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WAFI LIMOUSINE: Subtlety is the best way to not draw attention to yourself.

Companies are modifying their product to cater to the growing demand for privacy during meetings and events.

Meetings and events take place for all sorts of reasons and a majority of the time the material discussed is of a sensitive nature.

Despite the delicacy of the information discussed - ranging from the decision to grant the IT department the funds to install a water-cooler, to whether or not to lay off half the company's workforce - neither decision can be discussed across a busy office floor where gossip is traded like oil on the stock market.

In a climate where information and access to it is often make or break for companies, meetings and event planners need to feel secure in the knowledge that their chosen venue or company is doing everything it can to make security and privacy as water tight as possible.

As a consequence, hotels and event companies have witnessed a growing demand for private and secure meetings and events and have had to modify their offering to cater to it.

And in order to secure planners' business they are willing to go to great lengths to prove they can deliver a private event, as resident manager of Hotel Le Bristol, Paris, Vincent Smarrella explained.

"We have a lot of privacy requests from our planners. I had a request recently where the client booked a meeting room and then booked all the other meeting rooms around their meeting room so they would not be disturbed and for security and confidentially issues," he said.

Securing privacy can be expensive, but for many companies the need for security justifies the cost even if it means employing additional staff and renewing the fixtures and fittings.

"One of our clients changed all the locks for the meetings rooms and even the master key was not allowed to be used. They had 24-hour security outside of the room and when the meeting was finished they posted security guards in the room," Smarrella said.

Typical clients who require venues to go to such lengths to ensure privacy are usually bankers, private investors and pharmaceutical companies who meet to sign big contracts, according to Smarrella.

The types of client who traditionally require privacy are similar in the Middle East, according to director of events for InterContinental Dubai Festival City, Robin Stewart.

"Privacy had always being a major factor in selecting the venue for a meeting or conference, initially with competitors traditionally in the banking sector and pharmaceuticals," he explained.

Exclusivity

Some companies won't even sign a contract with a venue unless they are guaranteed that there is no competitor already in the hotel.

"Sometimes it goes as far as the meeting space, sometimes it can go as far as who is staying in the hotel. We obviously don't disclose any information about names, but we will have to turn down a piece of business because a competitor has already confirmed with us," Stewart said.

Assuming exclusivity of the venue can be guaranteed, the actual privacy of the meeting room is dictated by the customer and the meeting planner.

"We can go as far as having no signage on the public plasma screens. It can have the full company name and logo or nothing so it looks like there is no meeting place - not even a private one," Stewart said.

"We have locks on all our meetings rooms and we have a member of staff outside every single meeting room when an event takes place and that member of staff won't let any one into the room unless they are the organiser or have a pass."

The classic faux pas of the private meeting is when another guest or a member of the hotel staff walks into a meeting room by accident and is something that InterContinental has attempted to eliminate.

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