- Be Neighborly - When reserving a room for an event, do a quick
check of what’s
taking place in adjacent spaces to confirm that your booking won’t create noise or foot-traffic
conflicts. The EMS Reservation Book is a great tool for this.
- Build Buffers - Be sure to allocate time between bookings for
room setup and teardown.
You may want to consider adding default setup/teardown time to rooms.
- Don’t Stand for Squatting - Periodically send an email to remind
potential "squatters" – people who "grab a room" for a meeting at the last
minute without actually
booking it – to make a reservation instead. Unrecorded events create confusion for setup crews and
early-arriving event attendees.
- Book by the Numbers - Assign capacity figures to your rooms to avoid
situations where
events are held in rooms that are too small. This type of "conflict" can be very frustrating
for event sponsors and attendees. On the other hand, putting a group in a room that is too large
is an inefficient use of your space. Room capacities help you find the perfect fit.
- Focus on Features - Identify your rooms as having specific
"features"
(high-speed internet, built-in audio system… or anything you define) and use those features in
your Reservation Wizard search to ensure that you won’t have to relocate an event when the group
arrives and realizes the room won’t meet their needs. Features can be defined and applied to rooms
in EMS Professional, Enterprise, Campus and Hoteling.
- Get (Best) Fit - When scheduling a multi-date reservation,
especially at a busy time of year, perform a Best Fit search to find space among the many
potentially conflicting bookings. With this type of search, the system helps you piece together
your event, recalculating space availability each time you select a room for one or more of the
dates on your list.
Are there other ways that EMS helps you avoid conflicts? Email your thoughts to
feedback@dea.com and we'll post them here and credit you as the source.
Other Tips
Nine Tips for Nixing No-Shows - Strategies for encouraging
event organizers to use the space they've reserved or cancel the reservation.