Easy Travel Tips for Meeting Planners!
It’s no secret that preparing for a conference is a lot of hard work! Over the years of coordinating conferences we have some “must-dos” when it comes to traveling for a conference.
5 Travel Tips for Meeting Planners:
• Plan your travel as early as possible. If you’re flying to the venue, schedule time to prepare conference materials early enough so you can ship everything in advance. There’s nothing better than having materials waiting for you when you arrive.
• Do as much as you possibility can in the office before the conference (i.e. build badges, stuff tote bags and create registration packets). This will help create a speedy and friendly check-in process.
• Create a master agenda that matches the time zone you are traveling to and give each staff member a copy. This way you and your staff are on the same page at all times. It’s easy to forget things to-do, so writing them down, especially before you leave, is extremely helpful!
• When you get there and start unpacking you’ll be tempted to throw away your boxes. Resist the urge… you never know what you’ll need to ship back.
• At the conclusion of the conference, be sure to save room in your carry-on luggage for closeout documents (i.e. forms, payments received on-site, evaluations, etc.) so there’s no delay in finalizing the conference when you get back to the office. This is especially important, because a lot of these documents can be turned in by attendees at the very last minute and you may not have a place for them if everything has already been packed up!
Give these tips a try when heading out to your next conference and see if they work or help you setup for success!
