Organising a Conference

This essay discusses the steps and responsibilities involved in organising a conference successfully. It covers preparation checklists, staffing requirements, and ensuring success and satisfaction.

Running Head: ORGANISING A CONFERENCE
ORGANISING A CONFERENCE
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1ORGANISING A CONFERENCE
This essay assumes a hypothetical situation in which the function manager of a hotel
named Exotica is in charge of the regional conference of the Barclays Bank. The conference
is going to held during 5 days. The number of attendees is expected to be 300. The hotel
exotica is a Seven-star hotel in United Kingdom, with a capacity to accommodate 700 and
500 people in its ballroom, in case of theatre style and classroom arrangements respectively.
The dining space of the hotel can accommodate nearly 300 people for dinner. There are
several small rooms in the pre-function area of the hotel that can accommodate nearly 250
people. The purpose of this study is to enlist all the initiatives that the function manager of
the hotel needs to take to organise the conference successfully.
Part 1. Three checklists in preparation for the event
i) The manager of the hotel should first liaise with their client Barclays Bank to list
out precise requirements. The manager needs to prepare different lists for the
various requirements which include:
 sitting arrangement of 300 attendees in the ballroom,
 technical facilities to avoid any disruption during the conference,
 food supply and room services during 5 days and 4 nights.
He should also mail those lists to the managers of other departments who are in
charge of the ballroom, pantry and the room services.
ii) Next, the manager or the organiser of the conference should liaise with staff
members of each department to ensure all requirements are conveyed to them by
the manager of the respective department. Hence, the responsibilities of the
organizer will include:

2ORGANISING A CONFERENCE
 Whether the interior decoration team are instructed to transform the ‘theatre
style’ settings of the ballroom to the ‘classroom style’ for the first four days of
the conference and make provision for the accommodation of 300 people.
 Whether the technical team is instructed to check the connections of the AV
equipments and find out, if there is any fault in the speaker or the projector.
 whether the chefs are informed that they should make provision for daily
lunch buffet; different snacks in the ‘coffee breaks’ in the morning and
afternoon, during the five days of the conference
 Whether the staffs and the waiters are instructed to organize a gala dinner in
the evening of the day 4 along with the arrangements of music and dance.
 Whether the staffs engaged in the maintenance of the smaller rooms in the pre-
function area are informed that the smaller “break-out “meeting rooms should
be available for the last day of the conference.
iii) The organiser of the event should also liaise with the suppliers or contractors who
will be involved with the arrangements of the conference. In this context he
should look after these things:
 Whether the technical support team hired, on the contractual basis, for the
maintenance of the audio-visual systems and projectors during the
conference.
 Whether the orchestra is hired for the grand celebration in the last evening
of the conference (Capell 2013).

3ORGANISING A CONFERENCE
Part 2. Staffing the event:
In order to make the event successful the manager need to prepare a list of staff who
will be present to provide uninterrupted service during the event.
o Hospitality staffs-They will show the individual attendees of the conference,
their rooms after the attendees arrived in the hotel
o Room service staffs-They will approach every attendee after they reached
their rooms, and ask whether they need any service or not.
o Ballroom staffs- A lot of full-time as well as casual staffs will be required to
during the commencement of the conference who will guide each attendee to
the conference room, ask them if they will like to have water, coffee or snacks.
Some of the staffs will be there to look after the technical issues and inform
the technical team in case of any disturbance in the systems (Smith, Pyles and
Corp 2014). Some of the staffs will be there in the ballroom to emergency
services if any of the attendees feel unwell during the commencement of the
conference.
o Staffs for the maintenance of cleanliness-the hotel needs to recruit a lot
of casual staffs who will assist to keep the ballroom and dining space. The
full-time staffs will also be there to maintain the cleanliness of rooms where
the attendees will stay.

4ORGANISING A CONFERENCE
o Waiters-the hotel should make provision for the recruitment of enough
waiters to serve during the lunch dinner and ‘coffee breaks.
o Staffs for the gala dinner- for the gala dinner, there should be enough
staff who will look after the decoration and confirm that the orchestra
reaches on time. There should be staffs who will approach the attendee
so that they can convey the request for playing their favorite music to
the orchestra. There should be some senior staffs, who will be
supervising the overall management of the gala dinner.
o Staffs for security services- The bank should recruit some guards and
staffs, in order to enhance security (Conway 2014).
The overcrowding of attendees can be reduced in two ways.
 The staffs can request them politely to leave the ballroom or dining space, after the
meeting and the meal
 The manager can inform the attendees about the discounts for the relaxation program
during their leisure time, which may include body massage or spa (Getz and Page
2016).
Part 3. Ensuring success and satisfaction:
Ensuring the success of the conference and provide Barclays Bank satisfactory
services, depend on both enthusiasm and cooperation on the part of the event manager,
departmental managers as well as the subordinate staffs. In this context the key
responsibilities of the organiser of the event will be-conducting a thorough research to
produce a detailed proposal which will contain budget, timeline, staffing, the list of the

5ORGANISING A CONFERENCE
suppliers, what are the things the contractor going to supply, the exact time of supply, legal
obligations, if any. The proposal should be prepared a just after representatives from
Barclays contact the hotel manager for a detailed discussion about the conference. After
getting approval from the client the
manager should provide a copy of the proposal to the managers of other departments, such
as-managers of the pantry, ballroom, and suites, logistics and so on (Lotem 2013). The next
step should be communicating with the staffs as well as other managers and collecting briefs
of every arrangements daily (Mair 2013). Another major duty of event manager is to educate
every person related to the organization of the event about the importance of a successful
commencement of the event and its impact on the reputation of the hotel. Finally, the event
manager of the hotel should motivate all staffs and managers to coordinate and cooperate
with each other so that they are able to give their best efforts ( Baltensperger and Sinn 2016).
In the conclusion, it can be said that, coordination on the part of the event
management team of Barclays Bank is also required for the grand success of the event.
Hence, the event management team of the bank should coordinate, supervise and express
their agreement and disagreement frankly to event manager of the hotel Exotica.

6ORGANISING A CONFERENCE
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