Consultia Business Travel, the Spanish company specialising in the comprehensive management and consultancy of business trips offers

Keys to successfully organising business meetings outside the office

 

Madrid, 13 July 2022 – After nearly two years suspended as a result of the pandemic, events and business meetings are back stronger than ever and with new trends in organisation and location.

While teleworking has brought a quantitative and qualitative leap in business meetings, the challenges and shortcomings of this model have also become apparent in the last year. This is demonstrated by data from the survey “The Numbers Behind the In-Meeting Movement”, which found that one in three respondents cite “too many meetings” and a lack of personal connection with teammates and colleagues. In addition, one in four respondents admit that connecting with others has proven to be “quite daunting” in this new virtual meeting environment

According to Renato Peña, director of MICE at Consultia Business Travel, the Spanish company specialising in integrated management and advice on business travel, “teleworking is here to stay but there is an imperative need to create unity and team spirit, people want to empathise and telematically it is not possible to do so”

This desire to go beyond video calls and remote connections points to a hybrid model of meetings that combines the value of the face-to-face experience with the technology and more functional elements of virtual meetings. This leads to a promising future for meetings tourism, with the sector expected to fully recover by 2024, with figures of up to 12,511 million euros.

This type of meeting is a key tool in the day-to-day running of an organisation or company as it favours internal team communication and customer relations

However, many factors have changed in the planning and coordination of a business meeting. For this reason, it is essential to have specialists in the management of this type of event to carry out an efficient organisation of business meetings, so that they can carry out a job based on personalised attention and organisation, adjusting to the needs of each company.

In this new context, Consultia Business Travel, a Spanish company specialising in the comprehensive management and consultancy of business trips, offers some keys to successfully organising a business meeting according to the latest trends:

 

  1. Define the objective: in order to get the message across properly, it is important to be clear about the purpose of the meeting and that all the actions you organise revolve around this objective.

 

  1. Organise the programme in advance: it is important to take into account the start and end times of the day as well as the breaks and the parts it will contain or if you want to allocate a final part to networking according to the current trend. In addition, it is highly recommended that attendees have access to the event’s agenda, so that they know at all times what is happening and what will happen next.

 

  1. Attendees at the centre of the organisation: looking after the comfort, needs and interests of participants will lead to greater participation and better results.

 

  1. The travel or event experience: the choice of the setting, the space, the gastronomy or the audiovisual projections as well as the complementary activities make it possible to turn the work meeting into an experiential day that the attendees will not forget.

 

  1. Travel: if the meeting is to be held out of town, offer your attendees comprehensive travel arrangements from transport tickets to accommodation with clear information on locations, arrival and departure times and travel itinerary.

 

  1. Audio-visual equipment: an appropriate selection of audio-visual equipment and a sound check beforehand will help to avoid any unforeseen events or setbacks so that the focus can be on conducting the meeting and attending to all participants.

 

  1. Setting up and distribution of the space: the placement of tables and chairs or support points should be chosen according to the objectives, the interaction sought, as well as the order of hierarchies and hosts, if there are any.

 

  1. Gastronomy: it has become another attraction in this type of meetings. Choose it depending on the theme, whether it is served or in the form of a cocktail or coffee if it is a morning event. When contracting catering, individual needs and intolerances should be kept in mind.

 

  1. Signage and hospitality: these tools have become essential for participants to feel cared for and know where to go if they need to.

 

  1. Protocol: depending on the type of meeting, it may be necessary to establish a certain etiquette and, if so, that all guests and participants are aware of it.

 

 

About Consultia Business Travel

Consultia Business Travel® is a Spanish company specialising in the integrated management of business travel (Travel Management Company) that offers a differentiated solution based on software in the cloud (Destinux®) and a personalised consultancy service (Personal Travel Assistant), which makes it an integrated solution for the management of business travel. It also manages the needs of meetings, incentives, congresses and events (MICE) that the company needs.

The company, with Spanish capital and founded in 2010, currently has offices in Madrid, Valencia, Zaragoza and Oporto. The start-up has integrated into a powerful management system nearly 3 million hotels, more than 600 airlines, 27 car rental companies around the world and private transfers in more than 160 countries, RENFE and taxis and VTC in more than 90 states, achieving online connectivity and efficiency that stand out in the corporate travel market.