Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1172.
Booking space for business events.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1172.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Visit ESLPOD.com.
Don't take a vacation there.
Well, unless you want to.
But do become a member of ESL Podcast or take a look at our ESL Podcast store, which has some additional courses in English just for you.
And you.
And you over there, too.
This episode is going to talk about getting a room, a space for having a meeting, a business event.
Let's get started.
All right, we have to find meeting rooms and a banquet hall for the annual sales meeting and luncheon.
Do you have any ideas?
We could hold it at a hotel, as we've done in past years, or we can try the convention center.
The company has grown so much in the past year.
I don't think the hotel has the capacity we need.
The convention center sounds like a better option.
The advantage of the hotel is that it has in-house catering and wait staff for the luncheon.
Yes, but we can bring in outside catering, which would give us more food options.
The large convention center rooms will also allow us to configure the space the way we want it.
But the hotel meeting rooms have built-in AV.
I'm not sure that's available at the convention center.
All right.
I think we should visit both venues and book after we've met with the event managers.
Agreed?
Agreed.
And we'll need to sample the catering options, right?
Of course.
What are expense accounts for?
Roberto begins our dialogue by saying to Nicole Alright, we have to find meeting rooms and a banquet hall for the annual sales meeting and luncheon.
A meeting room is a large room, usually at a hotel or perhaps at a place called a convention center, which we'll talk about in a.
Meeting rooms are often used by organizations and companies that don't have their own space to have a room, or when you have too many people for your own offices.
A banquet, B-A-N-Q-U-E-T, is a large meal for many people.
A banquet hall, H-A-L-L, is a large room in which you can have your meals.
Now, what's the difference between a banquet hall and a meeting room?
Well, a meeting room isn't really designed for eating in, whereas a banquet hall is.
You could have a banquet hall at a large restaurant.
The word hall H-A-L-L here refers to a very large space, a very large room, one that might have 500 people or 1000 people in it.
A luncheon, L-U-N-C-H-E-O-N, is a formal lunch, usually for a large number of people.
So Roberto is looking for a place that has meeting rooms and perhaps also a banquet hall for the annual that is every year sales meeting and luncheon.
Do you have any ideas, he asks Nicole.
Nicole says we could hold it at a hotel as we've done in past years.
To hold, H-O-L-D, an event means to have a large meeting or a large event in a certain place.
We're going to hold our wedding reception in a hotel.
We're going to have it in a hotel.
A wedding reception is a party that you have after the wedding.
Many large hotels have meeting rooms and banquet halls in which you can have your meetings and banquets.
Nicole suggests going to a hotel or trying a convention center.
The word convention C-O-N-V-E-N-T-I-O-N here refers to a large meeting about some topic in which everyone who goes to the meeting is interested in.
A convention usually has many meetings about the same topic.
A convention center is a large meeting building that is built just for conventions.
Many large cities in the us have convention centers.
Los angeles has a convention center.
These convention centers are often so large you could have several conventions at the same time because they have so much room in them.
Roberto says the company has grown so much in the past year.
I don't think the hotel has the capacity we need.
Capacity C-A-P-A-C-I-T-Y here refers to the number of people that you could put in a room or in a building.
Roberto suggests that the convention center is a better option, a better idea.
Nicole says...
However, that the advantage of the hotel is that it has in-house catering and wait staff for the luncheon.
The expression in-house refers to something that is done within the same business.
So, for example, a large company might have an in-house legal department.
They don't go to lawyers who work for themselves or for another company.
They have their own lawyers.
Hotels often have in-house catering, C-A-T-E-R-I-N-G.
Catering refers to preparing and serving food.
At a lunch or a dinner say.
In-house catering then refers to the ability of a hotel to provide the food without having to go to a restaurant or to another business in order to provide that service.
A hotel also often has its own wait staff, W-A-I-T-S-T-A-F-F.
Wait staff refers to waiters and waitresses people who bring you the food or who take your orders at a restaurant.
Roberto says yes, but we can bring in outside catering.
Nicole is talking about the advantages of a hotel, having in-house catering and wait staff.
Roberto is talking about using a convention center.
But when you use a convention center, usually you have to get another company outside of the convention center to bring the food in and serve it.
That's what he means by outside catering, outside the convention center, people who don't work for the convention center, in effect.
Roberto says that if they do that, if they use outside catering, they will have more food options, more choices.
The large convention center rooms will also allow us to configure the space the way we want it, Roberto says.
To configure C-O-N-F-I-G-U-R-E means to arrange something in a particular way or in a certain way, so that it does what you want it to do.
You could configure your phone so that it doesn't ring after a certain time at night.
You can configure a room so that it will have enough chairs and tables for everyone in your meeting.
Roberto thinks that the convention centers will have large rooms that will allow people.
Nicole however, says that hotel meeting rooms have built-in AVs.
AV refers to audio-visual.
It refers to the kind of equipment that you would use to make a presentation to a large group of people.
It might refer to the sound system, including microphones and speakers.
It might refer to a screen on which you can put information or project images.
All of that would be included in AV.
Convention centers often provide AV services, but not all of the rooms may have the AV.
They may have to bring audiovisual equipment in in order to do what you want to do.
Hotel meeting rooms nowadays, in many cases, have built-in AV.
Built, B-U-I-L-T hyphen in, I-N, refers to equipment that is permanently in the room.
It's there all the time.
You don't have to bring it in from another room.
Nicole says, I'm not sure that built-in AV is available at the convention center.
Roberto then says, all right.
He likes to say all right.
This is the second time he's said it.
I think we should visit both venues and book after we've met with the event managers.
Agreed?
A venue, V-E-N-U-E, is a place where a certain event happens.
It's just another term for a place, but usually it refers to a place for a specific event.
So a bar could be a venue for a small musical group to play music.
Or a large stadium could be a venue for a musical group to play its music.
Anything really can be a venue as long as an event can take place there.
To book, B-O-O-K, is the same as to reserve.
It means to say, yes, we're going to use this space or this venue.
Usually it requires signing a contract with the hotel or the convention center and then giving them a certain percentage of the money in order for them to hold or to keep the space for you.
That's the meaning of the verb to book.
It's the same as to reserve.
You can book a hotel room, for example, for your trip.
An event manager is a person at a hotel or convention center whose job it is to help you make the reservation and to take care of all of the planning details that are required for you to hold your event.
Roberto is suggesting that he and Nicole go and visit these venues, these places, talk to the event managers and then book a space.
Nicole says, Agreed.
And we'll need to sample the catering options, right?
To sample, S-A-M-P-L-E, means to try something before you buy it.
Many times when you go to a hotel, especially for a wedding reception, the hotel will give you samples of the food that you can taste, so you can decide whether you like it or not.
To be honest, this doesn't happen all that often with meeting rooms at a hotel or a convention center.
I've booked many conferences and meetings at hotels and convention centers and I've never sampled the food.
But in the dialogue, Roberto and Nicole are going to be able to do that.
Nicole says that she and Roberto will need to sample the catering options.
They'll need to try the food to make sure they like it.
Roberto says, of course.
What are expense accounts for?
An expense E-X-P-E-N-S-E account is an amount of money that a company gives an employee to do things that are necessary for the company that are outside of the company offices typically.
So if the company is sending you on a trip, you will get money from the company to pay for that trip.
That's part of your expense account.
I guess in this case Nicole and Roberto are going to be traveling to the hotel or to the convention center and the expense account will pay for the travel to these places.
The samples however, are usually provided free by the catering departments of a hotel or a caterer that might service a convention center, so I don't think that's what they're referring to here.
It must be the travel that they will have to undergo or take in order to get to these venues.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
All right.
We have to find meeting rooms and a banquet hall for the annual sales meeting and luncheon.
Do you have any ideas?
We could hold it at a hotel, as we've done in past years.
Or we can try the convention center.
The company has grown so much in the past year.
I don't think the hotel has the capacity we need.
The convention center sounds like a better option.
The advantage of the hotel... is that it has in-house catering and waitstaff for the luncheon.
Yes, but we can bring in outside catering, which would give us more food options.
The large convention center rooms will also allow us to configure the space the way we want it.
But the hotel meeting rooms have built-in AV.
I'm not sure that's available at the convention center.
All right.
I think we should visit both venues and book after we've met with the event managers.
Agreed?
Agreed.
And we'll need to sample the catering options, right?
Of course.
What are expense accounts for?
We have an in-house scriptwriting department here at the Center for Educational Development.
And her name is Dr. Lucy Say.
Thank you, Lucy.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2015 by the Center for Educational Development.
