The Leonardo Hotels Guide to Business Meetings

Leonardo Hotels offer a range of different meeting and conference rooms to cater for many event types. With various different room layouts, essential audio visual equipment, and of course, dedicated corporate services, we want to you to get the most out of your visit!

The Venue

When you’re choosing a venue for your meeting or conference, it is important to make sure it has everything you need. We’ve come up with a few questions that will get you started:

Location

• Where is the venue? How easy is it to access from main routes?
• Are there good public transport links?
• Is there sufficient parking? Free or paying?
• Do they have a locator map?

Room

• Will the room layout work for what you need?
• How high are the ceilings?
• Do they have sufficient electrical points for your equipment?
• Can they provide charging stations for mobile phones/tablets etc?
• Does the room have natural daylight?
• Do they have all the equipment you may need such as flipcharts/screen/projector/PA system/lectern?
• Do they have enough chairs and tables?
• Is the lighting adjustable?
• Is the room air conditioned?

Catering

• Can they supply catering?
• If providing catering do they have enough glasses, cutlery?
• If not, can they recommend any outside caterers?

Additional

• Can delegates enter the building freely, or does the company have security procedures.
• Has the venue been recommended to you? Do they have any testimonials?

The Agenda

Meetings need agendas, they help with project communication and ensure people know why they are turning up to a meeting and what they should be doing when they are there.

Standard agenda items for your meeting could include progress updates, milestones or budget updates. You want to make sure that everyone’s points are covered, so get input from your team and fit these into your agenda. You should plan how long you expect every item to last, this way you can be sure that it will all fit in!

Don’t forget to send it out in advance, too close to the meeting and people will feel that they have not had time to prepare.

Feedback

Use the last couple of minutes during a meeting to evaluate, you don’t want to make the same mistake twice! People will have opinions about whether they thought the meeting was successful or not, capture these opinions and apply to future meetings. Here are some questions that you might want to ask:

• Was the meeting well-planned?
• Did we achieve the planned objectives?
• Were the right people involved in the meeting?
• Did people come prepared?
• Did we manage our time wisely?
• What did we do well what we should keep on doing?
• What did we do that we should avoid in future meetings?