Small Group ALTernative

The new ALT Hotel at Toronto Pearson Airport joins ALT Hotels in Montreal and Quebec in offering "no frills chic" service at a single price - any room, any time - wireless interenet always included.

ALT Hotels, with properties in Montreal and Quebec (and openings soon in Winnipeg and Halifax), is part of Groupe Germain Hospitality which also operates Le Germain Hotels. These include Hotel Le Germain Toronto and Hotel Le Germain Maple Leaf Square. Both brands offer exceptional design features with limited services, or as they say "service light".

Whereas breakfast is included with your stay at Le Germain, you may purchase a wide range of hot and cold meals and snacks any time of the day or night from ALTcetera Eatery - to be enjoyed in the stylish and comfortable lobby, or in the privacy of your own room. Yes, alcoholic beverages are available, and you can get a pretty mean Americano should you so desire.  

The ALT Toronto offers 153 guestrooms and 6000 sq.ft. of function space comprised of 11 meeting rooms and "creative lounges" - with floor-to-ceiling windows, 55" television screens, and colourful names such as Rose, Fuscia, Cyan and Indigo.

I love the proximity of this hotel to the airport, too. No waiting around for a shuttle, simply take the Link train; the picture above was taken from the train stop. There's 'alt' signage inside Terminal 3 to direct you.

For more info go to:  http://pearson.althotels.ca/

Time is Money

If you're holding a meeting over several days in a hotel it's typical to ask for a "24-hour hold" so that whatever set-up you have stays in place overnight. From the hotel's point of view, that's often a missed opportunity if they can they can re-sell that space for an evening event and make more revenue.

A colleague told me a story recently where a hotel (which will remain nameless) wanted to charge her client $10,000 to keep their meeting room on a 24-hour hold. She was able to negotiate the charge away - of course! - but it's something to watch out for.

Thoughtfully Sourced. Carefully Prepared

That's the new Hyatt green initiative regarding food and beverages served in its more than 490 hotels and resorts worldwide. Driven by the farm-to-table movement, where the focus is on locally-sourced ingredients at their freshest and most desirable, this "philosophy" also supports small-farm economies and reduces the carbon foot-print of transporting food items over long distances.

At a dinner last night at the Hyatt Regency Toronto, Chef Chad Goudie introduced our delicious dinner comprised almost entirely from the bounty of Ontario's harvests. He was practically giddy talking about how wonderful it is for chefs to have free rein in the kitchen to create menus this way. 

Happy chefs make for happy guests, I think.

Oh - and I swore I wasn't going to eat dessert this week but the fresh Niagara peaches in a balsamic reduction served with a small scoop of Chapman's vanilla ice cream was irresistable!

Spamalot

Spam Spam Spam Spam
Spam Spam Spam Spam

Whenever I hear the word “spam” that Monty Python refrain starts running through my head - and I’ve been hearing it a lot lately, particularly as it refers to sending Requests for Proposals out to way too many hotels at a time, otherwise known as “RFP Spam”.

It’s a pretty hot topic. Now that the RFP process has become automated to the point that a planner can – with no more than a few clicks – send a request out to dozens of hotels at a time, the hotels are feeling inundated. The process of assessing which requests will fit, and which are most advantageous to the hotel’s bottom line, is getting bogged down under the sheer volume.

A recent article in the trade publication M&C referred to a panel discussion where “there was a general implication that the proliferation of e-RFPs was driven in part by inexperienced planners – that contacting so many properties for bids indicates a lack of focus”.

Obviously it’s vital to understand the needs of your group or program before thoroughly researching the options. ConferenceDirect has a pretty cool tool in its proprietary facility database. I can go into any hotel listing and not only review all necessary specifications, I can see which of my ~300 colleagues worldwide have booked that particular property and at what rate, when, and for how many rooms. Taking that a step further, I can reach out to a ConferenceDirect associate who may have more experience with that hotel than I do to get an unbiased “review” of everything from working with the sales office to the level of service during the delivery of the program.

All that intel helps to narrow the search to the most suitable venues, but when I’m looking to place a more, let’s say “challenging” piece of business I naturally have to throw the net a little wider. As my colleague Deborah Borak says in that same article: “I can’t send RFPs to six hotels and have five of them not have availability”. We live for giving our clients choices.

Save the Spam for John Cleese and the boys.