Meeting News - April 20, 2009 - (Page 10)

Inside the Meetings Industry Edited by William Ng william.ng@nielsen.com In San Antonio, Destination Management Companies Strategize Unorthodox Ways to Keep Business Going In light of the decline in meetings and events, destination management company owners and employees at March’s annual conference of the Association of Destination Management Executives in San Antonio reported less of a business drop-off than what had been expected. “The health of the DMC business is specific to each destination,” said Nicole Marsh, ADME president, and president and CEO of the Arrangers, a Denver DMC. “Las Vegas and the higher-price resort areas are hurting, but in other cities, business is actually up.” “We’ve found that our city has benefited from the desire of groups to go to certain destinations because of the perception issue,” said Rhonda Marko, president and CEO of Destination Nashville, and immediate past president of ADME. “Centrally located cities, especially second-tiers and thirdtiers, are not considered extravagant. So there is still meetings business out there, but it’s moving in a direction that’s causing there to be some ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’” The ADME conference was useful for the “have-nots” among the 150 DMC professionals who attended, in that they heard ideas to keep money pumping into their firms. Marsh noted many DMCs are jumping into new revenue streams, such as social events and weddings. But the change that might pay off in the long run is the move to snare as many of each meeting’s needs and duties as possible. With meetings staffs generally smaller than last year, DMCs “have an opportunity to do more things for each client: venue selection and contracting, finding local speakers to save on travel costs, staffing registration, running the entire F&B component, organizing the community-outreach events (for social responsibility and team-building), and even helping determine ROI for the meeting,” said Marsh. “The DMC is often one of the last phone calls planners make in a city; we’re trying to change that.” “The DMC business is specific to each destination. We have an opportunity to do more. —Nicole Marsh, president, Assn. of Destination Management Executives U.S. Travel Assn. Data Show Execs Still Believe in Meetings After 13 CEOs in the meetings, hospitality, and travel industries went to Washington, DC, for a summit with president Barack Obama, as well as with congressional members, the U.S. Travel Association has turned its attention to winning over skeptics among the consumer media, general public, and businesses. The industry lobbying group disseminated revealing figures that it said shows how cuts to business travel are not only harmful to overall economic recovery, but to the long-term health of individual firms. On www.meetingsmeanbusiness.com, U.S. Travel published a survey of 400 executives at companies with more than $50 million in annual sales, and found 72 percent of them said increasing travel while other companies are cutting back creates an opportunity to build market share and new customer relationships. What’s more, 59 percent “strongly agree” that in-person contact grows their business. Lastly, 53 percent believe that companies that reduce their business travel will yield an advantage to competitors that maintain their travel. According to Daniel Diermeier, a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, the survey showed that businesses face “a classic trade-off” between short-term cost10 MeetingNews April 20, 2009 reductions and long-term value. During times like these, Diermeier said many companies go too far, cutting activities that would best position them to compete in the future. The survey comes at an opportune time. According to Meeting Professionals International’s latest Business Barometer report, which comes out every two months, the median reduction in attendance at off-site meetings was 6 percent versus last year, while the median spending cut on off-site meetings was about 7 percent. The percentages are slightly smaller than the 2009 projections meeting planners made in late 2008 for the MPI/American Express FutureWatch report, and yet, according to the Barometer, are still thought be overreactions amid economic uncertainty. One possible cause of the less-severe cuts is a spike in the perceived affordability of travel over the past few months, according to the travelhorizons survey conducted in mid-February by Orlando-based Ypartnership and U.S. Travel. In fact, the U.S. Department of Commerce recently noted that airline, hotel, and other travel-related prices fell 16 percent in fourth-quarter 2008 alone. —Section by Robert Carey ” To hasten that change, several DMC owners at the conference said they are taking more active roles in the meetings marketing efforts of their local convention and visitors bureaus and hotels. “Right now, I have an employee participating in our CVB’s road shows,” Marko said, referring to the Nashville Convention & Visitors Bureau. “We wrote our 2009 business plan in October with a focus on showing clients the packages we can offer and on the transparency of our pricing structure. But we revamped that in January, now focusing on how we can get meetings to this city and who we need to partner with to do that.” H www.meetingnews.com http://www.meetingsmeanbusiness.com http://www.meetingnews.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Meeting News - April 20, 2009

Meeting News - April 20, 2009
Contents
What’s Up in the MeetingNews Community
Inside the Industry
People Making News
Thirty Under 30
Hotels & Resorts
Chef Talk
Convention Centers
International
Destinations: Caribbean
Destinations: Kansas City, MO
Green Beat
Destinations: New Jersey
Destinations: Myrtle Beach, SC
Live from the Forum

Meeting News - April 20, 2009