If Meetings Really Mean Business, Now Is the Time to Prove It

Seems hard to believe that is has been nearly 18 months since the events industry began a slippery slide and a precarious decline.  As our global economy began what ultimately proved to be a near-crippling spiral, meetings and events quickly became prime victims of aggressive cost-cutting measures.  Across both the corporate and association events sectors, attendance plummeted as “non-essential” travel was slashed and banned, and face-to-face meetings were crushed and scrutinized as irresponsible expenditures in the wake of falling corporate earnings and rising unemployment.  Organizations quickly flocked to a wide array of “virtual meeting” technology solutions to enable person-to-person engagement without the need or expense of travel.  People quickly substituted webinar logins for name badges to enable their “meetings” participation.

Rick Binford

The impact of these actions was quickly felt upstream as airlines, hotels, and restaurants saw their revenues plummet and were forced to right-size their staff teams, further affecting the economy by adding to the unemployment rolls.

Under the advocacy of leadership of the U.S. Travel Association, the industry quickly mobilized to speak to the true economic impact of attacking the travel industry.  Still, clearly articulating the business impact of face-to-face meetings and events was handicapped.

Even now, while industry-awareness campaign efforts, such as the new “Face Time Matters” of the Convention Industry Council, USTA’s “Meetings Mean Business”, and others, are beginning to create a better understanding of the value of face-to-face meetings and events, the true impact of our industry in terms of driving business is still largely unheard across the global community of executive and elected leaders.

Shame on us!

Enlightened event stakeholders hold firm to the premise that history will repeat itself and that our business is beginning to show positive signed of a rebound.  However, I am certain that our business will never be the same.  An American Express Business Travel survey conducted in January of this year revealed over 70 percent of respondents reported they plan audio- or Web-based conferencing as an alternative option to face-to-face meetings.

Many of us believe wholeheartedly that nothing can truly replace the face-to-face interaction and learning experiences that are core to most meetings.  These interactions truly are critical to economic growth, world peace, cultural understanding and corporate social responsibility.  Yet how well are we as an industry standing up to the charge of C-level stakeholders in measuring the unique return on investment associated with the very meetings we so strongly believe in and are fighting so dearly to protect for the future?

While there has been a substantial effort in recent years to build reasonable methodologies and a body of knowledge around the concepts of ROI, how are we really taking this to the street?  Much lip service has been paid to ROI as a must-have capability, but how deep is our commitment to accurately measure the return on our event expenditures?

Now is the right time to make the types of investments- financial, intellectual and behavioral- to implement the discipline, responsibility and accountability to fully integrate return-on-investment measurement into event management.  Strategic meetings management approaches have elevated total event spend management effectiveness for many organizations.  Disciplined ROI accountability affords the opportunity for organizations to maximize the total return on their event investments.  If we want executive leaders to embrace our industry, we need to speak their language, and their language is all about quantifiable results.

Let’s step beyond the ROI dialogue and really track results.

This editorial first appeared in the May 10 issue of Meeting News magazine.