Event Planning and Operations Careers at White Lodging

Hi, my name is Brian Benak. I’m Director of Event Planning for Marriott Place Indianapolis. Starting off, first year, in the summer, I worked at a restaurant job and really seemed to like it. I went back and said, this is what I want to do. So I changed my major and started pursuing hotel management. I did two summers in a country club environment. Going out of college, I thought for sure, big hotel — I want to be a front desk manager, GM one day. I really didn’t even know the event management world existed, so I took a job with Hyatt Hotels. I liked it, but I was looking for something a little bit more fun. I missed the food and beverage and the banquet side. I happened to see a job posting for something called a conference services manager. I’ve always enjoyed working with the event managers at the hotel. I decided to take a job with another hotel chain, a couple of years out of college then, and became an event manager, or conference services manager, as they called it. I worked there for three years. My wife and I always had a draw to Indianapolis, so we were excited. I was looking through the White Lodging career page. We always knew White Lodging from being at Purdue — they had a great presence, a very big recruiter. I put my resume in and happened to get a call from the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown about a senior event manager job they had opened. So my department oversees all the reservations that get put in for all of the five hotels throughout the Marriott Place complex. And then also my department is responsible for planning every piece of group business that comes through the hotel. The most exciting things for me are those special events, whether it be the Super Bowl, the Final Four coming in, a presidential visit. Other weeks we may have a citywide convention consisting of 50,000 people across the city. You may have a group of 1,000; the next day you’re doing a dinner for 3,000; and then the following day you may have 15 or 20 different companies doing just small meetings. If I had to go back and give advice to an event planner wanting to get into this role: definitely get as much operational experience as you can. It’s key, because our role touches every department in the hotel. The experiences you get along the way, especially in college, will be invaluable. Whether it’s working a front desk, working banquet operations, being a restaurant server, it just helps you learn the initial details of each of those operating departments to be able to better execute and service your clients. We are the primary communicator in the hotel to all the departments for the groups coming in. Great communication skills. You’ll have a number of challenges that you come across throughout your career, and you’ll learn from each one. As you solve a problem, you learn from it, because that way it’ll just make you a stronger event manager. You may come into what you’re thinking is a quiet day, and five or six calls may pop up. Or all of a sudden there may be a hurricane down south, and the next thing you know, we’ve got a football team coming up here to relocate to avoid the hurricane. So you may run across a number of different opportunities and challenges when you’re planning an event. So really it’s working as a team to help understand what’s the best way to make this event happen, and then also make sure that the client receives that great experience.