erinwootan

Here we go! First blog post. Hopefully, I can provide some insight into what I do, and what is new and great in the industry. My specialty is event planning in casinos, and with that comes knowledge of casino marketing. So, I hope to entertain and educate on both topics.

First, a little more about me. Aside from having a passion for event planning, I also have a passion for casinos. I highly enjoy the environment of working at a casino. Having grown up in the Reno area and having parents who have both worked in the industry my whole life, working in a casino feels like home. In the future, I aspire to work my way up through the ranks of casino management. I have worked in several departments, and so far events is my favorite.

Since it is the beginning of a new year as well as a new decade, I will start with an outlook for 2011. In the event planning world, and especially in the casino event world, we have experienced quite a hit in terms of budget and the amount of money people are willing to spend on events. The casino industry has taken a particularly hard hit since 2007 and when you break it down by jurisdiction, Reno is down even more than the average. There are some indications that a rebound is in the near future, but we will never see profits and revenues return to their post-2007 levels, at least not in the short-term. So, we as event planners must come up with new, clever, and most importantly CHEAP ways to make events great.

While at an Event Convention this year in Phoenix, I was speaking to a fellow event planner who substituted her budget for decorative crystals inside a vase for kitty litter. She managed to find a brand of kitty litter that was the same size and was sparkly enough to pass for the more expensive decorative crystal version. Now, I’m not condoning the use an animal waste mechanism to decorate for an event, but when you have a set budget and a client with high expectations, you must adapt! There are other clever ways to save money on an event. If you have the time, buying swatches of fabric can be very inexpensive and can be used in many creative ways to decorate an event. I saw a decorative piece at an event that was meant to look like a backdrop of greenery. Instead of using real plants, the decorators used an oversized piece of wood (or you could use any solid backdrop material) and had attached green ribbon in such a way that it looked like it could have been real plants. And I’m sure it was only half the cost if not less!

These are the kind of creative ideas that an event planner has to come up with when money is limited. Feel free to share any other money-saving tips you might have!

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