really like careful about how we treat it.
• 19:46
  And that's why actually an agency that understands the marketing and the objectives, but also
• 19:52
  at the same time working collaboratively with their own event planners and agency is a great
• 20:00
  way of working.
• 20:01
  So it's not just Simon who becomes our partner, it's also the customer or the event agency
• 20:07
  that we work with.
• 20:08
  So we kind of almost absorb ourselves into their customer so that obviously it's seamless
• 20:14
  for them as well, which is really important because whilst we want to be seamless for
• 20:19
  the venue, we also need to basically help the venue hit the objective for the client
• 20:25
  as well.
• 20:26
  No, of course.
• 20:27
  And when you, how much satisfaction do you still get when you stand back after everything's
• 20:32
  been done and just either before doors open or even sort of mid event when you look around
• 20:37
  and go, we did this?
• 20:40
  Well, I like, I am getting shivers now actually, because to me, like this job is everything.
• 20:48
  And I'm like, even now, the event that has nine table centres to all the way through
• 20:54
  to something that's like completely transformative, gives me jitters.
• 20:59
  I'm nervous before every single event.
• 21:02
  And that's not because I don't know how to do my job.
• 21:04
  I so deeply care.
• 21:06
  And the team, the extended team at Eventologist, I'm really proud that I've recruited a bunch
• 21:13
  of people, like everything matters, even down to the, like a few days ago, a client, a well-known
• 21:20
  car brand wanted three tablecloths delivering the day before their event, because it was
• 21:25
  so important to them.
• 21:26
  Do you know what?
• 21:27
  The pride that my team go through to deliver that little bit of it, all the way through
• 21:33
  to the complete transformation of some of the things that we do, the jitters are amazing.
• 21:39
  We care.
• 21:40
  And also, I'm like, it's so, it's a big piece of work where you kind of just go, oh my goodness,
• 21:46
  what have we done?
• 21:47
  Sometimes you're so busy working away, building and checking on things.
• 21:51
  It's only when the lights go down and Simon's lights go up and you're like, oh my goodness,
• 21:57
  did we just do look at what we've just done?
• 22:00
  And you don't appreciate it.
• 22:02
  Sometimes we are our own worst critic and I'll be walking around going, I could have
• 22:08
  done that better.
• 22:09
  I could have done this better.
• 22:10
  And even though most people are going, oh my goodness, like, have you just done that?
• 22:15
  You're always going to go, well, how could I have done that better?
• 22:18
  But at the same time, it is a magical job to do.
• 22:23
  We could have done that better.
• 22:25
  And the always having nerves before things open shows that you care.
• 22:31
  I think that's the, they're the two key indicators.
• 22:35
  Complacency is the enemy of the event organiser.
• 22:38
  And if you don't have those nerves or you don't walk around going, we could have done
• 22:41
  that better, I think that that suggests complacency.
• 22:46
  And if that's ever happened to anybody, that's the time to get out.
• 22:48
  You know, I've never done an event, big or small, where I haven't gone, is everything
• 22:53
  working?
• 22:54
  Is everything, is that okay?
• 22:55
  Is that in place?
• 22:56
  Have they got water on the conference table?
• 22:59
  You're constantly checking in, the butterflies are going.
• 23:03
  And it's so important to have, I think.
• 23:06
  I think it's one of the fundamentals of being in this job.
• 23:09
  Well, you know, obviously, to add to that, it's, you know, you're only as good as your
• 23:14
  last event.
• 23:16
  And also, you can't rely on what you did in the past to dictate what you're going to do
• 23:21
  in the future.
• 23:22
  So for us, I don't even want Hilton to go, oh gosh, we've seen that five times.
• 23:27
  I don't want that, because basically, it bores me.
• 23:31
  So I'm constantly looking at, and the team are constantly looking at newness.
• 23:36
  But also, some of it is, you know, failure is never an option.
• 23:40
  I spent all of my day yesterday, recreating a plan for one of the customers, basically
• 23:46
  it was a floor plan, that I could see on paper that something's, I think my team called it
• 23:52
  the my witchy instinct, I could see that there was something wrong with it, and I didn't
• 23:56
  know what.
• 23:57
  So actually, when we put it into CAD, and started to look at it, kind of went, oh my
• 24:02
  goodness, it's a 450 seater event.
• 24:05
  But actually, there's only space for 280, even though the plans showed that on paper
• 24:12
  it works, but actually, measurement to measurement, it didn't work.
• 24:17
  We had to resolve it, the events in 12 days time.
• 24:21
  It's not my job to resolve it, but I resolved it because I don't want my team to go through
• 24:26
  problems on the job, but it's that constant looking forward and constant going, okay,
• 24:31
  what can go wrong?
• 24:32
  And whilst I'm not manifesting things going wrong, but actually by having that forward
• 24:37
  planning to go, did we do this?
• 24:39
  Did we like have people thought of this?
• 24:42
  Even down to, I keep using examples of tablecloths, but did we deliver two extra tablecloths just
• 24:49
  in case?
• 24:50
  Just in case.
• 24:51
  The laundrette didn't do a great job and keep clean tablecloths.
• 24:54
  As daft as it sounds, but that could be the thing that stresses an event manager or a
• 25:00
  venue planner, because actually you're like, oh my goodness, what am I going to do here?
• 25:06
  I don't want to create, I and my team don't want to be the source of anyone's stress.
• 25:11
  So by constantly forward planning our job, but anybody else's job, you're then thinking
• 25:16
  ahead to go, right, okay, I'm like 99% of the time, the reason why events don't go wrong
• 25:22
  is we're forward planning to the extent where actually it's unlikely for this to happen,
• 25:28
  but let's plan for it.
• 25:30
  And it's great because things don't go wrong.
• 25:33
  Absolutely.
• 25:34
  You have to have some element of what could go wrong.
• 25:39
  You have to build that into your thinking.
• 25:41
  You have to go, right, well, if this happens, what are we going to do?
• 25:43
  If this happens, what's the plan then?
• 25:46
  Because if you don't, nine times out of 10, you won't ever need that backup plan, but
• 25:50
  you can guarantee that the time you don't have the backup plan is the time that something
• 25:54
  goes wrong.
• 25:55
  Absolutely.
• 25:56
  And I remember a few years ago, it was before COVID, but there was basically had a turnaround.
• 26:06
  So the event started, the conference finished at 4.45.
• 26:09
  The event started at seven o'clock and there was a major crash, basically 300 yards away
• 26:19
  from the exit from Hilton.
• 26:23
  My van could actually see that 300 yards marker, but we couldn't do anything.
• 26:31
  So about half an hour passed.
• 26:33
  We were early, so it was great, but half an hour passed, 45 minutes passed and at about
• 26:40
  an hour, and it was about, I would probably say three o'clock, I kind of phoned my team
• 26:47
  to say, right, get another van on the road.
• 26:50
  I'm going to try and get a couple of other people that I know where I can get tablecloths,
• 26:56
  bits and pieces, and I'm going to pull together an event through deliveries and they're going
• 27:01
  to go down the A45 and round the back to try and deliver something.
• 27:06
  It doesn't matter if I double up on equipment, but it doesn't look like there was helicopters
• 27:14
  by this time.
• 27:15
  So funny enough, by the time all of this new equipment arrived, the van basically arrived
• 27:21
  20 minutes after, but the new equipment arrived at, I think, about 4.30.
• 27:29
  My van reached about 5.15 or something.
• 27:34
  So it was so tight, but you need somebody thinking about a plan B because you can't
• 27:39
  just go, well, I can't do anything.
• 27:41
  Like there's a crash.
• 27:42
  I'm sorry, sorry.
• 27:43
  Sorry.
• 27:44
  Nothing I can do.
• 27:45
  That's just not, failure is not an option.
• 27:48
  You just find a way of making it work and obviously the client was completely understanding
• 27:53
  because most people were on the road stuck, but actually having someone who's proactively
• 27:59
  thinking about, okay, what can I do in this situation is what you want as a partner.
• 28:06
  And I guess that's why-
• 28:07
  And it's what you want the client to see.
• 28:08
  You want the client to see that you want the client to go, there's nothing you could have
• 28:12
  done about that, but I'm so, I'm so happy that you clearly made an effort to try and
• 28:17
  sort something out.
• 28:19
  Sometimes that effort is worth it alone because if people can sit, if again, going back to
• 28:23
  the complacency thing, if you go there and go, no, sorry, shrug your shoulders, nothing
• 28:27
  we can do about it.
• 28:28
  That's not what the client wants to see.
• 28:30
  Nobody wants that.
• 28:31
  They want to see that effort.
• 28:33
  Absolutely.
• 28:34
  And I guess that's one of the reasons why, you know, you always like pride yourself in
• 28:40
  like delivering great products and, you know, great service, but one of the kind of trusting
• 28:46
  elements that Hilton are always knowing about, about Eventologists is the fact that we will
• 28:53
  do that.
• 28:54
  So they can phone me at 10 o'clock at night and say, oh, like we've not had, we've had
• 29:00
  a problem with, is there anything you can do to sort it?
• 29:04
  And actually having that, because things go wrong in hotels, things go wrong, you know,
• 29:10
  in day-to-day circumstances, things happen.
• 29:12
  And actually having trusted suppliers to go, right, let's all work together and deliver
• 29:18
  this and make sure it happens.
• 29:21
  And like to cite an example, I just remember that just after COVID and I was talking to
• 29:27
  the event manager from the, we were doing a great big event at Hilton.
• 29:33
  They took the entire, the entire hotel and I just remember that they had a problem because
• 29:42
  it was so close to coming back from COVID, lots of people who were delivering service
• 29:47
  just didn't turn up.
• 29:49
  So like some of their freelancers, there was a core number of people in the hotel, but
• 29:56
  you will have to supplement with some of the freelancers and agency staff because it
• 30:01
  was such a big, big event.
• 30:02
  And I just remember kind of looking at my colleagues and I call them colleagues, except,
• 30:09
  you know, they are, they are their preferred suppliers.
• 30:12
  I was like, you look like you're really struggling, like, what can I do?
• 30:18
  And actually I, it was never a problem.
• 30:21
  I ended up picking up glasses, doing service, and I was there with like cleaning up and
• 30:28
  helping them because you want that partnership to be so strong that they can call you to
• 30:33
  kind of support you with anything.
• 30:35
  And that's where, you know, that partnership is really deep, that everyone just mucked
• 30:40
  in and got the event done and the client didn't know any better.
• 30:44
  To quote High School Musical, we are all in this together.
• 30:46
  Absolutely.
• 30:47
  And once you enter and once you step over that threshold of the event, you are in that
• 30:53
  together.
• 30:54
  I've, you know, I've seen so many examples myself of people mucking in, you know, lighting
• 30:58
  teams are from a separate company to the audio team and the video guys, they're just all
• 31:03
  working together on something because there's an issue, you know, staff from wherever it
• 31:07
  may be, you know, like you said, clearing glasses, mucking in.
• 31:11
  It is again, it's a fundamental part of working in this industry.
• 31:14
  Absolutely.
• 31:15
  And so if they see you as partners, then the word that's not my job should not be coming
• 31:22
  in.
• 31:23
  It's a really important thing.
• 31:24
  So my again, all of all of our team are trained on that.
• 31:28
  You do what it takes to make sure that this event is successful.
• 31:32
  And that's it.
• 31:33
  Period.
• 31:34
  Absolutely.
• 31:35
  Partners is a great way to wrap up today's episode, because that's kind of the ethos
• 31:38
  of why we're here.
• 31:39
  And, you know, we are at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole celebrating their 50th anniversary
• 31:45
  as an event space in the heart of the UK, right alongside the NEC.
• 31:49
  And this hotel and this event space and the spaces that are available in here has the
• 31:55
  reputation that they've got because of the partnerships, because of these partnerships
• 32:00
  of the hotel working alongside trusted partners to deliver these events, which are in some
• 32:06
  respects synonymous with the UK events industry.
• 32:09
  And it's it just remains for me to say thank you very much to the team here for inviting
• 32:14
  us along from Event Industry News to explore some of the spaces, to be able to host the
• 32:19
  podcast in such a beautiful environment, genuinely, you know, for years, we've done them, you
• 32:24
  know, remotely and via video link, and it's great to be able to do that, but in very much
• 32:29
  the same way as we all had to go to virtual events during the pandemic, and we were desperate
• 32:34
  to get back live.
• 32:35
  It's great to be sat in a space like this recording and being able to talk to somebody
• 32:39
  across the table.
• 32:41
  It makes it so much more exciting.
• 32:42
  Thank you, Rita.
• 32:43
  It's been lovely to talk to you today.
• 32:44
  And thanks for joining us on the podcast.
• 32:46
  Thank you so much.
• 32:47
  Thanks again to the team at Hilton Birmingham Metropole for making this happen today.
• 32:51
  And we'll see on the next edition of the Event Industry News podcast, everybody.
• 32:53
  Goodbye.
• 32:54
  Bye.