Military Reunions in Seattle Southside

SD: Were you were you surprised at the difference between military reunions and other, you know, like corporate groups or other groups that are in that the social market niche? Were you surprised at the difference?

MM: Well, I just feel like every group has their own kind of special needs. And I don't know if I was surprised so much, but I was really interested to learn about the typical needs of every type of group, really. But at the Museum of Flight here was a lot of the military and groups because it's just a really awesome attraction for people especially interested in aviation and space and things like that.

SD: I was going to say from from the home base in Seattle Southside, they can actually sneak up to, I have to give a plug to the Everett Boeing plant and they can actually take the tour and then head back down as well.

MM: Yeah, and that's actually something I worked when I was at the Museum of Flight. I worked out a lot of different scenarios where they would go to the Museum of Flight in the morning, have a one hour tour, look around a bit. Have lunch: either box lunches on a bus, or have lunch in the cafe. And then they could take their box lunches on the bus and drive up to the Future of Flight. And the Boeing Museum and do a tour up there. So we worked that out very often, actually. It worked out really nicely.

SD: And I bet you still do that in your role with Seattle Southside.

MM: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the kind of suggestions that I can give or how to best utilize your time and what works best with different groups for the area. And that's one of my suggestions that I usually give.

SD: And on the theme of suggestions, I want to see if you want to answer this in a couple of ways. You know, your old hat of working from the attraction side and your hat with the CVB side. I always talk with the military reunion planners about making sure they have all of the information before they pick up the phone to call, because it makes them come across as much more professional and it helps you do your job better. And so I think my question would be: are there things that that you want them to have at the ready? Are there questions that you're going to ask them that they're going to need to know about when when they're contacting you with the CVB? And are there are the questions the same when they're contacting you, you know, for the Museum of Flight or are there different things that they need to have in the back of their mind?

MM: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Okay, so my role here at the CVB primarily is to find the appropriate host hotel for the military reunion planner and help them with an itinerary. And then usually I would refer them to the current group sales manager at the Museum of Flight to arrange tours and things like that and discounted group rates. So when I have a military reunion planner contact me here at the CVB, the first thing I would ask them is obviously their dates that they're looking at. If they usually have a banquet and what their needs are for that banquet so that I can find them a hotel that has the appropriate sized meeting spaces and what they need as far as a hospitality room goes, what type of banquets they have, whether it's like a buffet or plated or what they usually spend in that, because that can help get lower rates, lower room rates if you can provide that type of information. If they have any flexibility in their dates, because this area in particular, if you can book over a Sunday, you're going to get much better rates than if you book during the week. So if you can if you can move your reunion from Thursday through Saturday to Friday through through...hold on, Thursday through Sunday to Friday through Monday, your overall hotel rate's going to be less expensive.

SD: Mmhmm.

MM: So those are the type of questions I would ask when a planner contacts me here. When I was at the Museum of Flight, and this is what the current group sales manager there would do, we would ask what the group's particular interest is in so that we can customize the tours. They give complimentary one hour tours.

SD: Oh wow.

MM: Yeah, it's really great. And and they try to customize it. So the docents that work there, they're all volunteers and they they either come from a military background, Air Force, or they come from, they're retired Boeing employees or, you know, just it runs the gamut. But they're all very interesting people and they have a real passion for giving tours that are appropriate for groups and really engaging their audiences. So they want to know as much information about the group as possible when they get assigned a group. And then they do research and they try to show them the artifacts in the museum that would would interest them most. So that's kind of what I focused on when I was at the Museum of Flight, just about the group in particular. Also, obviously things like if they wanted to arrange for a lunch or box lunches or things like that. But it was mostly about the group and what they particularly were interested in.

SD: So as a silly follow up question to that, and maybe not so silly, I don't know. But, you know, we talk about at RFN confabs and during basic training, you know, different attractions and the eyeroll test. And if a reunion planner turns to his wife or a significant other and says, I'm so excited we're going to and they mention the attraction and the response is the other person rolling their eyes, they know that they need to probably keep looking. You know with the Museum of Flight, I personally I love aviation. And so it's fascinating to me, but it might not be so to other spouses or partners that are attending the reunion. And so have you, when you were with the Museum of Flight, did you try to blend in the folks that maybe would have rolled their eyes just a little bit about going because aviation's not for everybody? And so how did how did you work with that aspect of it?

MM: Well, actually, you know, I'm not really that interested in aviation myself which, the group sales person now is actually a pilot. So she's really into it. But, you know, when I was working there, I was not really interested in planes and things like that. But what I was interested in was the stories of the people, because, you know, I'm a historian, an anthropologist at heart. So all I want to hear about is what people the way that they lived their lives and and what it was like for them. And the Museum of Flight is a really good job of telling those stories. So when I was with the Museum of Flight, I would get that question a lot. Like, you know, "I know my wife would not be interested in planes." Well, I am a good example myself because I was not that interested. But...

SD: Now I'm going to have to go back down and do the tour again to get the story part and, you know, less ailerons-

MM: Exactly!

SD: -and flaps and more family. So that'll be cool.