Service and Activities Matter Most to Meeting Planners

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. October 14, 2008

BRETTON WOODS, NH, July 6, 2006. - A new research study shows that high quality service and a wide range of activities are the most important qualities cited by planners who regularly organize business meetings and conventions.

"By far, the most revealing element of the survey results was the emphasis that business meeting planners put on the attentiveness and professionalism of the people they will work with at the hotel and customer service - from the first contact with a salesperson, thorough ongoing support during the organization of the event itself, to on-site support during the event," reads the report, commissioned by the Mount Washington Resort at Bretton Woods. "Subjects also gave important priority to the availability of a wide range of extracurricular activities, particularly golf."

According to the business meeting planners who were surveyed, customer service issues often acted as a property's biggest plus - or its biggest weakness. Service issues were the most-often cited strength of any property, occurring seventeen times in the thirty-one times that a respondent offered strengths of a property. But, customer service was also the second most-cited weakness of various properties, second only to the distance to certain properties.

"For corporate clients and professional associations, service has to be perfect," explained Group Sales Director Rick McCarten, who previously worked for Marriott International for ten years in the Washington, DC area before recently coming to the Mount Washington Resort. "These people have to meet very high expectations in their professions, and they expect the same from a hotel or resort when they take their colleagues off-site for a meeting or convention. At the same time, the conference-goers want a wide range of activities to choose from - from golfing or skiing to hiking, swimming, shopping, and mountain climbing."

The study, conducted by Louis Karno & Company Communications, surveyed eleven individuals who plan meetings or conferences for a variety of companies and associations in the Northeastern United States. Participants included event planners, executive secretaries and administrative staff, and executive-level staff (Executive Directors, Presidents and Vice Presidents) who completed a phone interview about the meeting planning process. In order to ensure that they did not bias the results by "preparing" for the interview or changing their responses to please the interviewers, respondents were not told the specific nature of the survey - only that it was "designed to gauge public awareness of New England hotels and resorts that host conferences and business meetings." These interviews were conducted to provide insight into the qualitative priorities and decision-making of meeting planners, but are not a scientific poll or an exact quantification intended to represent all meeting planners.

For more information about The Mount Washington Resort at Bretton Woods, please call 877-873-0626, toll free, or visit www.mtwashington.com.

For a copy of the ten-page study, call Brett St. Clair at Louis Karno & Company Communications at (603)/224-5566.