3 Lessons When Planning An International Meeting

Post written by Missy Johnson, Principal, MJMeetings, LLC | Meetings Consultant | Gourmet Food & Wine Enthusiast | Sports Fan

I recently returned from working with a client at a lovely five-star resort in Cancun, Mexico. Each day the skies were clear, the sun was warm and the water was crystal blue.

These are the wonderful benefits that hosting your meeting or event in paradise can bring, but, I also learned some important lessons about working outside U.S. borders. Here’s the top three:

1. Communication is Critical

While I pride myself on having excellent communication skills (I have two communications degrees after all), there are just some things that are simply “lost in translation”. For example, in working with the a/v company, I had requested a floor stand for the microphone in the audience and they thought I wanted a table-top mic stand.

For whatever reason, the words I used to describe it made it sound like something different to them. I learned quickly that I needed to ask my contacts if they clearly understood what I was communicating and try to get them to repeat it so I could ensure we were, in fact, on the same page. Patience is the key here!

2. Conduct a Daily Master Bill Audit

Because this meeting spanned six days, I requested to do a daily audit of the group’s master bill with a representative from accounting. I’m really glad I did.

It was so easy to correct small errors from the previous day’s charges while they were still fresh in my mind and while the hotel still had an opportunity to correct them without major approvals.

The small errors I detected over the six days added up to several thousands of dollars by the time the meeting ended.

And while I’d like to think that I would’ve caught them all upon final bill review, it certainly made my review of the final invoice much quicker…and gave me (and ultimately my client) greater piece of mind.

3. Keep Credit Cards Safe

While the restaurants at the resort were wonderful, there were a few times we ventured outside the hotel to eat. In the span of 10 days, we had TWO credit cards that were compromised because the numbers had been stolen from vendors outside the resort.

In hindsight, we could’ve easily used cash for these meals and avoided a host of headaches. Sadly, tourists are an easy target for this in Mexico and other parts of the world. Somehow you never think it will happen to you…until it does.

Have you planned or attended a meeting outside the U.S. lately? What lessons did you learn?