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Meetings Biz under Scrutiny Meeting Planners and Hoteliers have had enough. Here's our report straight from the Elite Meetings Alliance event. Monday, September 14, 2009 Glenn Haussman

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The meetings business has been under intense scrutiny during this past year. And it’s creating an unparalleled drop in business for hoteliers, while making meeting planners’ jobs more difficult. Rather than focus on meeting productivity, too many meeting planners are distracted by the perception that meetings they hold will have negative ramifications in the press. The end result is it’s hurting the bottom line of both hotels and the companies that have cut back on corporate-sanctioned events.

Most interesting, though, is how both sides are equally frustrated. It’s not just hoteliers grousing that the meetings business has slowed; planners, too, truly understand the value of keeping their corporate cohorts out and about doing business in a meetings setting.
 
Both frustrated meeting planners and hotel sales representatives sat down with Hotel Interactive this past weekend to discuss the current situation. They are attending the Elite Meetings Alliance, an event that puts hoteliers and meeting planners into a matchmaking scenario. Similar in format to the way Hotel Interactive’s BITAC (www.bitac.net) events are structured - which gives hotel buyers and industry suppliers a better way to close deals - this event gives both sides of the equation a more effective way to communicate in regard to scheduling meetings.

“We are still managing budget and perception issues. There is no way around it. We are trying to justify meetings more often, but at the same time TelePresence is becoming bigger,” said Jennifer Leto, Corporate Event Planner with Hess. She plans more than 30 meetings a year and is concerned that TelePresence technology, which allows face-to-face contact by participants in different cities, will further hinder her ability to create more productive and beneficial in-person meetings.

Meeting planner Bradley Ford agreed. Ford, who is Director, Marketing and Customer Programs with Pathway Medical, also added that anti-meetings business comments made by President Barack Obama earlier this year hurt the meetings business.

“Obama’s comments have really affected us. We have relied heavily on face-to-face for 12 years, and his anti-meeting rhetoric and looking at the healthcare industry specifically is very damaging. By 2011 we have to show we are providing educational opportunities to show our meetings are worth doctors leaving their practices to attend,” said Ford.

Jamie Bruce, SVP Sales & Revenue Management with Kerzner International Resorts, said companies are willing to take a big financial hit just to keep away from negative publicity. He has been seeing this phenomenon for months at the company’s Atlantis property in The Bahamas. “Companies are willing to pay the full price of a trip to avoid negative coverage. That is continuing to happen,” said Bruce.

Meanwhile, Kelly Foy, CEO of Elite Meetings International, the company behind the Elite Meetings Alliance, insisted that even with all the negativity, meetings are still happening.

“The perception is that meetings were bad but the reality is that meetings are still going on. However, both [planners and hoteliers] are getting smarter and more efficient. It is happening and people are here doing it,” Foy said of the people attending the Elite Meetings Alliance event.

Interestingly, meeting planners at the conference are very bullish on the meetings they are planning on a go-forward basis.

According to a real time poll of attendees at last night’s opening ceremonies, most feel they will be planning the same amount or more meetings than this year in 2010. Forty percent of respondents said they will be increasing the amount of meetings they hold next year while another 40 percent said they’d keep it the same. Just 20 percent said they would be booking fewer meetings for 2010 than in 2009.

When meetings professionals were asked for what time period they were booking events for while here at the Elite Meeting Events, the response was that they were booking meetings for the remainder of this year through 2013. Most interest was in 2010 and 2011, with 38 percent and 33 percent booking events in those years, respectively.

Hoteliers, too, seem more upbeat about the future. When asked, “At what point do you see a bounce in business for your property?”, most see 2010 as the comeback year, with 27 percent seeing things getting better in the first half of the year and 33 percent seeing the second half of 2010 bearing fruit. Twenty percent said 2011, while another 20 percent see no bounce at all on the horizon.

“There are more positive signs than negative and next year is going to be an interesting year,” said Kerzner’s Bruce. “Our outlook is obvious. We still have to operate quality world-class resorts, and with lower revenues everyone has to streamline their businesses without lowering the quality of experience. This year has been an emergency reaction, but it is making hotels smarter and leaner.”