Award Date

Fall 2008

Degree Type

Professional Paper

Degree Name

Master of Hospitality Administration

Department

Hotel Administration

First Committee Member

Curtis Love, Chair

Number of Pages

73

Abstract

Planning meetings and events is a job function that requires skills and knowledge of the meeting management industry. In today’s economy and within many organizations across the globe, both corporate and association meeting planning is a job function that is frequently being seen as a task that an administrative professional can take on in addition to their other workload. While in many instances this may seem like the most efficient and cost-effective route for organizations to undertake, in the long-run it can actually cost the organization more – in both time and money. In addition, it can lead to poorly run and ineffective meetings. Lastly, the lack of comprehension by the administrative professionals on how meetings are run can have a great impact on meeting suppliers in the industry. By having to take the time to educate their partners on key terms, contractual language as well as the basics of meeting planners, suppliers risk losing time and money on meetings and events that are not strategically thought out and planned. Currently there are a multitude of training guides, manuals, certificate programs as well as degree programs available to learn how to plan meetings and events. For administrative professionals, however, in order to quickly undertake the task of creating a successful meeting or event for their organization they may not have the time or money to spend in enrolling in certificate programs or reading these thorough documents. This paper includes a literature review of current meeting management training manuals available, and utilized within the industry, as well as trade publications; extracting from them common themes and the basic tools necessary to quickly and efficiently learn how to plan a meeting and event. A chart summarizing the contents of these manuals is provided in the appendices. In addition, qualitative interviews were conducted with current corporate administrative professionals within various corporations tasked with meeting planning, to inquire and extract information of real-need meeting planning for them to effectively conduct their jobs.

Keywords

Meeting planners; Meetings – Planning; Special events – Planning; Special events industry

Disciplines

Hospitality Administration and Management | Human Resources Management

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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