Let’s talk about one-on-one meetings.  These meetings are the backbone of our event portfolio.  

For our smaller hosted events, we use proprietary appointment scheduling software with a ranking system that helps determine the final breakdown of one-to-one  meetings.

Once registered, Advisors and Suppliers go into our software system and update their profile.  This gives the Advisor and the Supplier a chance to explain who they are and what they do.  Once all profiles are open, the Advisors go in and rank the Suppliers with a 1-5 priority. Advisors rank the Suppliers that they would like to meet with the most with a priority 1, then the second most important to meet with as a priority 2 … and so on making sure to rank all of the Suppliers listed.  Not ranking all Suppliers does slow down the process, so it is an important part in the process to submit for all of them.

And, the Suppliers are doing the same on the other side of the software platform - ranking the Travel Advisors they think are the best fit for their brand and offering.  

As long as the ranking hasn’t been closed, Advisors (and Suppliers) will still be able to go back and adjust these rankings.

After a few days going through this process, we close out the rankings where we then are able to create the meeting schedule based on a 3-step process taking into account Mutual Requests, Travel Advisor Requests and the Travel Supplier Requests.

Then the meetings are officially scheduled and published to the official event app.  Now, of course things can change between the publishing and the day itself.  If anything changes in a big capacity we will communicate this in a combination of emails and posting to the event’s private Facebook group for Advisors.  The latest and greatest schedule can always be seen in the app by hitting the “sync” circle arrows button in the upper right hand corner in the app!

These mutual interest meetings allow Suppliers to talk personally with the Advisors who will be selling their product.  And Advisors can ask questions directly to the Supplier - giving them a greater confidence to sell that product to their client base. Forming relationships is crucial to both Advisors and Suppliers in having a successful career in the travel industry, and we are thrilled to help make these connections a reality.