We are delighted to welcome Kelly Knowlen, currently the Vice President of Sales Engagement and Special Events at Hilton, as our guest today. Kelly joins us today to share her career journey and talk about her work in the meetings and events industry. This episode will be of particular interest to event planners who own their businesses and want to increase their engagement, using events as a strategic tool for their organizations.
Career Background
Kelly has been with Hilton for over three decades, holding various positions that have taken her from sales management to corporate leadership. She now serves as Vice President of Sales Engagement and Special Events, overseeing their internal conferences and incentive programs in addition to about 200 customer events annually.
Culture
Hilton’s approach to meetings and events is rooted in company culture, creating exceptional guest experiences, empowering teams, and ensuring purpose-driven leadership. That culture guides their event design and execution, influencing everything from internal gatherings to large-scale customer conferences.
Shifting Attendee Expectations
Post-pandemic work trends, hybrid roles, and the arrival of Gen Z in the workforce have changed attendee needs. Research has revealed four key priorities:
The Meeting Maximizer Report
Hilton partnered with Ipsos and generational expert Jason Dorsey to survey 1,000 event attendees, uncovering what energizes or frustrates them. Findings confirmed that in-person events are still highly valued across generations, especially for career advancement and building relationships, even though Gen Z attendees often tend to feel anxious and seek extra support.
World’s Most Welcoming Events Playbook
Hilton developed the World’s Most Welcoming Events Playbook as part of its Event Ready program to provide event planners with practical, budget-friendly strategies to make their gatherings more inclusive and engaging. It combines research findings, ROI insights, and step-by-step recommendations that planners can adapt for any event, from small meetings to conferences with 10,000 attendees.
Practical Event Adjustments
The playbook highlights the adjustments made to Hilton’s events, such as sending menus and detailed dress code visuals in advance, hosting first-timer meetups to ease networking anxiety, providing welcome hosts and social channels for pre-event connection, offering virtual etiquette classes, and structuring schedules with more rest and personal time.
AI in Event Planning
Even though AI can assist with messaging, idea generation, and streamlining planning processes, the personal interactions, relationship-building, and in-person networking that define successful events remain essential. Hilton employs AI across technology platforms and customer service operations, while Kelly focuses on using it to enhance their attendee experience without forsaking the human connection.
Looking Ahead
Hilton is expanding the World’s Most Welcoming Events initiative globally, conducting research with event attendees worldwide, to gain a better understanding of regional and cultural differences. The next phase will explore new markets, such as large-scale weddings, and refine best practices for every type of event. Their goal is to provide actionable insights and solutions that ensure all attendees are informed, comfortable, and excited about participating.
Bio: Kelly Knowlen
Kelly Knowlen is a dynamic leader in the global hospitality industry with over 30 years of experience at Hilton, where she currently serves as Vice President, Sales Engagement and Special Events. In this role, she leads the execution and strategic priorities of Hilton Worldwide Sales customer events, industry events, and internal conferences for the Americas.
Under her leadership, Hilton has launched groundbreaking initiatives such as the World’s Most Welcoming Events campaign, which leverages original research to unveil the future of the meetings and events industry. In recent years, Knowlen led the commercial workstreams to create and launch Hilton EventReady with CleanStay and the EventReady Playbook, a proprietary tool providing curated resources for teams and event planner customers.
Before her current role, she spearheaded the launch of Global Week of Sales and Ready to Rise, two global initiatives focused on increasing sales engagement across the enterprise.
Beginning her Hilton career as a Sales Manager at DoubleTree Concourse in Atlanta, Knowlen has since held more than 10 key positions, including Director of Sales and Marketing at several Hilton properties. Her journey continued as Regional Director of Sales and Marketing and into critical roles at Hilton Corporate, working in sales operations, global engagement, and events.
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“They want to come, but they’re anxious about it. They want to be prepared.”
Kelly Knowlen
Full transcript of episode 284 of The Business of Meetings podcast, Eric Rozenberg with Kelly Knowlen. Lightly edited for readability.
Eric Rozenberg: Hello and welcome to the Business of Meetings podcast. I’m your host, Eric Rozenberg. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of helping businesses in the meetings and events industry grow and succeed, and I’m excited to share that experience with you. If you feel alone and overwhelmed, and if you’re looking to take your business to the next level, improve your strategy and sales, and connect with like-minded professionals, you are in the right place. I invite you to visit eventbusinessformula.com and join our community of event business owners dedicated to exponential growth.
Now let’s dive into today’s episode.
Hello and welcome to a new episode of the Business of Meetings podcast, and today I have the great pleasure to speak with someone who’s been 30 years with the same company, and she has held many different role, and she’s now the Vice President, Sales Engagement and Special Events for Hilton, Kelly Knowlen. We’re going to speak about what, obviously, you’re doing in the industry, and really target it for all the people that are planning events, that own their business, but also that are linked and interested with getting more engagement and using events as a strategic way for their organization. So, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today.
Kelly Knowlen: Oh, thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Eric Rozenberg: So, we have something in common, is that we’re both from Florida. You’re a real Floridian. I’m a transplant from Belgium. But more importantly, I’d love to know what is your journey since you study, I believe, in Florida, right?
Kelly Knowlen: That’s right. Fun fact, I actually went to college and graduated from Florida State with Frank Passanante, that I know you’ve had on your show before. So, we’ve known each other for a very long time. I won’t say how long, but yes, graduated with a degree in hospitality administration from Florida State, and a couple twists and turns later, it’s been almost 33 years I’ve been with Hilton, and in a lot of different roles, and it’s been great. I’ve loved it every step of the way.
Eric Rozenberg: That’s awesome. I’m really fascinated with people like you that know that that’s what they want to study and go into those studies, because I’m part of this group of people that just fell by coincidence, and quite frankly, I had no idea there was such an industry.
Kelly Knowlen: Oh, yeah.
Eric Rozenberg: So what made you study in that domain and attract you to the industry?
Kelly Knowlen: Well, I knew I wanted a business degree, and it sounds silly, but my parents actually encouraged me to go into the hotel business. I think they had some friends that were in the hotel business, and they’re like, “Oh, what about this?” I used to plan events in high school. They’re like, “We think you’d be good at this.” I’m like, “Okay.” I had no idea what I wanted to do. So, I studied hospitality at Florida State and got in to an internship my senior year where I was working for someone who was repping a bunch of associations and hotels of Florida, and I got to do some networking events with some salespeople, and I thought, “What is this job? These people have a great job. What is it they’re doing?”
So I started working towards a career in sales in hotels and was a sales manager for years, and then director of sales, and a regional director of sales, and then corporate roles supporting the sales organization. And eventually, about eight years ago, I took this job in events, which is part of our sales organization within Hilton, and my team does about 200 customer events a year, and we also organize our internal conferences. So everything from global owners conferences to our GM and commercial conferences, and we do incentive programs, and so everything from small advisory groups to, we’ve got a conference next month for almost 10,000 of our hotel leaders. So everything in between.
Eric Rozenberg: Wow.
Kelly Knowlen: Yeah. It’s great.
Eric Rozenberg: Wow. Where you going to do that? Those 10,000 people conference.
Kelly Knowlen: It’s in Orlando, headquartered at our Hilton Orlando in the convention center. So really looking forward to it.
Eric Rozenberg: They need a place for that. But personally, I had the opportunity to attend several President’s Dinner at the MPI World Education Conference, and well, truly enjoy what Hilton is doing all the time. But let’s talk about this industry. First of all, you’ve been in the same for over 30 years, which for me is absolutely exceptional and impressive, and then you’ve seen a lot of change as well, from the company you work in but also from the industry. What is it that you see today, and how different is it from what you’ve experienced the last decades, I would say?
Kelly Knowlen: Well, I think right now culture is so important, and it’s just such a huge part of what we do and how we think and how we lead. We want to make sure that we provide a great culture, not only for our team members but obviously for our guests that come into the hotels, and provide great customer service for them, and that is our goal: be the best place to stay. And so my role in the events team and leading events for Hilton is to support the hotels, support Worldwide Sales, and everyone across the business really. We get to work in just about every department across our organization. And so really having that culture of power, purpose and that we want to provide exceptional customer service. We always are thinking of that as we’re designing our event and different things that we can do, which really led us to this initiative that I know we’re going to talk about today.
Eric Rozenberg: Yeah.
Kelly Knowlen: Creating a program around how can we help our industry colleagues create the world’s most welcoming events. And that’s all driven by our culture and creating that great guest experience for our guests when they come into our hotels.
Eric Rozenberg: That’s very interesting, because I would say that 20, 30 years ago, everything was focused on the brand. Not specifically for your company, but in general, all the marketing effort was like making the brand known, and then it finally shift to the customer and to the participant, and now there is culture. And I love you saying that, because that’s always what I’m telling the people I’m coaching, whether you’re a solopreneur or you have a company with 50 employees or even more.
Kelly Knowlen: Right.
Eric Rozenberg: Even in that range, culture is so important.
Kelly Knowlen: That’s right.
Eric Rozenberg: And the values that you have. And a lot of people said, I won’t name the company, I had one of my Fortune 500 client I was planning corporate events for in another life. You would go to their office, in the lobby, behind the receptionist was their values and their credo. Didn’t know about it, and they were certainly not living it, and actually had issues afterwards. So I think it’s wonderful to hear that, and I know that you walk the talk there, but that values are so important, and that’s something that I believe even small business don’t pay attention enough to. And so you introduced that, but the playbook that you’ve created, and I’m always saying that, systematize and processes. So having a playbook, whether it’s for an executive assistant playbook or a sales playbook or an event playbook, always start with the culture and the values. So, I love what you’re saying. Now, can you tell us a little bit more about how you decided to start this initiative and creating a playbook for event planners?
Kelly Knowlen: Yes. Yeah. I’d love to talk about it, because I think part of the culture piece, and I love hearing you say that you coach to that too, is that listening to your customers and listening to your event attendees. Again, whether it’s a small event that you’re planning or a really large event, everything in between, listening, knowing who your attendees are, and listening to what it is that they need and what they’re looking for and what’s changing. I mean, it’s great that you started out with a question about change, because our business is changing, and we need to stay in tune with that and change with it. So a couple years ago, the start of this initiative was that we started seeing the shift. People were working from home more than ever after the pandemic, or maybe having a hybrid role. And then Gen Z, this new generation coming into the workforce and possibly attending in-person work events for the first time in their career. And they were looking for things that were different. And we started hearing it loudly from our attendees.
Actually, this conference that we have, I mentioned coming up in September, we did this a few years ago, and it was loud and clear from our attendees that the agendas were too long, started too early, went too late, they were overpacked. We were post-pandemic trying to get so much messaging into the conference that we just went a little maybe too far, and they told us loud and clear to give them some time to check in with their hotels and with their team members back at the office, and to check on things at home, to give them some time to get a breath and recharge during the day. So I go, “Well, if we’re hearing this from our attendees, I wonder if our fellow event planners are hearing this from their attendees as well.” So we started doing roundtables in 2024 at our customer events and asking our customers, our meeting planners, “What are you hearing? Are you hearing this too? Are you getting different feedback that we need to do things differently?” And they said, “100% yes. Absolutely. We’ve got to start doing things differently.”
So then my colleagues and I started brainstorming about how could we break the mold of how we’ve always done events and try and really do things differently, and not just for our events but for our industry colleague and for everyone who plans events. And then as we were talking through it, we started thinking, what about this Gen Z generation coming into the workforce? Are they going to want to attend in-person events? They’re so used to communicating over their mobile devices or in laptops, and if they’re working from home, that’s even more exaggerated. How are they going to feel about coming in person? So, as we started testing some solutions at our events little by little and doing more and more roundtables, we realized we really were on to something here. People really wanted to do things differently in our industry.
So, we conducted a big research project in the fall of ’24. We partnered with our communications team, with Ipsos, with Jason Dorsey, who is an expert on the different generations, and we asked about a thousand event attendees what they were looking for, what frustrates them, what gives them energy and joy, and what were they looking for in coming to an event or deciding to come to an event. And so this was what we called the Meetings Maximizer report. And we launched it last January, this past January, and we called it the Year of the Meetings Maximizer, because people really want to make the most out of their event attendance. But as part of that too, we put together this playbook that you mentioned. We created the World’s Most Welcoming Events Playbook, and it’s solutions for our customers, our planners, our fellow planners, to create welcoming events. So people are excited about coming to an event, they’re glad they came, and they want to come back. And that could be from the smallest event gathering of 10 people to a conference for 10,000. There’s solutions in this playbook for everyone who plans an event.
Eric Rozenberg: That’s wonderful. I’m listening to you and talking about the Gen Z. I have three Gen Z, three daughters. And I’m telling them, where they’re texting their friends, “No, you’re not talking with your friends. You’re texting.”
Kelly Knowlen: They call it talking.
Eric Rozenberg: This is not a conversation.
Kelly Knowlen: Well, it is to them. It is to them. And so that’s what, just like you, I’m parents of Gen Z kids, and I see the difference, and we can’t keep doing meetings and events the same old same old, right?
Eric Rozenberg: Yeah. Absolutely. What I’ve noticed, and I don’t know if this is general, but what I personally noticed is that I believe there is more common point between them and our generation, the Gen Z and the Gen X, than between millennials and the Gen X, or the millennials and the Gen Z. Have you noticed anything like that in the survey and the feedback you had from the attendees?
Kelly Knowlen: The thing is, there’s a lot of commonalities, I think, across the generations, and one thing that is for sure, and it came through loud and clear in our survey, was that Gen Z, they want to come to in-person events, and that was a big relief to us. They really see the value of in-person connections. They see the value of advancing their career, advancing business opportunities by coming to in-person work events. So, that was a huge moment for us. Okay, great. So, they want to come. So, that’s one big hurdle we don’t have to overcome. Now, what can we do to make them feel comfortable? Because what we learned was that they are very anxious about attending. They want to come, but they’re anxious about it. They want to be prepared.
There were four big takeaways. One of them is extreme meeting preparedness. They want to be prepared. They want to know what to wear. They want to know what they’re going to eat. They want to know about the agenda, what to do in the area around where they’re coming, where they’re going to stay, how they’re going to get there, who’s going to take care of their pets at home while they’re gone. They want to be really prepared in advance.
Another area that we found was that they want a stress-free start. They really worry about how they’re going to network. Over 50% said they worry about networking. And when you think about it, Gen Z kids, again, they’re used to texting, not walking into a room full of strangers and knowing how to network, especially those that might have finished college during the pandemic. I know my daughter did one year virtual classes when she was in college.
Eric Rozenberg: Yeah.
Kelly Knowlen: So, there’s a lot of things we can do to help alleviate that stress. And then another thing that I mentioned, we heard loud and clear from our attendees, is they want more downtime. They want to be able to take a breath during the day and catch up with work back at home or back at the office, and maybe just recharge their social batteries, ’cause they’re used to working from home and not being in constant social overload. And the last thing was, people told us that they really were interested in traveling with a companion when at all possible. We call it the pod squads at Hilton. We call it our frolleagues, friends who are colleagues. We’d love to travel with our frolies, but that’s something that the new generation is really looking for as well. And again, that’s something that’s common across all generations. We heard it from our customers of every gen. They would love to travel with somebody else, and that would make them feel more welcome.
Eric Rozenberg: That’s very interesting, because you would think then that they would stay with the person, or they would spend more time with the person they’re traveling with and not engage with others. But to your point, they want to meet. So that’s great. I’m sure it’s a relief for everybody. You remind me of one of my favorite interviews of Jeff Bezos, and he was asked, “Mr. Bezos, how do you plan for Amazon in the next 10 years? What are the change you’re seeing, and how do you adapt the strategy to it?” And his answer was phenomenal. He said, “Listen, I’m not focusing first on what is going to change. I’m actually focusing on what is not going to change, and I planned a strategy on that. And the two things that are not going to change: first, people are not going to tell me, ‘Jeff, the product is too cheap. I want to pay more.’ And they’re not going to tell me, ‘Jeff, the product is coming too quickly. I want to wait a month before receiving it.'” Right. So they focusing on that. Now, if you transpose this to our industry, what is not going to change is the fact that people want to meet in person.
Kelly Knowlen: That’s right. That’s right.
Eric Rozenberg: And I would offer that even with AI, or because of AI, and because of all the technology, which is phenomenal, people will want to come more in person. I think it’s Mark Cuban recently mentioned that one of the job of the future is event planner.
Kelly Knowlen: Oh, really? Oh, I love to hear that. I feel very secure in our jobs and our roles, because people do want to meet. They see the value of it, and that’s going to continue to grow. That’s not changing. People want that engagement. They crave it. And to know that this generation that’s just entering the workforce now wants it as well, and they see the value. They know they’re going to get connections there. So what do we need to do as meeting planners to help them maximize that experience? And that’s how we built the playbook with that in mind. What can we do to address all these concerns, worries, things that might make people anxious in attending events? How can we as event planners ease a lot of that stress and help them get off to the right foot before they even get on the road?
Eric Rozenberg: Absolutely. And before we get into the playbook and you share with me what’s in the playbook, where can people download the playbook?
Kelly Knowlen: I’m glad you asked. hiltoneventreadyplaybook.com is a good place to start. We’ve got a lot of resources in the overarching playbook that’s called Hilton EventReady, and then the World’s Most Welcoming Events Playbook is part of that. So, got a playbook within a playbook.
Eric Rozenberg: Yeah. Right.
Kelly Knowlen: We’re all about the solutions.
Eric Rozenberg: Exactly. When I download it, what do I find in it?
Kelly Knowlen: Well, you’re going to find a lot of the research. So, you’re going to find some of these proof points. So for instance, if you are a small event planner and you’re trying to help a customer maybe prove to their boss or their leaders of their organization the need for an event, and why they should have an event, and what is the potential ROI on an event, we give them some data points to support that. This percentage of people see the value in it. This percentage of people know that it’s going to advance their career, etc. So we have some of the proof points in there. But then there’s also the solutions. So, we tackle these four areas that I mentioned, extreme meeting preparedness, stress-free start, more downtime, and pod squad travel, in some ways that as planners, we can address each of those with some very simple things to do, and very low cost, high ROI, in my opinion. So, everyone from the smallest event to the largest event can execute on some of these.
Eric Rozenberg: Excellent. With all the change that you’re mentioning and the data you have, what has changed in the way you selling? What has changed in the way you are selling the brand to your customer? Any hint that you can share that could also reflect for people that are approaching their client?
Kelly Knowlen: Well, I think being able to show that there are some very simple solutions to improve the return on the investment in an event can help sell the event for us. And when we talk to our stakeholders and we’re talking about event planning, we go back to what the surveys tell us from the previous event, what we’re hearing from our attendees, and then we’re also using some of this data to enhance how we design and execute an event. And I can share a couple examples, if you’d like for me to.
Eric Rozenberg: Yes, please.
Kelly Knowlen: Some things that we’ve done differently, that are, again, anyone can do, very simple, to help with people being prepared: we send the menus in advance. So, typically when you go out to eat now, you go online, you look up a restaurant, and you see what they have to offer. You decide in advance what you’re going to eat, right? A lot of times, well, the event attendee wants the same. They want to know what is being served through catering and the banquets team. So, we send all the banquet event menus in advance, usually in the know-before-you-go messaging, so at least a couple weeks in advance, or they’re in the mobile app. For our conference in September, every menu, every breakfast, break, lunch, reception is loaded into the app, so people can see what they’re going to eat, kind of think about it in advance, and know that we’ve addressed any food allergies or things that they might need to avoid.
Another thing is sending the agendas well in advance. Most event planners send agendas in advance, but well in advance, so people can plan. And then real specific guidelines on what to wear. So, we’ve created these slides with pictures of dress code options, everything from business casual to resort casual to cocktail to formal, with real pictures and examples that you can send out to event attendees to help them prepare with what to pack and what to wear.
The second thing is, for a stress-free start, we’ve created a host program. So, at our events, we have welcome hosts to greet people, take them in, show them around, kind of give them a lay of the land. We’ve had a first-timers meetup, which isn’t anything new, it’s not a new concept, but it really works. We did this at a conference last fall, and it was me holding a sign at the bar. We put in the know-before-you-go, “Anyone who’s a first-timer, meet at the Signia bar, and we’ll all walk into the networking reception together.” I honestly thought a couple people would show up, and people just started coming and coming. I couldn’t introduce people fast enough to each other. We had like 50 or so people walking in together, and they each made a friend before they even walked in the door. It was awesome.
We’re trying something new for this conference coming up. We’re using a social site. As an organization, we use Microsoft suite, and we’re using Viva Engage. It’s a social site through Teams that everyone can join and ask questions. We can post information, keep people real-time informed what’s going on. So really excited to see how that helps and what the turnout is for that. But again, very easy, zero cost, hopefully a high return.
Some other things that we’re trying, again, to help with a stress-free start: we’re actually doing an etiquette class, a virtual etiquette class. We’ve been doing etiquette classes at our in-person customer events. They’ve been very well-received. And so we’re going to do one for our 10,000-person conference and offer it online virtually, so people get a refresher on social networking. And I don’t mean social media network, I mean social skills. How do you break into a crowd of people who are standing around talking? What are some easy things to start a conversation? What are some top tips? Especially for some of our brands that might have new leaders, new first-time attendees at our conference, again, maybe Gen Z that haven’t been before. Give them some tips to make them feel more confident.
We’ve had a real change of heart and flexing our schedule. We’re starting later. We’re ending earlier. We’re giving more time between evening events and afternoon events, longer breaks. We’re creating quiet zones for people to go check their emails. We’re even offering to-go boxes at the end of our lunch buffet. So, if they want to pack a to-go box and go to the quiet zone and catch a break, get caught up back at home, they can. And again, if they want to bring a guest, they’re welcome to bring a guest that can stay in their room with them and attend one of the evening events, if they are able to pay a little extra for that. So again, just trying to make people feel welcome and listen and do things a little bit differently this year.
Eric Rozenberg: So I could have used that, especially when I discovered the resort cocktail smart casual.
Kelly Knowlen: Yes. Yes.
Eric Rozenberg: What is that?
Kelly Knowlen: Right. My favorite is, we went to an event this past January, and it was lifestyle chic, and I’m Gen X. I had no idea what lifestyle chic was. I have a hard time wearing sneakers to IMEX still. So I’m really going to try this.
Eric Rozenberg: Well, one day I went to a conference, in Switzerland. It was an industry conference, and they say that we should bring very warm clothes.
Kelly Knowlen: Yeah.
Eric Rozenberg: Because afterwards we’re going in the mountain and everything. And so I, as usual, I read it too quickly, and everybody was dressed appropriately with suits and everything, and it was one idiot who was already in ski gears for the opening session. It was me. So I could use that.
Kelly Knowlen: I love it. I love it. That’s one thing, again, I think across the generations, everyone wants to dress appropriately, and they want to put their best foot forward and make a good impression. And so the more we can help them with specific photos and guidelines, the better.
Eric Rozenberg: Well, yes, that’s very precise. And I like the etiquette workshop as well.
Kelly Knowlen: Oh, yeah.
Eric Rozenberg: I cannot not ask you how AI is changing the way you’re doing business and the way you’re selling. Can you share a little bit about that? You already have agent to simplify the work, and in the meantime, how do you balance that with the need of personal relationship?
Kelly Knowlen: Yeah. No, that’s a great question, and I have to be honest, I’m just starting really over the last year to dip my toe in the water of AI and put things in Copilot. I just did it right before I joined this call. I was thinking of a different way to word a sentence on a presentation that’s going to our leadership group, and I put it in AI. So for me, personally, it’s more about helping with communications right now. Make sure that the message is very clear, will resonate. AI sometimes gives me a little bit better idea than comes out of my own brain on how to message something. And so that’s how we’re starting to use it. But with Hilton, obviously, there’s a huge lot of different ways in our technology, and with our online, AI is being used through our websites and through our call centers. Just incredible work that’s being done in those different areas. But for me personally and my team, we’ve been more using it to help us improve our communication with our customers, with our hotels, with our business partners. And I see that definitely continuing as we go.
Eric Rozenberg: Yeah, absolutely.
Kelly Knowlen: How about you? Have you seen different ways that event planners are using AI?
Eric Rozenberg: Well, I hate mentioning things where they’re not ready yet, but hopefully before IMEX, I’ll have my own AI based on everything I’ve been doing the last 10 years, all the content I put together, the almost 300 episode of the podcast, the framework, the class I’m giving, the coaching session I’m giving. And anyone who’s a solopreneur or has a small business in our industry is going to be able to ask me questions in their native language, and it will be my face, my voice, my AI who will answer them in their native language and help them.
Kelly Knowlen: Awesome. That’s amazing. So that’s crazy, sick.
Eric Rozenberg: And I love it because I can help even more people like that.
Kelly Knowlen: Yeah.
Eric Rozenberg: But I’m looking every day. I’m using it every day, especially when you’re not English native. It’s very helpful to correct, right? But I like writing. So I like writing my stuff myself, although I have it corrected. And then I’m looking at all the different aspect. I’m looking at the playbook and looking at the process and thinking, where can I have agent helping me for that? So it’s a totally different world. And as much as when you started your first business years ago, you needed to have a lot of staff, you needed to have a lot of investment, today it’s not the case. You can have your small business. The idea is to think about the processes, put the playbook in place, and then look where you can have AI stuff. And for me, yeah, it’s amazing. Thing that is not going to change is the need for human interaction, right? That people coming together. Training is one thing. Negotiation, networking, I want to see real people. I want to see exactly what they think and see their emotion. And for negotiation, I really want to be in front of the person, first of all, to see it’s a real person, and second, see how they’re reacting. I don’t know if that’s answering your question, but that’s…
Kelly Knowlen: No, I love it. I think that’s amazing. Having not met you until today, I feel like you definitely have a philosophy of providing help to others. You want to lead, coach, and help and support and see others grow. I think I can tell from everything you’ve said, and that’s what is so exciting about the work that we can do, when we can do things like that to help colleagues, other industry leaders, other event planners to do better in their job, and again, just promotes our industry and improves our industry as a whole. So that’s fantastic.
Eric Rozenberg: We are in the greatest industry, and there’s a lot of excitement and potentialities for what we do. So that’s wonderful.
Kelly Knowlen: Yeah. Can’t imagine doing anything else. Got a great job.
Eric Rozenberg: I agree. Listen, I love our conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time. I would like to ask you again three question. The first two is, how can people get in touch with you, and if you can repeat where they can download the playbook?
Kelly Knowlen: Yes, thank you. Yes, I would love for anyone to reach out to me. It’s kelly.knowlen@hilton.com. Knowlen with a K. I always say kelly.knowlen@hilton.com. And the playbook is available on hiltoneventreadyplaybook.com. So if you enter in the browser hiltoneventreadyplaybook.com, the World’s Most Welcoming Events is part of that. There’s a lot of other resources in that EventReady Playbook. My team does a diary of an event planner with learnings that we have as we go through our every day, and we keep a diary, almost like a blog, that we update. There’s white papers in there that are incredible resources. And then of course there’s information on our brands and everything that you would expect to find. But there’s a lot of really useful resources for, again, any planners, if you’re planning a wedding to planning a big citywide conference. There’s some really great helpful tools in there.
Eric Rozenberg: Wonderful. Thank you. And my third and last question, when we finally meet in a year with a bottle of champagne, what are we going to celebrate?
Kelly Knowlen: Well, I hope that in the next year we’re going to celebrate the phase two launch of the World’s Most Welcoming Events. We are doing research globally right now. Initially, our research was all conducted in North America, but I’m excited that this fall we are doing research with event attendees across the globe. So by January, we’ll be able to report out on our findings, and we’re going to dig a little bit deeper into some new things and some of the same themes that we’ve heard, but go a little bit deeper on what is casual to Gen Z now? What are they wearing to these events? And have we swung the pendulum too far in trying to create banquet menus that work for everyone? Have we gone too far? What are we doing differently to serve the social event planners that are creating weddings? What could we help with brides and grooms that are planning enormous weddings? We were on the phone with one of our colleagues over in Singapore, and she said, “Some of these Indian weddings are over 2,000 people. They’re massive.” What are we doing to make those event attendees feel more comfortable? That’s a whole other market we’re going to try and tackle. So, I hope we’re celebrating phase two of World’s Most Welcoming Events, and we have a lot of new research and data points to share, and solutions.
Eric Rozenberg: Wonderful, Kelly. Thank you so much. Looking forward to meeting you in the future.
Kelly Knowlen: Me too. Hope to see you soon. Thank you.
Eric Rozenberg: Thank you for tuning in to the Business of Meetings podcast. I hope you found today’s episode valuable. If you enjoyed the show, the most important thing you can do is leave a review and share it with your colleagues. It really helps spread the word. I truly appreciate your support. And if you’re ready to take your business to the next level, don’t forget to visit eventbusinessformula.com to learn more about how we are helping event business owners like you. Thanks again for listening, and I’ll see you next time.
