Articles

Adapting to the New Challenges in the Meetings Industry.

There is no doubt considerable consensus that corporate business meetings and events have been hardest hit by these recent recessionary times. As corporate profits have fallen in most countries over the past year, companies have reacted with an array of cost-cutting measures related to their employees' business travel and their participation in meetings whether these were held domestically or internationally. In every major economy, 2009 was the year when executives sought to control costs by indiscriminately cutting meeting and business travel budgets, often with little or no consideration of the purposes for which face-to-face contact is still absolutely essential. Decision-makers across the industrialized world showed only limited understanding of the value of meetings. With rising unemployment, negative consumer trends, debts and bankruptcies many industries and governments treated meetings as an extra cost at best, an extravagance at worst.

As a direct consequence destinations around the world in 2009/10 were reporting sharp drops in spending on meetings and business events, leading to layoffs in communities that were already suffering in weak economies.

For many decision makers, the rapid evolution of virtual meeting technologies created the impression of a simple solution: Organizations could slash their meeting and travel budgets, avoid the perception of wasteful spending and take credit for cutting the carbon emissions associated with air travel and ground transportation. Furthermore, the European Union introduced new virtual meeting guidelines to reduce air travel, with several international consulting agencies predicting that virtual technologies would potentially eliminate 2.1 million airline bookings per year by late 2010.

As the meetings industry faced unprecedented challenges worldwide, authoritative bodies such as Meeting Professionals International, EIBTM, Reed Travel Exhibitions, AIBTM, The Conference Publishers and Harvard Economic Review responded to the challenge by conducting qualitative and quantitative research. Two separate white papers aptly titled Meetings Deliver and Meetings Market: Outlook 2009/10 primarily set out to demonstrate the benefits that face-to-face meetings deliver to the organizations that hold them. Both research findings gave overwhelming results showing that face-to-face meetings deliver results that far outweigh the time, money and resources they consume. Results further indicated that;

Meetings drive sales and profitability for business.
They enable organizations of all kinds to deliver on key strategic objectives, serving as a catalyst for education and professional development, motivation, behaviour change and concrete actions.
Benefits for local communities that rely on the meetings economy as conferences create jobs and tax revenues wherever participants gather.

This shift in the basic understanding of meetings and business events is permanent and not only comes as a moment too soon but is welcomed by the major stakeholders in the Meetings Industry. As organizations have been slower to recognize that teleconferences and webcasts don't fill the void that face-to-face meetings create, the opportunity to mix, match and combine formats according to the topic, audience, timing and purpose of each meeting is just beginning to emerge. However despite the overwhelming evidence that face-to-face meetings deliver, the meetings industry scenario is still being transformed by tight budgets, reductions in business travel and closer scrutiny over any element of a conference that might be seen as whimsical. More than ever before meeting professionals have to show their skills on flexibility and adaptation in the shortest timeframes possible. The ability to adapt on the fly is fast becoming the new challenge that meeting professionals and suppliers have to hone their skills on as part of the drive to succeed. In fact, ever attentive to a shifting business environment, meeting professionals have adopted a back-to-basics approach to their onsite programs. Significantly, extras are out, metrics are in and meeting professionals are forever on the sharp lookout for smart, affordable elements that will add value to their meetings.

Both research reports state that "Meeting and event professionals are working long and hard to sustain existing business models while discovering new methods, markets and best practices in response to an unprecedented range of pressures - financial, political and social". Adapting to the new reality of meetings is key to thriving and not just surviving in a tough economic scenario. The reports stipulated that over the next year, the most popular measures of a successful meeting will be:

Meeting cost relative to budget
Participant satisfaction
Achievement of meeting or event objectives
Acquisition of new customers or members
Increased revenue from existing customers or members
Internal performance improvements
Direct revenue generation.

Incentives on the other hand, were being seen to cut down on extravagant getaways. Alternatively, team-building and information sharing programs were increasing in demand and replacing the long distance getaways. This trend is expected to last until the economic recovery gains more momentum. Moreover, incentive researchers and publications are stressing the need for built-in metrics, to help companies track their return on investment and make the case for continuing successful programs.

Meanwhile, some meeting professionals and suppliers are taking tentative steps in the direction of hybrid formats that combine the best of face-to-face meetings, virtual options and the latest social media tools such as Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter. Planners, service providers and clients - are beginning to explore the possibilities and practicalities of combining live audiences with virtual communities of interest, whilst extending the dialogue around a face-to-face meeting for weeks or months after the business meeting, conference or seminar has taken place. These initial glimmerings of innovation are setting the stage for a new scenario where further discussions and development can take place. The challenge being faced by the international business meetings community is to either adapt and prosper or gradually lose relevance and market share.

Sources: Meetings Deliver - MPI; Meetings Martket Outlook 2009/10