Ask An Expert
by Calanit Atia
Las Vegas is getting ready for a very busy convention season in 2021. Stephanie Glanzer (pictured right), senior vice president & chief sales officer, MGM Resorts, discussed their newly-announced comprehensive plan designed to facilitate the safe return of meetings and conventions at the company’s properties in Las Vegas and throughout the U.S.
The “Convene with Confidence” plan results from months of work with experts and builds on the company’s Seven-Point Health and Safety Plan.
Planning: Virtual site inspections and careful pre-planning of event, meal and break times to safely optimize guest movement throughout meeting spaces. Various types of events offered include virtual, hybrid or in-person.
Arrival: Pre-registration provided in advance and digitally. Where registration desks and queuing are required, scheduling and physical distancing are implemented and clearly indicated.
Cleaning and disinfecting: High touchpoints are cleaned and disinfected regularly, single-use amenities disposed of daily and hand sanitizer available in high traffic areas.
Physical distancing: Facilities and floor plans adjusted to meet physical distancing requirements and evolve as needed.
Dining and Break Refresh: Various meal service styles are offered, with an extended menu of pre-packaged options.
This includes the option for a multi-layered health screening process using CLEAR’s Health Pass and utilizing onsite rapid, molecular COVID-19 testing that can deliver results within approximately 20 minutes. It also offers higher accuracy in deducing the virus a bit sooner than the antigen testing.
“Convene With Confidence” is the complete process for the meeting planner. It starts with planning an event, from the virtual site inspection, pre-planning of walking the spaces, the hotel helping with scheduling and determining the traffic flow before the attendees step on site. It is meant to give both the meeting planner and the attendee confidence to ensure that they will feel safe coming to an MGM resorts property.
The attendees’ experience will start with touchless checking into the hotel, keyless rooms and contactless registration by introducing the Health Pass. This is an offering for those groups that want to create safe perimeters around their meetings spaces, where attendees have the confidence that others have been tested each day. In addition to social distancing on the show floor, there will be a collaboration between the venues and the tradeshow organizer. During the planning stages, MGM will ensure there is a single flow of traffic within tradeshows, one way in, one way out, wider aisles, as well as following onsite safety protocols.
“Since reopening, we have hosted many in-person meetings, as well as virtual and hybrid site inspections,” says Glanzer. “We have not slowed down our future production, people have continued to plan and think about their future programs whether if they are in 2021 or 2022 and beyond. We’ve had very minimal impact, very minimal cancellation beyond the first quarter of 2021. The great news is that 2021 was already a very busy year, and now all of the groups that had to cancel their events this year rescheduled to 2021, so the second quarter of 2021 is becoming busier than pre-COVID.”
For more info, visit www.mgmresorts.com.
Calanit Atia is the founder and president of A to Z Events as well as an Air Force Veteran, award-winning event planner and a member of the 2020 MPI Women’s Advisory Board, columnist and speaker. Contact her at (702) 212-2500 or Info@CalanitAtia.com.
