The Elavon local office had initiated the venue finding process, then ZiaBia were approached to manage venue negotiation. This included all current venue options as well as providing additional options. ZiaBia took responsibility for adding value to rates, reviewing the space on hold. We then confirmed the correct dates and contracted the chosen venue.
Once the venue was secured, ZiaBia continued their involvement throughout the pre event process. This included registration with flight bookings for 150 people, budget management, transport logistics and on site management.
Execution
This two-night residential enquiry was given to ZiaBia in November 2014, part way through the venue finding process.
The Warsaw Marriott was selected for this event, due to its excellent location in the city centre. The hotel were able to accommodate all bedrooms for the group and the conference space flowed well for the various activities and breakout sessions over the 3 days.
The event started with a day’s set up while delegates arrived and in the evening there was a working dinner and introduction to the event. The next two days included Dragon’s Den style challenges, an intensive breakout schedule, Gala dinner. It concluded with a high octane Drum Café workshop.
The event space within the hotel was conveniently located over two floors with the main ballroom on the same floor as most of the breakout rooms. This was an important part to ensure smooth logistics of the day sessions with up to 9 breakout rooms needed each day. Each breakout room varied in setup, was used by different groups throughout the day. There were very short turn around times with each breakout changing from one session to the next.
A highlight of the event was the Gala Dinner on the second evening. The main plenary room was turned around to host the company award ceremony. The timings for the evening had to be closely managed with 18 awards and a bespoke Operatic performance.
Aleksander Kwasniewski, Poland’s President from 1995 – 2005, joined the conference on the second day to share his experiences and visions for the future with the group, as a guest speaker.
A drum café session concluded the conference leaving guests on a high. After a briefing in the ballroom delegates were split into teams to learn their part. After they had perfected their section, everyone was brought back together to perform in their group with the grand finale where everyone performed together as a whole group.
Challenges & Solutions
Flight Logistics – Often registration for an international event involves the booking and organisation of airport to venue transfers. For this event, ZiaBia also managed the allocation and confirmation of flight bookings for the 150 non-local delegates. Registration went live and within only 4 days, every delegate needed to be booked flights and confirmed with specific requirements catered for.
In addition to this ZiaBia aimed to implement due diligence, that limits the amount of delegates booked onto each flight. With a limited amount of flights and suitable times available, it was a challenge to ensure that this was carried through.
The best flight to bring delegates from Warsaw to London left only 1.5 hours to get everyone from the hotel with luggage, on coaches and to the airport with time to check in.
ZiaBia have fine-tuned their bespoke registration system, which ensures that the process is accurate, quick and easy to use for both management and delegates. It enables them to quickly retrieve information to make timesaving decisions as well as instantly confirming the booking to the delegate involved. Reports can be pulled easily to update client contacts on the progress and ensure everyone has been captured. Well-founded relationships with airline contacts make booking and amendments easy and good value for money.
The requirements included break out facilitation, gala dinner set up and execution as well as the facility for delegates to be able to download material to their iPhones.
ZiaBia are skilled and experienced in working with different partners onsite. They contacted a valued partner, which they have a relationship with, which meant that they could get them up to speed and involved as quickly as possible and decide on the parameters for a close working relationship.
