Happy Friday event professionals and venue managers!
This week has flown by! We have remained busy with a bunch of cool venue sourcing projects in San Diego and Southern California. Jiu jitsu, cheerleading, rugby, skating, baseball and basketball venue searches are all in progress. We have also spent much of the week on business development…
Stylehawk is built on event venue referrals. The basic concept is that with a centralized directory, we can facilitate event booking amongst our partner venues to eliminate availability constraints for our event clients. We are a marketing engine for our venue partners. We also know that event venues get very consistent, in- bound booking opportunities. Our hope is that if an opportunity comes that just won’t work in that building, our venue partners will say something to the effect of…
“Unfortunately, our venue is not available for this event. You might want to call Stylehawk Event Services. They work with a number of different venues and may be able to assist with additional options…”
With this, we can shop the event to the other venues in the directory creating greater marketing reach. In return for these referrals, Stylehawk creates value for event venues by:
- Creating marketing/ lead generation opportunities.
- Providing event support to venue operators in the form of manpower and admin support with no overhead.
- Concentrating event service providers into a marketplace that can help small and medium sized event venues benefit from economy of scale.
We understand that sport event venue sourcing is unique. This service exists in ancillary markets like hotel accommodations, wedding venues, meeting rooms and film locations, but it is definitely not common for sports complexes, arenas and stadia. The existence of this service in other, related specialties tells us that we are solving a pain point and we need to do a better job of communicating the benefits to event promoters and venue operators while also learning more about how we can continue to provide greater returns on our relationships.
In an effort to provide more value to our partners, we are looking very seriously at some technology tools and staffing strategies to make venues more profitable and to make the jobs of venue managers easier.
Events made simple. Events done right.
Is our North Star and we are committed to this value proposition. We would love to hear about your pain points and how we can help. If you would be so kind, please take 5 minutes to complete our Rental Events Conversion Survey.
Now… for this week’s reading suggestions:
Safety
DroneNode Designed to Protect Outdoor Events from UAVs
Drones are incredible technological tools. The advances in drone development is hugely exciting. Event venue operators and event promoters are using drones to capture incredible video footage as well as to curate drone specific content and sport. We will soon see drones delivering products and being used as transportation for attendees to our event sites. As with any new technology that has crossed into consumer hands, there are new risks that come about.
At this point, I think anybody managing outdoor event venues has had issue with drones at their events. There are a number of concerns with unauthorized drone activity over events. These concerns include:
- Privacy- Are people’s rights to privacy being violated (the idea of a drone outside our tenth floor hotel room window is creepy!)?
- Licensing- Whose image is being captured and what is being done with it? Is event content being distributed/ pirated?
- Safety- What is the risk of a drone crashing into people or property?
- Terrorism- We are seeing drones being weaponized. There is risk of these devices being retrofitted for evil or being used in swarm attacks. Situationally aware venue managers, must consider these sorts of threats in their emergency response planning.
Unfortunately, there have been few options for venue managers to effectively defend against drone intrusion. Because drones can be piloted from miles away, it may be impossible to locate the drone operator. There haven’t been a lot of good options for downing drones… That may be changing though. DroneNode is a “portable, compact and inconspicuous jamming device that law enforcement can use at large outdoor events without raising public concern.” The device can jam a number of frequencies simultaneously and cause drones within a one kilometer range to return to their point of origin or land. DroneShield, the makers of DroneNode have “recent credentials in the area [of public events that] include the 2018 Olympics, the 2018 Commonwealth Games and the 2015 to 2017 Boston Marathons.” DroneShield is positioning itself to be a major player in securing “large public gatherings globally.” To date though, DroneNode has not been authorized by the FCC and therefore, “may not be offered for sale or lease in the United States, other than to the U.S. government and its agencies until authorization is obtained.
Courtesy
The Concierge Mentality: Defining the Role of the Hotel Concierge
There has been a major emphasis on service in the sports event venue industry. There are a few reasons for this. Chiefly, there is significant competition for discretionary dollars and sports event venues must deliver a superior service experience to compete for this spending attention. Additionally, the home viewing experience has gotten so good for sports, that fans expect to experience something different when they decide to attend an athletic competition. As a result, event attendees expect a more personal and tailored experience- something they will remember and can show off on their social media news feeds. This experience comes at significant financial expense. A good game and a winning outcome is not enough these days. Great service is paramount to delivering on fan expectations.
Hotels have long understood this concept… which makes sense. If a hotel is a guest’s home away from home, it makes sense that the hotel would do everything possible to make them feel at home OR create an experience that is even better than being at home. Hotel concierge staff are specifically positioned to create ‘Wow” experiences for guests. They are the can- do folks at the hotel. I’ve talked about it before, and it is reiterated here.. People in guest services positions most love what they do. The best guest services professionals have a “passion for service and a world class ‘can- do’ spirit.” This shows itself in attitude described as “equal components of having a sense of urgency, expediency, responsiveness, immediacy and ownership of each and every request placed with the concierge service or individual.”
The article also talks about the expansion of concierge services to other industries. This is relevant because… well… it is exactly what Stylehawk Event Services does. Our concierge staff is positioned to be well trained and empowered event professionals with the specific task of supporting our event and venue partners.
Events made simple. Events done right.
Efficiency
The Super Mario Effect- Tricking Your Brain into Learning More
Mark Rober is a YouTuber with over 3 million subscribers. Mark is a former NASA engineer who engineers incredibly fun devices (snowball machine gun, world’s largest Nerf gun, etc) to teach science and engineering in an interesting and relatable way. This is the concept he presents in this Ted talk. He calls it Life Gamification. Basically, life is a series of challenges. If we approach each challenge as a learning opportunity and don’t dwell on the failures we will achieve greater success. Mark calls this the Super Mario Effect.
“Focusing on the princess and not the pits to stick with a task and learn more.”
I just finished reading the book Grit by Angela Duckworth, which basically says that a person’s ability to persevere and remain true to their pursuit of long term, big picture goals is critical to achieving success and this stick- to- it- ness is more powerful than talent alone. The Super Mario Effect is great supporting content to Grit because it serves as a tactic for perseverance.
One of the great things about the event and venue management industry is how dynamic it can be. We are afforded the opportunity to experience success and failures on a day in, day out basis. We must be diligent about providing the best possible event experience. “Best” is a subjective metric that requires constant tinkering and reimagining. We cannot simply cut and paste year over year.
On a personal front, I’ve written a lot on my other channels about my experience as an entrepreneur and small business owner. It can be scary, so being gritty is the critical trait in the success of Stylehawk.
Entrepreneurship
Who Needs the NFL Anyway?
The world has changed. New technologies and distribution channels are commonplace now that didn’t exist just five or six years. This is particularly true for the way we consume sports and entertainment programming. These new technologies have created distribution channels and demand for unique, niche and new sports content. As a result, consumers are now able to tailor their consumption behavior to their specific wants and interests. This personalized sports consumer experience is allowing different types of sports to blossom and thus create tremendous opportunity to develop and grow live event experiences. It also means that major league sports interest is becoming decentralized which will force further innovation from the big leagues. Major league sports has thrived off of billions of dollars of TV broadcast revenue. There is likely still a place for this, but the dynamic is changing.
Featured Venue
San Diego Concourse- Golden Hall
Many in San Diego are aware of the San Diego Civic Center… I’m not sure as many are familiar with Golden Hall. Like many of the municipal event venues in San Diego, Golden Hall is aging… but it is an incredibly functional building with tremendous event appeal. Golden Hall features 23,000 sq ft of floor space with 31 ft ceilings. It also has balcony seating for 1,000 people. This combination makes it a spectacular venue option for cheerleading, martial arts, jiu jitsu, technology events like esports and drone racing, volleyball and event basketball.
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