"We send our clients on site visits that go like this: the meeting planner arrives one evening and meets with no one from the hotel until the following morning. The meeting planner scopes out the hotel on his own in the evening. It's amazing what one can learn about a hotel from it's bartender." From there, Nancy goes on to explain the critical nature of site visits and why they should be conducted from the point of view of the guest, not from a meeting planner's point of view.

In addition to simply reviewing the amenities in the guest room, Nancy suggests the visiting planner call out to various hotel departments housekeeping, engineering, room service, and the concierge and determine not only how well they respond to the situation, but how soon. Nancy actually times their response to determine if a hotel will meet the needs of the visiting company's employees.

During her meetings with department managers, Nancy asks them to respond with their ideas of how to deal with a variety of situations and how they might plan ahead to avoid those situations in the first place. She asks the sales representative for three references from other meeting planners who have held meetings there in the past six months, and then follows up with them, learning from the experiences of others.

The bottom line, according to Nancy, is to "approach a site inspection like an investigative reporter. It shows your contact that you're someone to be taken seriously."