PERSPECTIVE
Partnering for Success
THE RIGHT QUESTIONS HOTELS NEED TO ASK EVENT PRODUCTION PARTNERS.
By JILL HUNT, VP OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND INSIGHTS, ENCORE
F
or hotel leaders, the guest experience is the brand.
Every conference, corporate meeting or incentive program hosted in your property becomes a reflection of your brand standards. While hotels carefully manage food service, front desk operations and housekeeping, one critical part of the experience often involves another partner: the event production company.
Attendees rarely distinguish between the venue and event production. That reality is prompting more hotel leaders to rethink how they evaluate and work with event partners.
Technical capability still matters, but increasingly the differentiator is customer experience: how well the partner understands planners, communicates with venue teams and ensures seamless service delivery.
Here are several questions hotel leaders should consider asking event production partners to ensure the customer experience remains a priority.
➊ HOW DO YOU GATHER AND ACT ON CUSTOMER FEEDBACK? The most effective production partners treat customer feedback as a continuous learning tool rather than a post-event formality.
Hotels should ask vendors how they capture feedback across the event lifecycle, from pre-event planning conversations to post-event surveys, and how that feedback influences service improvements.
For example, we use a broad insight ecosystem that gathers signals from tens of thousands of event planners and venue partners each year to understand expectations and identify service improvements.
For hotel partners, this kind of datadriven listening can lead to meaningful operational improvements, such as more consistent event setups, clearer proposals or improved communication during planning.
40 hotelsmag. com May / June 2026