The worldwide gala calendar is the list of award shows, film festivals, fashion weeks, art fairs, summits, sporting weekends and galas around which RideRutz.com plans transport every year - 47 evenings and weeks in 33 cities, from the Golden Globes in January to the New Year's Eve galas in December. Each has an arrival convention, a street-closure plan, an accreditation scheme or a host list, and a week in which the city's vehicles sell out; the calendar exists so that clients can brief the coordinator before that happens.
Why a chauffeur company keeps a calendar
Because the same evenings recur, in the same cities, with the same problems, and a coordinator who has done the Met Gala steps, the Croisette closure, the Davos road or the Midtown frozen zone before is worth more than any amount of planning from scratch. The calendar is RideRutz.com's institutional memory of those evenings: which venue has which carpet, which hotel has which entrance, when the police close which street, which organiser wants arrival windows to the minute and which to the quarter hour, and - most usefully - which weeks in which cities book out first, so that vehicles can be positioned and clients warned. The gala and event transportation page explains how an evening is run; the film festival and award show transportation page how a week is run; this page shows the year.
How to use it
Find the event, note the month, and brief the coordinator as soon as attendance is confirmed - eight weeks out for a large gala or an award night, six to eight for a festival, as soon as the delegation is confirmed for a summit. Tell the coordinator who is attending and in what capacity: a principal on the carpet under the celebrity standard, a sponsor's executives under the VIP standard, an official under the diplomatic standard, a delegation under the conference method. The coordinator returns a plan and a written quote, and the travel desk books the flights and hotels before the city sells out. The gala transport planning guide sets out what the plan contains.
The weeks that collide
Some weeks are worse than others. Late August into September brings Venice, Toronto and New York fashion week within days of each other, and a principal attending two of them needs a file that spans both. Mid-May brings Cannes and Monaco in the same fortnight on the same coast, with the Croisette closed and the Nice Airport road full. January puts the Golden Globes, CES, Davos and Sundance in the same three weeks on two continents. September's General Assembly week freezes Midtown Manhattan for heads of state while the fashion shows run downtown. The calendar shows the collisions; the coordinator plans around them, and positions vehicles and chauffeurs from neighbouring cities where the festival city cannot supply them.
Events not on the list
The calendar shows the recurring evenings and weeks; it does not show the state visits, the company anniversaries, the product launches, the private galas, the foundation dinners and the summits that move from host to host, which are planned in the same way from the brief. Nor does it show the hundreds of regional galas, charity dinners and festival nights in every gateway city each year, for which a single car or a dozen are booked on the reservation engine or through the coordinator. If the event is not listed, send the brief; the method is the same.
Sources
Organisers publish their own dates and arrival conventions each year - the Cannes Film Festival, the Academy, the Metropolitan Museum, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations General Assembly and their peers - and the coordinator confirms every date and every rule with the organiser before a plan is issued. Galas, festivals and summits worldwide are also listed on EventsWorldwide.Directory, a group site, which the calendar draws on for events outside the recurring list.
Host city (varies)
