What is Corporate Hospitality and Why Use It?

What do we mean by Corporate Hospitality?

Corporate Hospitality can be described as any event where an organisation entertains clients, prospective clients or staff at the organisation's expense. This includes spectator sports, participatory events and activities, art or cultural events, and any other events.

The most popular events for entertaining guests are horseracing meetings, football matches, concerts and the major sporting tournaments such as the 6 Nations rugby, Royal Ascot, Test Cricket, The Open, Wimbledon and many more, too many to name here.

Corporate hospitality is usually sold in the form of a package which includes a good quality ticket or seat for the event along with drinks, a meal and sometimes a gift. This is a typical package but it does vary to cater for different events, facilities and budgets. Some packages, for example, would only include a drinks reception or buffet or, particularly at football events, simply the use of a corporate facility with drinks being paid for on the day.

Why use Corporate Hospitality?

The basic idea behind corporate hospitality is to strengthen relationships. Hospitality really targets the individual rather than the company as, for example, a purchasing director being invited by a sales director is of more benefit to the invitee than his/her company.

Hospitality could be seen as a form of bribery - a way to treat the individual in return for their custom but there is often more to it than this. Often these people would only ever speak on the phone or, at least, meet in a work environment. An invite to a corporate hospitality event offers the invitee the benefit of attending the event whilst offering the inviter, or host, the opportunity to get to know his customer.

A hospitality event has a much greater appeal than, say, inviting someone for a meal as it is often a highly prestigious event where tickets are not readily available. The event itself also serves as a focus for conversation - an easy ice breaker.

Justifying the cost

Hospitality packages can often seem highly expensive when compared to the broken down cost of a ticket, a meal and a few drinks but this is not a fair comparison. The hospitality package is an exclusive opportunity and should be likened to other forms of marketing rather than socialising.

Imagine that you have a contract worth several thousand pounds or dollars. Spending a few hundred on a hospitality package is as close as you can get to a guarantee of retaining this contract and, in the longer term, can be far more cost effective than cutting the customers' prices by a few percent.