UEFA Champions League Sponsor’s event – mitigating cancellation costs.
Bedroom nights
223
Event space
1
% of booking refunded
100%
€ saved in cancellation changes
€100,000
Event attendees
100+
Objectives.
One of our long-standing telecommunication customers are sponsors of the UEFA Champions League and required us to source over 220 bedrooms, as well as space for an event taking place in Istanbul on the night of the Champions League in May 2020.
Solution.
To support this request, we began looking for accommodation and suitable venues in June 2019, almost a year in advance. We successfully sourced the accommodation in both the Hyatt Regency (143 bedrooms) and the Sheraton Istanbul (80 bedrooms), with the event also due to take place in one of Hyatt Regency’s event spaces.
In March 2020, however, the COVID-19 pandemic caused the UK to ‘lockdown’, with our customer’s CEO implementing a travel ban on all non-essential travel, including travel relating to both meetings and events. This meant that we had to cancel the event space and hotel bookings on behalf of our customer.
With the venues governed under Turkish law and the contracts not stating anything about a global pandemic, our Supplier Management, Legal and Venue Finding teams had to work hard to mitigate the cancellation costs by working closely with the respective hotel chains.
We also collaborated with our customer’s internal hospitality contact, as well their legal and procurement teams, to update them on progress and cancellation negotiations throughout the entire process.
Results.
The customer was “delighted” with the result, as we were successful in mitigating all cancellation costs and obtained a refund for 100% of the confirmed booking spend - saving our customer over €100,000 in cancellation charges!