Thursday, March 28, 2024
Home NE Places NE Venue Report Smaller Meetings, A Premium on Outdoor Space

Smaller Meetings, A Premium on Outdoor Space

By M+E Staff

With high-tech, low-touch amenities like self-check-in at airline-style kiosks and deliveries via YO2D2, the hotel’s friendly resident robot, YOTEL Boston is well positioned to welcome meetings back comfortably and safely. Now as part of its “SmartStay” safety measures, the property, which has 326 guest rooms, or “cabins” in YOTEL lingo, has introduced a second robot, Vi-YO-Let, to offer UVD-grade sanitization and disinfection throughout high-touch public spaces and selected rooms.

As meetings return, Yotel Boston, located in the Seaport District, is introducing a “Make YOTEL Your Own” campaign to encourage buyouts in Beantown. Among the perks:  waived room rental fees, a welcome champagne toast for all guests and a hotel buyout available to groups Monday through Thursday with 100 rooms on peak. The hotel has 5,000 square feet of meeting and event space, including the Deck 12 restaurant and outdoor space (capacity 150).

We asked Julia Greenwald, YOTEL Boston’s director of sales and marketing, to share a couple of trends in meetings that she’s observing. Here’s what she had to say. 

  • We’ve seen that companies are moving away from holding larger programs and are opting for much smaller ones that are closer to home, lessening the need for long distance travel. Company-wide kick-offs or Quarterly Business Reviews are being replaced with smaller regional team meetings of 30 people or less. We believe there will be an uptick in smaller meetings as many companies will continue to work remotely and may never return to the office full time.”
  • Customers have indicated the importance of outdoor space. They feel that employees will feel safer initially gathering as a group outside before holding any indoor events and, in some cases, even before heading back to the office.

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