Pre-Con With a Twist

Here's a very cool idea for all you meeting planners and facility event planners, brought to you courtesy of the Hilton San Diego Bayfront. Instead of staging another tedious facility pre-con meeting before your next large event, why not do the meeting while taking a tour through the venue!? It's a unique approach and highly engaging for the planner. Our Hilton Bayfront event manager, Heather Wellong, took our client (National Association of Electrical Distributors) on an informative, fun, and tasty back-of-house tour of the hotel's operations to personally experience the inner workings of this large and innovative property. From the reservations department, to hotel communications, to the amazing laundry operation, we saw it all! The well choreographed journey included brief tours hosted by department heads operating in their own backyards. Perhaps most impressive were our stops in the hotel's banquet and room service kitchens. In each area, chefs had prepared a sampling of the actual menu items to be served during the meeting along with favorites from the hotel's restaurants. This allowed the customer to converse with chefs about menu and presentation questions in a very personal and informative format. Of course the highlight of the tour was the pastry kitchen. The hotel's award-winning pastry chef had prepared an impressive chocolate and spun sugar interpretation of the client's logo surrounded by a stunning selection of pastries and desserts from the banquet menu. It was a brilliant way to end the tour!

The pre-con ended with the hotel GM and executive team hosting a brief pinning ceremony accompanied by refreshing smoothies served high atop the hotel's 30 story tower. Of course we eventually did go through the BEO reviews, but even that seemed less tedious in light of our insightful tour. My compliments to the Hilton Bayfront for creating an innovative approach to building customer relationships!