David Marks - MM CompanyDavid marks your card in 25 destinations
Thursday, 06 January 2011 10:27
David marks your card in 25 destinations
David Marks was, until 1996, Director of Sales & Marketing at the Conrad Hotel in Istanbul. ‘I knew all the DMCs there’, he says, ‘and could see that some were very good and some weren’t. But how would a UK event organiser be able to tell the difference from afar?’And that is why he set up his MM Company in 1997. It is a representation, marketing and sales company for DMCs in about 25 countries. ‘It is difficult to define how many DMCs we represent’, he explains, ‘because, for example, one of our partners is Pacific World and that is in itself a group of DMCs with 19 offices in eight countries from Cambodia to China to Singapore to Vietnam.’
‘Working on a retainer’, he goes on, ‘we are a cost to the DMC and not to the organiser. We are paid to knock on doors, present our portfolio and spot business opportunities in the market. And we know our DMCs and their personnel very well. Many of our partners have been with us for over 10 years.
‘Companies are expecting today to work in an amazing range of destinations. If, for example, they are holding an event in Vietnam or Argentina, do they know how things are done there? Which are the reliable venues? What are the places that should be on a leisure programme? Yes, they need a DMC, but what do they know about which DMCs have the experience and the resources to do a good job for them?’
Then David points out: ‘The reverse is also true. What do the Argentines or the Vietnamese know about the potential client in the UK? How serious is a request for a quotation? What standing does the client have in the industry?’
That is where the MM Company comes in. ‘Acting as the link between the two, we can introduce a DMC in the destination that MM knows to be stable, reliable and creative. And we can assure the DMC that the potential client is well worth any time spent on designing and costing a project.’
An interesting addendum is that MM can remove much of the inconvenience stemming from time differentials around the world. ‘We represent DMCS in destinations such as Argentina, Canada, Oman, Mauritius and so on. But we are on the same time as the UK client. We never use automatic answering machines. A client can call and talk to us about an idea, an amendment to a proposal or anything that needs urgent attention and we can go with it from there. For example, we could, if necessary, contact the main executives at home in the destination outside their office hours and can have the data the client needs within the normal time scale in the UK.’
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