Incentive planning is important to building guaranteed attention and focus of any audience, and luckily there are a number of tools to help with this. Some of the tools are available in the most obvious of places, while others might be a little more subtle.

Venues – surprisingly, many venues have built-in incentives that they can offer, such as tours or gifts. This is more common in more exotic locations, and special destinations such as Las Vegas and Atlantic City. For more information, inquire with the hotel’s concierge service.

Local Concierge Services – In many cases, it is possible to find local services that offer meeting planning services at a discount. Smart meeting planners can and will consult with these for pricing whenever appropriate. Often it turns out that the local services have developed special relationships based on volume and history, and thus are able to offer better pricing.

Searching – If you do not look for it, then do not be surprised if you do not find it. The Internet is an amazingly powerful tool for looking for anything, and Google makes the entire process look simple. Simply navigate to Google’s home page (www.google.com) and type in what you are looking for. For example a search for ‘affordable tours in Tucson’ is a great way to locate an incentive.

Seasite.com – This amazing portal offers group cruise planning tools you can use to plan an incentive cruise.  With all cruise brands represented, you can source a group cruise easily with a single electronic RFP.

Planning group cruises and meetings at sea has always been a relatively simple task. This is largely due to the ease of planning that comes with all-inclusive pricing and the convenience of organizing lodging, meeting space, food and beverage, entertainment and décor in one simple process. However, Seasite.com has now made it even easier to plan corporate cruises and meetings on cruise ships with the introduction of their user-friendly planner guides.

These new cruise planning guides go well beyond the typical ship information available to travel planners and include the information that you really need to know when planning functions at sea. These easy-to-use guides include previously unpublished information, such as:

• Capacity of function rooms
• Information about outdoor function venues
• Meeting space grids
• Information about group dining options

This meeting-specific information that is critical to meeting planners and corporate travel planners has never before been made easily available, until now.

Check out Seasite.com’s cruise planning guides the next time you need to plan a meeting or event at sea, and you will see just how simple these online cruise planning tools are to use.

Follow these simple steps to easily access ship information for your next event:

1. Go to Seasite.com.
2. From the home page, click on Meeting Venues.
3. Select a ship from the A-Z ship directory.
4. When the ship details appear, click on Planner’s Guide.

Meeting and event planners often find themselves being asked to plan a variety of social and business events, regardless of their niche. Because of this, it is always a good idea to have a few tricks up your sleeve for when you choose to accept these projects. While you might be a corporate event planner who never anticipates planning a wedding, you never know when one of your best clients might ask for a favor or when uncertain economic times might encourage you to expand your service offerings. Therefore, having some unique ideas for weddings in the back of your mind might prove useful at some point in your career.

For a truly romantic, intimate setting for a wedding or vow renewal ceremony, river cruises are an excellent option. Whether opting for a small ship, a barge or an ultra-romantic steamboat, couples will have a memorable wedding day when they choose a river cruise wedding. This affordable option allows them to combine their ceremony and honeymoon in one price package and offers the opportunity for family and friends to join them for just the ceremony or for the full journey. Wedding river cruises can take place in Canada, Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, the South and the Great Lakes, or on one of Europe’s many rivers, depending on the couple’s preferred destination and budget.

Planning a river cruise wedding – even if you have never planned a wedding – is easy and convenient with the group cruise planning tools at Seasite.com.

Hosting a business meeting on a cruise ship not only ensures stellar attendance, it also can make your job as a meeting planner simple and convenient. At the same time, your company or client can enjoy cost-savings of up to 40% over a land-based event at a resort hotel. Cruise ships are now well-equipped to handle meetings at sea and will be standing at the ready with group discounts, business meeting packages and everything you need for a successful meeting when you contact them.

Part of the simplicity of holding business meetings at sea is that the accommodations, entertainment, meals, meeting venues, audio-visual equipment and décor are all included for one upfront price and can all be arranged without having to contact multiple vendors and negotiate multiple contracts. Opting for a cruise ship meeting allows you to choose from a wide array of possible destinations, as well as offering you the opportunity to select the cruise length that will best suit your event budget and planning needs. Depending on the size of your group, you may also be able to choose a half or full ship charter, which allows for a more personalized experience.

If conducting your next business meeting on a cruise ship sounds appealing, visit Seasite.com to learn everything you need to know about hosting meetings at sea and to take advantage of convenient group cruise planning tools.

You are a corporate event planner that is darn good at your job and can put together a topnotch conference, team-building experience, executive retreat or upscale gala with one hand tied behind your back. But, what do you do when one of your best clients suddenly asks you to plan his wedding and you have no experience or connections in this niche? Before you start to panic, take a moment to consider the connections you already have and how you can use your corporate event and travel planning skills to plan a wedding that will impress your client and go off without a hitch.

The thought of finding an appropriate venue for the ceremony and reception, ordering floral arrangements, planning a menu, finding a wedding DJ and reserving accommodations for all of his out of town guests may not seem like a simple task, but with one simple decision you can make wedding planning a breeze, even if you have never planned this type of occasion before now.

By convincing your client that a luxury cruise is the answer to his wedding planning needs, you will slide right back into your comfort zone and will be well on your way to successfully including wedding planning into your current skill set. A cruise wedding is a convenient way to take care of catering, venues, accommodation, entertainment, flowers and décor in one simple step, and is a luxury option that will truly impress your client and make him think you put endless hours into getting everything just right.

To make your wedding cruise planning even easier, visit Seasite.com and use the convenient group cruise planning tools available. You just might find that it is time to add wedding planning to your list of offerings.

Planning an event whether as an independent caterer or as an employee for a corporation is not easy unless you know some tips and tricks. Meeting planning software can be a real blessing and can help you lessen your burden in your attempt to organize a perfect event. So, what are you options?

Some of the well known meeting planning software is the “Conference Matrix Grid View”, “Conference Resume”, and “Complete Conference Specifications”. The Conference Matrix Grid View is 67kb in size, and it also has a quick view HTML version for you. Businesses are using the HTML version of corporate meeting planning software increasingly, which provides them with the advantage of holding meetings with people geographically apart. All that the participants would need to have is a laptop with internet. It provides a summarized one page view of large, multi-session, and multi-day meeting. The software provides you with information, such as what the meeting room assignments are, and at-a-glance view of what is going on presently in the meeting. Read the rest of this entry »