New VP To Standardize Meetings
<B>New VP To Standardize Meetings</B>
By Chris Davis
Starwood Hotels & Resorts, which has spent the past year creating new offerings and hiring executives for its meetings and groups program, has hired a new vice president charged with refining and implementing chainwide meeting and convention services standards.
David Dvorak, a former convention services head at major hotels in Las Vegas and New York, will install uniform meeting standards, including those concerning proper handling of the RFP process, and revamp Starwood's internal organization and processes so that properties provide better, more consistent service throughout the chain's six brands, including Sheraton and Westin.
"The process will take fine-tuning, but many of the standards are there," Dvorak said. "We want to get them into an official program to give to individual properties, which is not something we've had throughout Sheraton and Westin."
Starwood also will look to implement standards for dissemination of pre-event information to meeting planners, procedure for site visits and the installation of a meeting concierge in each property to handle planners' needs during events.
"We want to intimately define meeting and convention services best practices across all brands," said Starwood senior vice president of global sales Bob Moore. "We want to improve the quality of service, which we have not done chainwide to a level satisfactory to all planners."
Moore said Dvorak's responsibilities will include standardizing the structure of each hotel's meeting and convention services department. The meeting and group chain of command in Starwood properties is not uniform, he said, as some convention service managers report to the director of sales, some to the general manager and some to the director of catering.
"We'll try to define that," Moore said. "Also, the workload we give customer service managers is so great, there's often no time for them to give planners confidence that everything is going to be fine with their upcoming meetings because they're busy with in-house groups. The next group in suffers."
The issue of standards is key for meeting buyers, Dvorak said, because of the proliferation of short-term meetings corporations hold. Without time to source an array of properties, buyers often select chains based on an expected level of service. "Meeting planners should know what they'll get when they book a chain, and if they don't have the confidence to book a Sheraton or Westin, they'll look elsewhere," Dvorak said, "Now, they'll know what they'll get here too."
Other standards, which still are being formulated, should be decided upon by the end of the year and implemented in the first half of 2001, Moore said. "Some will require capital," he said. "This isn't just eyewash."
In addition to Moore's appointment last year and that of Christie Hicks as vice president of global sales, Starwood has brought in industry relations executive Dave Scypinski (Meetings Today, Feb. 21) and introduced a points-for-planners program, all within the past 13 months.
"The process is taking shape," Moore said. "We have group customer service managers, general managers and executives at the regional level all identifying key attributes in meetings and groups."
Dvorak, once named convention service manager of the year by the American Society of Association Executives, comes to Starwood's White Plains, N.Y., headquarters from Las Vegas, where he was executive director of convention services at Bally's and Paris hotels and casinos. He spent nine years with Hilton Hotels in a variety of positions, including director of meetings and conventions at the Hilton New York and Towers. Dvorak now will report to Starwood's Bob Moore.