Features - January 2008

With the U.S. dollar currently so weak, companies may not be as inclined to take meetings overseas. Here, Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers (standing) extends a virtual handshake via TelePresence to Marthin DeBeer, Cisco S.V.P. and G.M., Emerging Markets Technology Group. Photo courtesy of Cisco Systems

By George Seli

As more companies extend their reach internationally, planners find themselves suddenly challenged to keep pace with a whole new set of meeting imperatives that require a new set of cultural rules to plan by.

For Mary Koeppel, CMP, senior event planner with Caterpillar Inc., Mooresville, NC, executing meetings  that support her company’s global business objectives is a routine responsibility.

“We quite frequently have programs where we bring people into this country, we do programs in their countries, and we take people out of the U.S. to other countries,” she related. The events include training seminars, board meetings, trade shows and incentives, all geared toward supporting Caterpillar as a manufacturer of construction equipment with plants and dealers in 23 countries around the world.

A New Frontier
But while globalization is no mere trend at international companies such as Caterpillar, it’s still a phenomenon that the meetings industry is coming to grips with. Even those who are accustomed to staging

While there may never be a substitute for live face-to-face meetings, Cisco Systems’ TelePresence Meeting Solution technology comes close. Photo courtesy of Cisco Systems

events internationally often face challenges on that frontier.

“We’re new into China, and so we’re doing many more programs in that country, such as familiarization meetings to expose some of our U.S.-based employees to the Chinese culture and way of doing business,” said Koeppel, who doesn’t always have the advantage of working with U.S. hotel chains in China.

So the comfort level is seldom ideal for planners trying to keep pace with the global directions their company is taking. And “going global” for other planners simply means taking the annual incentive trip overseas for the first time.

“In general, the idea of globalization is just emerging in the meeting and incentive industry. I can’t say it’s a mature situation,” said Scot Graf, president of Chicago, IL-based BCD Meetings and Incentives. “If you have ideas on how meetings or incentives can support your global business initiatives, you’re probably a Fortune 500-type company and therefore you’re global.”

Such companies have production plants, branch offices and/or sales outlets in many countries, and events departments must stage training, networking and strategy meetings that convene employees from those widespread locations.

“You might have a Singapore-based company that wants to bring together into Singapore new retail bank tellers from China, Malaysia and Australia for a series of training sessions,” Graf said by way of example.

Common Hurdles
What hurdles are unique to planning these kinds of meetings? Most obviously, site and vendor selection for a foreign destination must be conducted, which often requires a reliable network of in-house colleagues and/or third-party planners to provide assistance and consultation.

Consider a U.S.-based planner at an international company who is charged with staging an event in Berlin: He or she may well work with colleague planners or administrative assistants at the firm’s German office. These professionals will naturally have a greater familiarity with the local options in hotels, offsite venues and activities, transportation providers and so on.

On occasion, Caterpillar’s meetings in China are planned through its Asia/Pacific division, but when Koeppel is responsible for coordinating a meeting in China, she certainly doesn’t go it alone. “We have offices in China with administrative assistants who work with local hotels,” she said. “I work both with my counterparts in that country as well as some U.S.-based DMCs.”

Third-Party Expertise
A U.S.-based third-party planning company with international offices can be an invaluable resource, especially for corporations with only domestic in-house planners. BCD, for instance, has 12 European offices with their own meeting planners, in addition to U.S.-based planners who work with U.S. clients.

“We take the approach of having planners in the local offices,” said Graf. “So in our Brussels office you’re going to see 55 people, 30 of whom are full-fledged meeting planners handling business not only in Belgium but all over Europe. We might leverage the expertise of someone in our sister office across the world.”

The difference is clear: U.S.-based planners may have a background in planning events in Portugal, but a planner who works in Portugal has the day-to-day cultural familiarity. One U.S.-based petroleum-industry company, for example, convened attendees from 12 European countries in a Benelux country — an economic union in Western Europe that includes Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg — for a series of training meetings followed by a gala event.

“Out of our Benelux office from a service perspective we’re speaking five languages and handling those 12 groups of attendees seamlessly in terms of attendee registration, housing and providing translation services,” Graf related. Importantly, an international third-party planning company can offer more or less uniform services across many countries and cities. The Fortune 500 companies, said Graf, “want the ability

Companies that don’t have meeting planners in their overseas offices rely on third-party destination management companies such as TBA Global, which organized this international sales meeting in Malta for a Fortune 500 energy company. Photo courtesy of TBA Global

to sign a contract where they can get hotel venue sourcing, full operational planning, logistical services, registration and so on in any part of the world. Such a global contract has terms and conditions that are very consistent and protect the company. Prices will vary based on the labor market, but in theory the menu looks the same.”

Among the third parties that can service the global meeting needs of a Fortune 500 company is TBA Global. Mark Shearon, executive vice president, has observed that oftentimes such companies do not have bona fide meeting planners in their overseas offices, “so they would rely on us to provide the services, which include contract negotiation, venue selection and transportation,” he said.

One example of this scenario is The Timberland Company’s meeting department, headed by Michelle Johnson, senior manager, corporate events. Within a few years since the Statham, NH-based company launched in the U.S. in 1973, it opened offices in the United Kingdom, Italy and France, and now has branches in 47 countries. Five to seven trade shows per year are held overseas, and while Johnson’s department handles all domestic events, the European offices lack meeting divisions.

“It’s basically an admin trying to fill those shoes,” said Johnson. However, “Timberland recently landed on an organizational structure that will have me running all of the corporate events in the next 12 months,” she noted, admitting that the new responsibility will entail a learning curve for the international destinations.

For example, her first global meeting was held in Scotland, a country she “knew nothing about” and, with 30 days’ lead time, a site visit was out of the question. Although the meeting turned out surprisingly well, she found that the audio-visual services located through Timberland’s European offices were rather pricey. In retrospect, “it would have been more economical for me to fly in some of the equipment I needed from the U.S.,” she said.

Fortunately, Johnson has a support network for planning global meetings, beginning with Boston-based Party By Design, which is “very comfortable doing international events,” she said. “The woman I work with is the former president of MPI New England. They have a tremendous amount of networking capabilities.” In addition, Johnson expects to utilize her own MPI contacts to get tips on suppliers in other countries. The goal is not to manage the meetings onsite for the global offices, but rather to source the right suppliers for their events and leverage volume internationally through Timberland’s preferred hoteliers. “We would be able to strike a deal with Hilton or Starwood and say, ‘You’re going to get our business but you’re going to get it in four different countries in these time frames,’?” Johnson explained.

Comfort Vs. Cultural Immersion
When planners select a U.S.-based hotel chain for international meetings, they often do it for that very reason: leveraging the meeting volume they have built up domestically with that chain. The added benefit is that U.S. attendees will naturally be more comfortable in a foreign destination when they can return to a familiar kind of facility as a home base.

“It’s just a little bit of comfort if you say the words ‘Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott,’ said Graf. “People know what they’re getting vs. the Mena House Oberoi in Egypt, for example. They say, ‘I’m from Chicago I’m not sure what that is.’ So we do tend to recommend the larger global chains, and frankly they’re quite good at understanding the different cultures coming in and can help with (providing) translators and currency exchange.”

Yet there is an exception to this well-known approach. If a planner truly wants to immerse attendees in the culture of the locale, no hotel will express that culture better than an indigenous one. “What do you want this audience to come away with? Is it important that they really feel the local culture and they feel like they are in Beijing?” asked Shearon. “One of the problems with going to a big hotel group is you feel like you could be anywhere.”

Translators And “Cheat Sheets”
While certain indigenous experiences can be valuable, the feeling of exclusion due to a language barrier is not one of them. English may be the language of the business world, but some attendees at a global meeting may lack a solid grasp of it and require translators, whether professionals or bilingual company employees. The former can be rather expensive and often follow strict rules, such as a 30-minute limit on contiguous speaking.

Johnson once hired two translators over a week for six Italian sales agents. The total expense, including lodging and transportation, came to approximately $16,000, she said. Nevertheless, the service could not be bypassed. “The whole point of having an international attendee come to a sales meeting is to understand the product and the tools to sell it, and to not be able to understand that defeats the purpose of having them there,” Johnson said. “So it’s absolutely worth having the translators.”

But depending on foreign attendees’ level of proficiency with the language of the destination or the presenters at the meeting, it may be sufficient to utilize bilingual company employees who are willing to translate. “When we brought the French team to a meeting in Montreal, obviously they spoke the language of the country very well, unlike our attendees from the U.S. But we brought an administrative assistant from their office who is bilingual,” Johnson related. The expense came out to a third of what it would have cost to bring in a professional, and the employee had better product knowledge to boot.

Of course, language barriers exist in print, too. Meeting-room signage should be in as many languages as appropriate, and messages in guests’ rooms should be in their language of choice. In some cases, attendees do well to carry printed information in the local language that they can use to communicate. For example, U.S. attendees may not have the luxury of a translator when they are in a cab in China trying to get to their hotel, and thus should have the hotel name written down for them in Chinese so they can pass the information to the driver. Simple measures such as these can certainly avoid headaches for international guests.

Different Business Customs
Cultural differences in areas such as formalities and work schedules pose another set of challenges. Companies are increasingly doing business in the Asia/Pacific region, where there tends to be more formality in business proceedings. For instance, planners should be sensitive to the fact that attendees from that region often expect hierarchy to be reflected in seating arrangements. “Assigned seating may be needed for certain people because in some cultures the line employee or everyday worker is very uncomfortable if by coincidence they sit next to a superior,” Graf noted. “Particularly in China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, hierarchy is still very important, whereas in the U.S. culture it’s certainly respected but it’s not as though someone would be uncomfortable.”

Similarly, Germans tend to observe seniority when entering a meeting room, with higher-ranking individuals entering first, and commonly use titles before names when greeting as a sign of respect. They also tend to take punctuality quite seriously. Spanish attendees may be accustomed to a divided workday, with a two- or three-hour lunch followed by a work session lasting into the evening. So when there is a significant contingent from Spain, it may be a good idea to accommodate that custom in the meeting schedule.

A Taste Of Cuisine
Providing a crowd-pleasing cuisine can also be tricky for a culturally diverse group. For example, while some Italian attendees may want Italian food in order to “feel at home,” others may be more inclined to explore the regional food. “When I go to China, I eat Chinese food, and when Chinese employees come to our country, they dine on our cuisine,” Koeppel said. Networking and bonding are key objectives when employees from various international offices convene, and sampling new cuisines is a great conversation-starter. With that in mind, “we do a dinner at the hotel with food stations, so four corners of the room have four different cuisines,” Koeppel added. Ultimately, the safest approach is to provide a diversity of culinary choices and not make assumptions about tastes. 

As corporations continue to globalize, they outgrow the handful of major international cities they used as meeting sites in the past. The “BRICs” (destinations in Brazil, Russia, India and China), for example, represent an increasingly important market for many U.S. corporations. Fortunately, commercial real estate development in many areas of the world is turning more cities into viable options for business meetings or incentives.

“Ten years ago when companies considered Asia-Pacific for a unique incentive, they meant Singapore and Hong Kong. Now, Shanghai, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur are just as comfortable,” Graf said.

As the world continues to shrink and planners become more proficient at handling the logistical challenges of staging events in far-off lands, taking  that once-fearful leap across the pond will become de rigueur, a fait accompli.    C&IT

Taking A Virtual Leap Across The Pond In the mid-’90s, many senior managers and meeting planners were still unclear about the nature of videoconferencing. But usage tends to increase with understanding, and these days Fortune 500 and 1000 companies typically supplement their face-to-face events with some degree of virtual face-to-face, in order to save travel and lodging expenses as well as time. Videoconferencing can be particularly convenient when attendees are based in internationally widespread offices. Perhaps domestic employees will convene in the U.S. and European or South American representatives will participate virtually. Pamela Kozikowski, president of Williston, VT-based ConferenceGlobal and a specialist in videoconference and satellite events, noted that this kind of scenario is fairly common among her corporate clients, although the amount of international participation varies annually. “We can have a year where it seems like almost every videoconference has international attendees, and we can have another year where it’s just 10 or 20 percent of the meetings or almost 50 percent,” she said. Making The Right Connections One important choice to be made for international videoconferencing is the connection method, which can be either ISDN lines or IP (Internet Protocol). ISDN is the older and arguably more reliable method, but since the medium is high-speed telephone lines, long-distance fees will apply. However, “telecom is getting much more affordable,” Kozikowski observed. “In some cases the rates can be as low now to make an ISDN The Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC, is the site of a round United Nations-like IACC-certified conference room. ConferenceGlobal holds a videoconference for one of its clients in this international setting every January. Photo courtesy of ConferenceGlobal call overseas as it was to just do it in the U.S. 10 years ago.” IP, on the other hand, involves no connection charge, assuming the call is “point-to-point,” i.e., between two locations. A multipoint call requires a “bridge” service, which does incur a fee. Multipoint videoconferences can utilize a split-screen to view the other parties or even a “Hollywood Squares”-type view. “There is a lot of flexibility, and videoconferencing is totally interactive by its nature, audio and visual,” said Kozikowski. “Usually the height of the monitor would be like a person sitting across the table, so you can practically have eye contact and see their body language.” She does give one piece of advice for planners involved in staging such an event: Provide at least a few weeks of advance notice to the facility where the videoconference will be held, especially if it’s a hotel. “We can bring the equipment in, but we need to have some sort of network in place, and hotels without notice don’t always have that,” Kozikowski said. Many hotels do maintain ISDN lines, while others have the network capacity for IP videoconferencing. “We have thousands of venues around the world that are set up for videoconferencing, probably the majority of them boardroom size,” she said. “But you certainly can’t walk into a hotel and assume they will be ready to videoconference."    C&IT