Event:
Super Dispatch Broker Summit
Location:
Atelier Playa Mujeres
Timeline:
14 weeks from intros to event day
When we first met in mid-July, 2025, Super Dispatch told the Clearcraft team they were looking for communications and logistics support for their first major event, the Super Dispatch Broker Summit. They’d be bringing VIP customers and prospects from the U.S. and Europe for a three-day Summit in Cancún, Mexico.
The stretch goal for attendance was to get 80 VIPs onsite at the beautiful Atelier Playa Mujeres. But with 14 weeks to go, just 9 guests out of about 30 verbal “yes’s” had actually confirmed their travel plans.
Clearcraft signed on with Super Dispatch to hit three key targets:
- Solidify travel details with all registered guests.
- Finalize the rooming list with the hotel’s Group Reservations team.
- Coordinate arrival and departure airport transfers for all guests.
To make attending an easy decision, Super Dispatch poured a lot of value on top of a great business opportunity in Cancún. For one VIP from each company, Super Dispatch would cover a two-night stay and reimburse airfare up to $1,000.
Super Dispatch also negotiated with the hotel to allow all guests to extend their stay 3 days before or after the event and still get the group discount.
We knew the list of registrants was going to grow. The key to nailing the event would be persistent, positive guest communications and clear coordination between teams and vendors.
How we hit our primary targets (plus a couple more)
Tracking, talking and chasing
Where else to start when you’ve got to centralize data: we built a project tracker to be the team’s source of truth.
Registrant names and emails were coming from Eventbrite, but flight details, plus-one information, dietary restrictions and preferences for extracurricular events had to be provided separately via SurveyMonkey. Bringing it all together created a simple, shared record and a built-in agenda for progress updates. Plus, it helped us reformat data so that handing it off to partners would be easier later on.
The first eight weeks and 80% of the invite list came together smoothly. As the event got closer, our project tracker helped us prioritize urgent outreach. For the last ~10-20% of registered guests without confirmed travel, we followed up relentlessly. In many cases we ultimately collected critical info via text or on phone calls.
Why? We understood that the big objective here was to drive attendance. A little bit of sales had to get mixed in with the logistics work. We’re confident our effort to email, call, text and stay on top of tentative guests ultimately pulled some from “maybe not” to “Mexico!” And though we didn’t quite hit Super Dispatch’s stretch goal, almost 70% of all invited guests wound up attending.
For an inaugural event that required international travel, we view that as a smashing success. But the story doesn’t end with filled-in spreadsheets. It was time to finalize with our vendors so guests had a smooth experience from arrival to departure.
Solving problems in real time
The main wrinkle in that smooth experience came about ten days before the event, when we received a slightly confused message from a guest whose confirmation email from the hotel was missing dates.
While we worked on a guest list shared between Clearcraft, Super Dispatch, the hotel and our transportation providers, the hotel’s team had copied and edited reservation details in a private file — surprising us after they provided the initial formatting for our shared resource.
Because guests had the option to extend their stay beyond the two nights Super Dispatch covered, the hotel team issued dual reservations to guests with extended stays: one reservation under the group dates, and a second reservation for the extended dates.
When we asked the hotel to send confirmation messages to all guests, only those with extensions received confirmations… and only for dates before or after the event. All of the confirmation emails for the event dates went to Super Dispatch!
It was time for those real-time problem-solving skills to kick in.
We received the first alert around 8:30 a.m. By 1 p.m., we’d built a custom HTML email template and provided instructions for the Super Dispatch team to upload to HubSpot, create custom properties for critical event info, test and send.
Every guest then received a personalized, Super Dispatch-branded confirmation showing the correct dates for their entire stay. For good measure, we also included a link to ground transfer details, a bonus to taking over confirmation communications.
These unanticipated emails worked so well, we repeated the process to give guests a reminder about check-out and departure procedures at the end of the event. “The timing could not have been more critical, those last-minute emails were truly a lifesaver,” said Emilie Carell, who oversaw the event coordination.
“The templates themselves were extremely easy to use, and the “ahead of stay” confirmation messages were well-received by guests. Beyond solving an immediate problem, it gave me a new (and very helpful) skill set for future communications in HubSpot.”
Creating a branded vacation experience
If you’ve ever had the privilege of flying into Cancún, you’ll know that the Arrivals terminal can be a bit chaotic. Rental agencies, adventure planners and trays of tequila shots compete loudly for your attention.
Most travelers need to navigate through the noise to meet taxis and drivers-for-hire outside the terminal, and that’s after spending an hour or two working through customs.
The excellent team at Tropical Incentives facilitated ground transfers for Super Dispatch guests, and we provided them with a detailed flight manifest for every guest and their plus-ones (some of whom took separate flights in).
In return, they provided us with a traveler guide, including a detailed map of the route guests should take through the airport terminal, past distractions, and out to their waiting van.
This guide is what we included in our confirmation emails, giving guests a clear idea of what they were looking for once they got through the terminal.
We stayed in close communication with the ground transfer team via WhatsApp, confirming each pickup, hotel dropoff and re-delivery to the airport for return flights. Though drivers provided guests with handwritten reminder cards for their departure pickup times, we added these to a second set of custom emails. On the final day of the event, each guest was reminded of the hotel checkout time and their van pickup three hours before their flight.
Delivering a high-end serice
Our goal as an agency is to be a partner in execution, not another thing to manage. It was meaningful to hear that ethos reflected in our client’s perspective of how we work:
“The Clearcraft team’s willingness to jump in directly with the resort, third-party excursion vendors, and our transportation partner was a game changer. You didn’t just execute tasks; you anticipated gaps, proposed solutions, and kept everything moving,” Carell said.
On top of deeply thoughtful programming, an incredible venue and a truly unique networking opportunity, the Super Dispatch team also wanted to give their guests a true Cancún vacation. To cap off the Summit, the Clearcraft team helped coordinate, negotiate pricing and finalize guest lists for either a golf outing or a half-day catamaran ride, which added to the feeling that Super Dispatch’s Summit was a uniquely high-end experience.
That may be why our two teams worked so well together through this project – like Super Dispatch, Clearcraft is committed to delivering a high-end experience for our customers. We want to not only meet the goals, but find ways to exceed them and our clients’ expectations for agency support. Great agencies don’t require more oversight. They should manage the joint team to success.
Clearcraft is the kind of partner that makes an event feel bigger, more polished, and more supported than your internal team could ever manage on its own. Matt and Rikki were not only exceptionally skilled and organized, they were genuinely great humans to work with – calm, collaborative, solutions-oriented, and always willing to jump in. They made an enormous, complex event feel manageable, and the end result showed it.