In the past I have been both the provider and recipient of corporate hospitality. (Or corporate hostility as many of us called it.) Most of the events that I was at were fairly low-key in the scheme of things. I didn't make any of the soccer World Cup trips, for example, although it seems that most of the rest of the country did.
Most of my entertaining was strictly of the theatre, restaurant or bar variety which, regretfully, meant that it was based in Dublin. Bringing clients away is a tricky business, though. The people you take with you are aware that this is something of a quid pro quo, either a reward for previous business or an inducement to do more. The hosts are equally aware that their guests want to be treated extremely well for the duration of whatever trip or event is being organised and have no intention of paying for anything.
Company executives suddenly take on the persona of tour guides as they spend the day head-counting clients and reassuring people who turned up without passports that something can be done about it even though nobody has the faintest idea what. Presumably all the brokers who went on Hibernian Insurance's skiing holiday turned up with their passports as well as their skis.
And hopefully nobody managed to tumble down one of the slopes and end up in plaster. Injuring the clients doesn't go down too well as many companies who used to take people to paint-ball games found out. The client likes to take home happy memories of hospitality, not bruises to 80 per cent of the body. Hibernian's corporate entertaining keeps hitting the newspapers as it has a habit of taking its brokers on overseas trips.
I don't know all that many people who could head off to Brazil at the drop of a hat themselves, but if someone else is paying for it I can see the attraction. There is something very satisfying about getting a free trip, which I'm sure the guys at Hibernian have noticed themselves.
The comment I read over the weekend suggested that these trips give the company an unfair advantage in the market. But corporate entertainment doesn't always pay dividends for the company that provides them. I know of one guy who was brought on a very lavish overseas trip and moved to another job a couple of days after he returned in which he had no need to speak to his hosts ever again. Nice free trip for him, complete waste of money for the host who then had to spend even more money wooing his replacement.
In another episode, a client on an overnight stay charged everything he possibly could to the room, leaving the hosts with very significant additional expenditure. A couple of drinks from the mini-bar is one thing. But charging a selection of luxury towelling bathrobes seems over the top to me.
People get very edgy about the whole notion of corporate entertainment - it's fine if we're on the receiving end, it's unfair if we're not. And people who've had to pay in to see an event certainly resent the hospitality latecomers who've just staggered in from the bar and are stumbling around looking for their seats. Even worse can be the continuous clatter of crockery and glasses, punctuated by an occasional burst of laughter, from behind the cordoned off area where guests are being entertained.
Sporting events are, of course, tailor made for corporate hospitality and ones where you are meant to be noisy. Sport is now entertainment and it is not just fans of Liverpool or Leeds who will happily accept trips to see them play. It is people who've been offered a day out and want the whole spectacle of a high-level football match.
The importance of corporate deals to clubs was underlined recently when fans in Newcastle United lost their court case to prevent the club from developing new corporate seating in an area where the fans had previously been allocated prime seats under a bondholder facility.
The fans, who paid for their seats, have been relocated to less prestigious viewing areas in the club to make room for people who haven't paid for their own seat at all and who probably couldn't care less who wins the match once they have a good day out. Not that you'd expect much more from Newcastle United, a club whose views on its fans are well known. And who'll want to do better to attract more corporate business - the share price has almost halved since the end of 1998.
I'm not entirely without blame in the corporate stakes myself. I remember being invited to a golf outing where I spent the entire day in the hospitality tent drinking wine and eating canapes while watching the golf on TV.
The only mitigating circumstance in this instance was that it was cold and drizzling outside and I didn't have an umbrella. (No excuse really - and any company worth its salt would obviously have kitted me out with a heavily logoed one, as well as some waterproofs)
The weather is still the one great leveller between paying and non-paying guests when it comes to sporting fixtures, although more and more stadiums are providing glassed-in, roof-covered viewing areas from which the burgeoning corporate contingent can be kept warm and dry and away from the hoi polloi.
In an age of increasing competition in industry, companies are trying to be more and more innovative in organising events that will keep their clients happy and provide the hosts with opportunities to network in a social setting. There's no doubt that friendships can be forged at events, but friendship never got in the way of a good business deal and if you don't come up with the goods it doesn't matter where you brought a client, it won't pay off.
Clearly the more successful corporate hospitality is seen to be in winning friends and influencing people, the more likely it is that it will squeeze out the personal customer altogether. Eventually we'll get to a stage where football matches are supported by rival groups of companies all trying to pinch each other's clients while the pitch action becomes more and more irrelevant. According to reports there were less than 20 brokers on the Hibernian trip to Switzerland so it looks like being a while before the slopes are overrun with competing insurance companies. But give it time.
