Major Event Hospitality

Providing hospitality at major sporting events remains at the core of HiP’s business. We have a long reach with the ability to deliver successsful events pretty much anywhere in the world. We summarise below a number of case histories which we hope will provide a indication of our abilities to work effectively throughout the world.

Rugby World Cup 1999 and Rugby League World Cup 2000

Hospitality in Partnership has considerable experience in creating consortia with expertise across a range of disciplines providing a full turn-key service to major events rights holders.

For Rugby World Cup 1999 held in the old “Five Nations”, we conceived the idea and then formed a consortium which ultimately won the official corporate hospitality contract for the Tournament. Our four partners included both caterers and conventional corporate hospitality agents. All the partners sold the packages across all matches with each partner assuming the fulfilment responsibility in one of the hosting countries. HiP handled fulfilment at all the matches in Wales, including the Final (for 6,000 guests) in the dramatic new Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.

We had a similar, albeit smaller, contract for Rugby League World Cup 2000 held in England with the Final at Old Trafford, Manchester in November 2000. The consortium formed a joint-venture company, Rugby Hospitality 2000. On this occasion HiP not only sold the packages and managed the fulfilment at several matches including one quarter-final and one semi-final but also managed the entire central administration of the joint-venture company from our Ealing office.

Rugby World Cup 2003

We again won the contract for Rugby World Cup 2003 in Australia with sales rights for Australia and New Zealand only. Here HiP staff were the driving force behind the sale and delivery of over 53,000 hospitality packages. For both Rugby World Cup 1999 and 2003 we made a substantial minimum rights fee guarantee to Rugby World Cup Ltd for the official commercial hospitality rights. For Rugby World Cup 2003, we appointed eight hospitality agencies (seven based in Australia and one in New Zealand) to sell the packages working on a commissionable basis. These approved agencies collectively had the details of over 90% of the potential clients and it seemed eminently sensible to appoint them to do the selling. All sales agent appointments were approved by RWC Ltd.

This involvement of local agents was extremely successful with total sales in excess of 53,000 – a phenomenal number for a country with a total population of only 20 million. We took responsibility for managing and motivating these sales agents and ensuring they abided by all Rugby World Cup’s rules and regulations, particularly with respect to ambush marketing. Another benefit of appointing well-established agencies is that the black-market was virtually negligible.

We also took full responsibility for the total fulfilment of the hospitality programme. Chris Bruton, the HiP Chief Executive, was the Chief Executive of this company, Rugby Hospitality 2003 Pty Ltd, based in Sydney. The total turnover of our business in Australia was 52 million Euros. The total rights fee paid to Rugby World Cup Ltd was nearly 12 million Euros.

ICC Cricket World Cup West Indies 2007

HiP was official appointed by Cricket World Cup to provide hospitality consultancy, hospitality event management services and sponsors hospitality services to ICC Cricket World Cup West Indies 2007 which took place in the Caribbean during March/April 2007. We formed a company, Cricket Hospitality 2007 (CH07) to run the business. The CH07 office, located in Barbados, was the focal point of our activities. We appointed official sales agents throughout the cricketing world as well as in the Caribbean to promote these official progammes.

The project involved providing VIP hospitality services in nine different countries, at 51 matches over a period of seven weeks. The outcome was a tremendous success selling over 22,000 places throughout the Tournament. For this project, Hospitality in Partnership won the coveted ”Hospitality Event of 2007” award at the ISEMS Dinner in December 2007.

We were also responsible for the fulfilment of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 partners hospitality programme.

Our ability to deliver

These Rugby World Cup and Cricket World Cup appointments confirm our ability to create, market and operate hospitality on a truly global scale. Working closely with local suppliers, wherever the event, is one of the key aspects of our philosophy. This philosophy is perfectly exemplified in Rugby World Cup 2003 in Australia where we appointed eight local sales agencies to sell the packages and the Australian Rugby Union to help us with the fulfilment.

Full Turnkey Service

HiP removes the LOC’s administrative burden of operating this particular aspect of their event, allowing them to dedicate their time to running their tournament. Our service includes the package creation, the appointment of the sales agents and all the service suppliers as well as the event management itself. We pride ourselves on the quality of our on-site event management team who will ensure that all the guests receive red-carpet service.

HiP has a proven record of delivering memorable event experiences at major events anywhere in the world. Every event is different and we will tailor-make the solution to meet the rights holders specific requirements.

Perhaps a key aspect to our service is that Hospitality in Partnership, as its name suggests, works, wherever possible, with local suppliers and staff. We believe it is a fundamental responsibility of international companies to leave a legacy in all the countries they operate.

Please contact us for case histories.