Recovery from Super-storm Sandy: Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island to Reopen

With many beaches officially open in the New York area but some still seen with uncertainty among the public, we are happy to report that corporate meeting attendees will soon be able to schedule opportunities to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

The Statue of Liberty will reopen on July 4 and Ellis Island is expected reopen around the same time.  Ellis Island in particular has been a favorite of corporate meeting and destination incentive groups and Shackman Associates New York has run major galas that incorporate elements of Ellis Island and its neighboring component, Liberty State Park. 

Overall, the business travel industry quickly recovered from the storm.  While it was disappointing that two of the area's iconic venues were temporarily damaged, more New York City entertainment venues than ever have opened or evolved in 2013 to rave reviews by destination meeting attendees.  

Broadway Update: Evil has never been so "Glee"-ful

In her role as psychotic coach Sue Sylvester on the Fox hit "Glee", actress Jane Lynch was kind of the "Miss Hannigan" of McKinley High School. 

She now gets to play the evil orphan task-master for real in Broadway's production of "Annie".  With appearances running through July 14, Lynch made her first New York stage debut in Off-Broadway's "Love, Loss and What I Wore".  Although her part didn't require the singing she'll be doing with "Annie", loyal fans of "Glee" might remember Lynch singing Miss Hannigan's flagship number on a recent episode.

Shackman Associates New York provides corporate meeting and destination incentive groups with unique Broadway experiences and have included backstage tours and interactions with key performers.  Don't worry, we promise any potential encounter with Lynch will not lead to your  attendees dropping and giving her 30!

Corporate Meeting Food Trends: Lobsters "Rolling" Southward with a Twist

New York City is proving that you don't have to schedule a corporate meeting in Maine to enjoy one of its most famous dishes - the lobster roll. 

As is typical in New York, chefs are not content serving lobster rolls in their most basic version, which is with fresh lobster, mayo, and butter on hot dog bun.  Here are a few new twists that can be catered for your meeting group: a) bacon and avocado with a Bloody Mary; b) Japanese-style, which features dashi, star anise and ginger; c) sweet-potato fries on the side instead of "chips"; and d) as a food truck, which is already a popular meeting component in Manhattan. 

Karen Shackman in USA Today: Data shows face-to-face corporate meetings are profitable

Shackman Associates New York was recently quoted in USA Today as an expert on a new study that found businesses that continued to send employees on the road during the recession were more profitable than those that cut back on business travel.

The study, conducted by Oxford Economics and commissioned by the U.S. Travel Association, shows how travel can affect a company's bottom line just as businesses are starting to once again spend money on trips to meetings and conferences.

U.S. companies generated $9.50 in revenue and $2.90 in profit for every dollar invested in business travel, which is based on an analysis of government data on 14 industries over an 18-year period.

An accompanying survey of 298 business travelers conducted in November found that 57% believed cutting their travel budgets during the economic downturn hurt their company's performance. Only 4% said it helped.

USA Today noted the importance of face-to-face meetings:

Business travelers believe that they would lose 42% of their customers without in-person meetings, the study found. They said they were twice as likely to get new customers with face-to-face meetings than without them.

Karen Shackman, founder of New York event management company Shackman Associates, which specializes in managing corporate meetings, said she is seeing meetings pick up in New York.

"The trend we are seeing in New York is more business travelers who opt to stay and meet in boutique hotels," she said. "New York is in the middle of explosive growth regarding boutique hotels and many offer amenities that reflect the individual style of business travelers."

Corporate Teambuilding: Be a New York City Chef

Corporate Meetings and Destination Incentives have been choosing New York City because attendees can enjoy cuisine from top chefs who are opening new venues in hot neighborhoods and in some cases, in hotels where are meetings are held.

Dining experiences are now becoming more interactive than ever with launch of “Chef for an Hour” experiences. Examples of these classes include:

 

1. Do-it-yourself Pasta. This experience is taught by one of America’s leading Italian chefs. Your meal is paired with wine and includes a recipe booklet, wheel cutters, and apron and rolling pin.

2. Be a Farm-to-Table guru. Attendees learn how to eliminate processed ingredients from gourmet food and make world-class dishes that are served at Manhattan’s trendiest restaurants.

3. Teppanyaki Table Theatrics. Meeting attendees learn how to wow their friends and co-workers by learning the ins and outs of Japanese cooking. This includes seasoning, dicing, spatula spinning, shrimp-tail flipping and other theatrics that are fan favorites at Japanese steak houses.

4. From Rooftop-to-Plate. With more corporate meetings choosing Brooklyn as a destination, attendees are right around the corner from multiple restaurants where chefs grow ingredients in rooftop gardens above their venues. Planting your own garden and cooking a meal to remember from some of these chefs’ top recipes is a great idea for planners who seek to schedule reoccurring meetings in New York.

Off-Broadway Update: "The Last Five Years" Gets an Extension

"The Last Five Years" is one of those Off-Broadway musicals that struck gold and maintains a huge, almost cult following.

The current production has been repeatedly extended and a movie version is in production.

"The Last Five Years" is unique as it follows a very complex courtship from chronologically opposite ends.  The audience sees Jamie's half of the relationship from the beginning going forward and Cathy's half of the relationship from the end going backwards.  Obviously, the key moment of the production is when their journeys intersect at "the proposal."

People have traveled all over the world to see "The Last Five Years" and it is estimated that thousands of marriage proposals have included the show's lyrics.

Shackman Associates provides unique experiences to corporate meeting and destination incentive groups that include insight into the best Off-Broadway shows, backstage tours and interaction with key performers.

Corporate Meetings at the Ballet

Spring is in the air throughout New York City, and so are many pairs of ballet slippers.

The American Ballet Theatre's Spring Season of performances is a great after-hours option for your corporate meeting.  In 2013, three fan favorites - Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet - return to the stage.  However, it is the three new productions - Ratmansky, Le Coursaire and Onegin - that are creating lots of buzz. 

Onegin, with production designs by Tony Award-winner Santo Loquasto, is a fantastic love drama set in Imperial Russia and inspired by Alexander Pushkin's novel. 

Shackman Associates regularly provides unique entertainment experiences for corporate meeting and destination incentive groups that include backstage passes and interactions with key performers.  

Corporate Meetings and Broadway: Motown in Manhattan

"If there ain't no mountain high enough", the cast of new Broadway production of "Motown" sure is serious about reaching any peak they choose to climb.  In addition to offering toe-tapping renditions of favorites from singers Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Berry Gordy and Martha Reeves, "Motown" might be the most extensively costumed show in decades.

It features approximately 350 outfits and 135 different wigs.  For example, with 26 outfit changes, "Motown" follows the career of Diana Ross from ages 15 to 39. 

Shackman Associates New York provides unique Broadway experiences to corporate meetings and destination incentive groups that has included back-stage tours and interactions with key performers.

Yo Adrian! Rocky headed to Broadway

The cast hasn’t been announced, but Rocky, after a well-received world premiere last fall in Germany, is headed to Broadway in 2014.  We're hoping it includes a great dance production to “Eye of the Tiger”!

Brooklyn Update: New Hotel on the Way by London Olympic Park Designer

The culture district that includes the Brooklyn Academy of Music has become so hot that a new hotel is now on the way.  Construction will begin this fall on a 200-room hotel in Downtown Brooklyn and will be complimented by multiple cultural projects.

The hotel is being designed by Thomas Leese, who has received rave reviews for the London 2012 Olympic Park.

Meeting Food Trends: A French Twist in New York

French food has never been hard to find in New York City.  However, a generation of hotel chefs and venues that cater to corporate meetings are taking the cuisine to new and exciting levels.

Traditional dishes such as Paris-Brest, a which is a ring-shaped pate a choux pastry stuffed with hazelnut cream, are being treated to unusual additions like Snickers Bars.  Meat-studded cassoulets are being replaced with beans as the principal ingredient, sweet bread medallions are taking the form of tasty nuggets, and the traditional French rack of lamb is getting an Asian infusion by celebrity chefs that features the neck as a key delicacy.

Additionally, some French-themed hotels are offering meeting groups options to incorporate healthy menus in meals for attendees that are usually served to dinner patrons.  The major shift we are seeing in French cuisine at meetings also includes creative new versions of fan favorites like French Toast and Pommes Frites.

Finally, all of the changes are creating more competition among venues, hotels and chefs, which is providing meeting planners better prices for galas, meeting breaks and off-site breakout dinners for destination incentives. 

Pier 57 Restoration on the Way!

If your corporate meeting is looking at hotel accommodations in Chelsea or the Meatpacking District, it will soon have 425,000 square feet of retail and restaurants with in walking distance at Pier 57 on the Hudson River.  The new restaurants will be built from repurposed shipping containers.

The renovated pier will include an amphitheater that will be constructed from old airplane fuselages..  The Tribeca Film Festival will use 100,000 square feet as a permanent outdoor venue. 

Pier 57 will also feature cooking schools, art galleries and music recording studios.  We have recently seen major interest from meeting planners for these kinds of venues. 

New York Botanical Garden Welcomes 7,000 Orchids

More than just a spectacular venue for events, The New York Botanical Garden is one of the truly special urban utopias in the world.

The garden's Annual Orchid Show, which runs through April 22, 2013, features 7,000 orchids that are on display in the country’s largest curated event of its kind.  The show dramatically transforms the landmark Enid A. Haupt Conservatory into a tropical rainforest.  Even without the orchids, the conservatory is a unique corporate and incentrive destination meeting venue accomodating 120-300 attendees for a variety of event ideas.  For example, one could easily imagine Victorian or Edwardian ladies and gentlemen enjoying an afternoon or evening "amongst nature" once upon a time.

In 2013, Hurricane Sandy storm-damaged trees from the Garden's grounds will be incorporated into the show as a design element. Nearly 300 of the Garden’s specimen trees were either uprooted or otherwise destroyed. 

As one would expect, scheduling an event at the New York Botanical Garden is quite competitive and Shackman Associates New York's network of contacts help incorporate venues like the botanical gardens into destination meeting galas and group intineraries.

Macy's Herald Square Now a Food Destination Too!

Shackman Associates New York has frequently scheduled exclusive shopping experiences at top Manhattan venues, but many meeting attendees still love checking out Macy's because it's the flagshop store from what they know at the mall and see on TV every year on Thanksgiving.

However, it hasn't been known for its food.  Until now.

The opening of Stella 34 Trattoria is transforming the 6th floor at New York's most famous department store into its own destination dining experience.  The venue features homemade pasta, multiple seafood plates, a Prosecco bar with Bellini's, three wood-burning stoves and a very sleek vibe that features a modern decor with lots of windows.

Stella 34 Trattoria, which is becoming it's own "Eataly", is one component of a $400 million renovation project at Macy's 111-year-old store and seats 180 people.

Screening Rooms: Driving explosion of New York City film festivals and ideal for corporate presentations

While Robert DeNiro's Tribecca Film Festival is the biggest, NYC is seeing explosive growth in these kinds of events.  Hotels are taking notice and have incorporated beautiful screening room venues into their list amenities. 

We recently visited one in SoHo during the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival.  With 150 seats, the screening room earned rave reviews from top conservation experts who flew in from around the world to attend the event.  In addtion to the screening room, the hotel developed multiple, adjacent rooms that accomodate pre- and post- film receptions. 

You don't need to be showing films to make a screening room and major component of your next corporate or association meeting.  With the latest digital technology, they are ideal for interactive  presentations and Q&As.

Corporate Meetings on Broadway: Tom Hanks to make his debut!

Tom Hanks isn't just a great actor - he's a Lucky Guy.   At least he's playing one on Broadway!

With previews opening in March, Academy Award-winner Tom Hanks will make his Broadway debut in Lucky Guy, where he will take on the role of tabloid columnist Mike McAlary.  As he investigates the scandal and corruption of graffiti-ridden New York in the 1980s. Hanks will be joined by his former co-star of the hit comedy Bosom Buddies, Peter Scolari.  Scolari will star as columnist Michael Daly, and will be joined by Christopher McDonald as lawyer Eddie Hayes and Peter Gerety as editor John Cotter.

The cast will also include Michael Gaston (A Day in the Death of Joe Egg) as Jim Dwyer, Dustyn Gulledge (As You Like It) as Dino Tortoricci, Deirdre Lovejoy (Six Degrees of Separation) as Louise Imerman/Debbie Krenek, Danny Mastrogiorgio (Golden Boy) as Bob Drury, Richard Masur (The Grapes of Wrath) as Jerry Nachman/Stanley Joyce and Stephen Tyrone Williams (Harper Regan) as Abner Louima.

Resorts World Casino in NYC Opens Major Event Venue

New York City just added 70,000 sqaure feet of event, trade show and corporate meeting space.  While a plan to replace the Jacob Javits Center with a new facility in Queens has been hotly debated among public officials, developers of the Resorts World Casino at Aqueduct ready finishing off Phase II of its mega-complex to attract major industry trade shows, large banquets, corporate and association meetings and concerts. 

Having first opened in 2011, Resorts World is the highest grossing slot facility in the United States and is considered one of the safest gaming venues in the world.  It also recently opened a steak house and a fine dining Chinese venue. 

The New York CityMetropolitan Transportation Authority has been continually expanding transportaion access to Resorts World, and the complex, including Aqueduct Racetrack, is located within 5 minutes of JFK Airport. 


Photo courtesty of AMNY.

Broadway Update: Skyfall writer looks to bring Bette Midler back to Broadway

John Logan, the playwright responsible for the newest James Bond movie Skyfall and other huge hits such as The Aviator, Hugo and Gladiator, has his sights set again on Broadway and his next production is one-woman show based on the life of Hollywood super-agent Sue Mengers.

His preferred choice to play Mengers is super-actress Bette Midler.

 

Logan's first Broadway credit was Red, which received six Tony Awards in 2010, including Best Play. He also wrote off-Broadway's Never the Sinner. In addition to a new Alice and Wonderland play starring Judi Dench and Ben Wishaw, Logan is also writing the next two Bond films.

Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree is Here!

New York Business Travel Ready for a Quick Recovery from Hurricane Sandy

The New York City area had a rough week and our hearts go out to millions of wonderful people throughout the East Coast, especially in coastal areas of New Jersey, Staten Island, Rockaway and Long Island, who have suffered unimaginable loss. 

 

The business travel industry, while hit hard last week, is prepared for a quick recovery.  Most, if not all of our hotels have weathered the storm, and with power fully restored in Manhattan, are ready to accommodate business travelers and corporate meetings with the world-class service and amenities people expect in New York.

 

We had two meeting groups in town last week and everyone worked around the challenges with a positive attitude.  More importantly, our attendees witnessed first-hand the never-quit spirit of New Yorkers, who not only overcame a major natural disaster as individuals, but also made it a priority to help their neighbors in a time of need.

 

New York will be back better than ever.