During our event last week during Cowes Week I met our journalists off their yacht which had moored in Cowes and guide them through the crowds to our private dining room on the other side of the town. It was a hot day and although it was only a short five minute stroll to the venue I felt inclined to apologise to the journalists and to reassure them that we were not far away.
The response was to bullishly tell me not to worry unless I lost any of them. I found this quite funny until later when I was chatting with a couple of journalists and they told me their horror stories.
One journalists told me about his trip to Dublin where they were well looked after until the next day. It wasn’t until the journalist came down for breakfast that he realised that everyone had departed. He had been left behind.
Shocking. Not only that, but he wasn’t alone, another journalist had been left sound asleep in bed. The PR agency had called his mobile, which was on silent, and when there was no answer presumed that he had already made his own way to the airport.
I could understand a simple error of miscounting heads and leaving one behind but two is surely unforgivable. Not only were they left behind but they didn’t even receive an appology. Shocking.
I’m sure this isn’t an individual case as organising and successfully managing an event is a hell of a lot harder than most would appreciate. You need to think of every scenario and to have the ability to put yourself into the place of all attendees to understand what their experience is. Just because everyone turns up doesn’t mean the work is over…..far from it and the blisters on my feet from last week are a lasting proof of this statement.
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