‘HelmsBriscoe’, the largest third party conference resource company specializing in venue selection has set up an office here in Dubai. Announcing this today, Ms. Pat Durocher, Managing Director – HelmsBriscoe International said, “As leading managers of conferences and offsite meetings, we see tremendous potential in the Middle East region. With a significant presence globaly, we were looking at expanding our operations which is what brought us to Dubai. Being one of the main business and tourism destinations of the world, Dubai will be an important base of operations.”
Ms. Durocher also announced the appointment of Deen Ashraf as Sales Director - HelmsBriscoe International. Mr. Ashraf will be responsible for company operations in the area. A seasoned hotelier with over 13 years of Sales & Marketing and hotel pre-opening experience, Mr. Ashraf has worked with leading hotel brands like the Oberoi Hotels, Le Meridien and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts.
The involvement of a third party or outsourcing company has become a viable option for meeting services such as site selection, negotiation, contracting, ground handling, meeting registration, and on-site assistance. Organizations today are giving more consideration to their meeting purchasing policies, procedures and location, cost and service levels which remain the top three issues of most concern.
According to Deen Ashraf, “Clients are looking more carefully than ever at their ROI and are taking steps to ensure that they are in the best possible position when it comes to negotiating rates with their suppliers. This has resulted in clients looking at more “value driven solution providers” and adopting the outsourcing concept, whereby a professional ‘third party conference resource provider or a venue site selection provider’ becomes a valued partner.”
Commenting further he said, “We take away the labour-intensive, time consuming process of locating, evaluating and contracting appropriate sites from around the world for our clients, thus providing them with more time to concentrate on handling other aspects associated with putting together a meeting. Through our preferred relationships with qualified partners, we hope to provide complete integrated solutions and additional value to our clients.”
“Given that we book 2.7 million room nights per annum our buying power enables us to negotiate tremendous value for our clients. In addition, through our network of 750 associates in 31 countries and our state of the art technology, we have the ability to commence a search based on the client’s criteria and acquire extensive service, product and price related information for hotels anywhere in the world. As there is no charge for our services, our involvement as the third party provides the golden opportunity for a client to get “help” when they need it without increasing payroll or overhead costs, not to mention having the access to a pool of global expertise.” Mr. Ashraf added.
HelmsBriscoe serves over 8,000 clients representing virtually every kind of organization, large and small. HelmsBriscoe provides a no-charge site services to corporate, association and government clients that plan off-site meetings and conferences. On their behalf, the company researches hotels and other meetings venues that match the desired criteria. As an industry leader, HelmsBriscoe delivers only the highest level of site selection services worldwide through experienced and committed resources.
