The Jacksonville skyline and the St. Johns River. Credit: Ryan Ketterman/Visit Jacksonville

Paul Astleford, president and CEO of Visit Jacksonville, is on a mission to convince more and more meeting planners that his destination — located on both the St. Johns River and the Atlantic Ocean in Northeastern Florida — offers a unique and important set of benefits in today’s market.

“Jacksonville offers a unique and vibrant side of Florida where a group can have that ‘big fish in an intriguing pond’ experience without breaking the bank,” Astleford says. “Our ‘river city by the sea’ is the ideal value destination for memorable waterfront meetings. Both the return on investment for planners, and the return on experience for attendees, makes the overall return on investment more than worth it while meeting in Jacksonville. Also, our city has the right meetings infrastructure, business community, service groups, natural beauty, food scene and attractions to be a competitive and dynamic location for meetings of all sizes.”

“Our city has the right meetings infrastructure, business community, service groups, natural beauty, food scene and attractions to be a competitive and dynamic location for meetings of all sizes.” — Paul Astleford

Astleford and his team currently work with more than 400 groups annually, many of them enthusiastic repeat customers.

“Our dedicated convention sales and services staff strives to create a more personalized relationship with new and repeat customers,” he says. “From attending industry shows across the nation, hosting FAM tours for planners, working closely with the local convention and select service properties in the city, we make sure we are all reaching out to the right groups and planners, and customizing our delivery to meet their expectations in the most professional way.”

The most important “news” that Astleford wants to get out, he says, is that Jacksonville is “the premier North Florida ‘comfort zone’ experience for meeting professionals. Our primary convention hotels have undergone recent renovations to stay on top of the latest technology and esthetic trends.”

Full of Pleasant Surprises

Meeting planners who experience Jacksonville for the first time are often quite surprised by its appeal, says Anne Urban, owner and president of local destination management company Destination Planning Corporation, who has been booking meetings in Jacksonville for 20 years. “Most of the feedback I get is that meeting planners are usually surprised by everything that Jacksonville has to offer, all in one place,” she explains. “We have the gorgeous St. Johns River, but we also have the ocean. And not many cities have both. And our river is unique, in that there are only five in the world that run from south to north. And it flows directly into the ocean. So our waterways provide a great list of activities, from kayaking to sailing to deep-sea fishing and bird-watching.

“Planners are usually very surprised by how wonderful our airport is. It’s very easy to get into and out of, and we have a good amount of flights coming in and going out. So planners are often surprised by how easy the arrival and departure process is here.”

And that process has been made even easier with the increased airlift that has come from the addition of new direct flights and more connection options to get to Jacksonville International Airport.

And a related surprise for planners, Urban says, is the classic Southern hospitality that visitors receive. “They are also surprised by how welcoming we are, from the time you get off the plane,” she says.

Pat Weyand, executive assistant at CSX Transportation, which is headquartered in Jacksonville, uses her hometown for an average of two meetings a month that draw attendees from regional offices across the country. Those meeting include team meetings, board meetings, executive conferences and customer meetings. The company’s national sales meetings are for 700-800 attendees.

“Our people think Jackson­ville is a super place to have a meeting,” Weyand says. “One reason is because of the weather. We have a lot of customers from up north and they love coming here in the winter. But people also tell us how friendly Jacksonville is and how easy it is to get into and out of through the airport. They also enjoy our local dining scene.”

As a planner, Weyand particularly likes the city’s value proposition. “The cost of the same meeting in other destinations is quite a bit higher than it is here in Jacksonville,” she says. “With the value we get here and the quality of what you get, Jacksonville is just a great destination.”

For Vickey Woodley, senior manager, meeting services, at the Jacksonville-based, 1,000-employee ear, nose and throat division of medical device company Medtronic, familiarity with the destination she uses for about a dozen meetings a year is a big factor.

“We know the city,” Woodley says. “We know which venues to use. We have access to the resources of Visit Jacksonville, our CVB, whether that’s help with finding the right transportation or a teambuilding activity. And every time I have worked with them, they have been quick and helpful in getting me what I need. They are a great resource.”

Hotel Inventory

Jacksonville is home to more than 200 hotels and resorts with a total of close to 18,000 rooms. Its hotel inventory offers a wide range of options, from downtown major-flag properties to modern suburban hotels, elegant riverfront accommodations and oceanfront boutique resorts.

The downtown properties, such as the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront (963 guest rooms; 110,000 sf of meeting space) and Omni Jacksonville Hotel (354, 14,000), are ideal for groups that need a lot of meeting space, Urban says. Both are located along Jacksonville’s Riverwalk on the St. Johns River.

“The downtown area is also now the hub of all the things that are related to meetings, including dining and entertainment,” she says. “And there’s a whole cluster of hotels down there now, including properties like the Hampton Inn for planners that are looking for that type of hotel product. And all of the downtown hotels have great access to the river and great views. There are also walkways along the river and there are lots of things to do.”

The hotels that Weyand favors most often include the Hyatt Regency downtown, One Ocean Resort & Spa in Atlantic Beach, and two properties south of the city in Ponte Vedra Beach that both boast acclaimed golf courses — Sawgrass Marriott Golf Resort & Spa, home of TPC Sawgrass and the Players Championship, and Ponte Vedra Inn & Club with its seaside links.

Woodley also finds a good mix of local hotels for her meetings. “The hotel inventory works well for us, because a lot of the meetings we do are smaller meetings,” she says. “For example, we do a lot of training meetings that usually have about 15 attendees.” For those meetings, she particularly likes the Homewood Suites property. “For our training meetings, we like it because attendees are here for a week or two and the property allows them to easily get out to the Town Center complex and have things to do in their free time. They don’t need any transportation.”

Offsite Venues

Jacksonville also can claim a long and diverse list of unique offsite venues. Among those most frequently touted by Visit Jacksonville are the Epping Forest estate, Foxy Lady Cruises, the Atrium at the Jacksonville Main Library, Tap Room at Aardwolf Brewing Company, the rooftop at the Museum of Science and History, the Skyline Dining and Conference Center on the 42nd floor of the Bank of America building, the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum, The University Club of Jacksonville, The River Club, The Jacksonville Equestrian Center, The Ritz Theatre and Museum and the grounds at the Beaches Museum & History Park.

Another unique venue is the Malone Aircharter Hangar at Craig Field. Urban is hosting an evening there soon for an 800-attendee meeting. “It’s a really unique venue,” she says. “And the group I’m using it for wanted something different. They didn’t want to use a typical hotel ballroom. They wanted something interesting and fun.”

Urban also favors the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts, which has three theaters with capacities ranging from 600 to nearly 3,000 attendees.

Among her absolute favorites is the Florida Theater, where Elvis held his first public concert in 1956. “It’s a beautiful, historic venue that is perfect for general sessions,” Urban says. “The architecture is just breathtaking. And it’s only a block from the Hyatt hotel.” Group capacity is 1,900.

Another great venue recommended by Urban is Jacksonville Memorial Arena.

“And all of the venues are within easy walking distance of the downtown hotels,” she says.

Particularly for smaller groups looking for a spectacular environment, Urban suggests the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens. It houses an extensive art collection and also offers spectacular riverfront gardens with the best views in the city.

The Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens is considered one of the top 10 animal attractions in the U.S. It has just debuted a new exhibit called “Land of the Tiger,” a state-of-the-art animal exhibit where tigers roam (safely) and interact with visitors.

EverBank Field, the home of the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars, is now also home to the largest scoreboards in the world and a VIP area that includes new cabanas, special dining options and even two swimming pools — a great place for a special retreat or group event, Urban says.

Dining and Entertainment

Jacksonville also offers a dynamic dining scene.

“We have fantastic restaurants,” Urban says. “And what is different is that within a five-mile radius of the major hotels, instead of just finding a bunch of chain restaurants, we have very, very interesting local restaurants that have great food.”

Urban says the three areas that most lend themselves to dine-arounds are downtown, Riverside and the historic San Marco District. Among Urban’s favorite dining spots are Indochine and Taverna in San Marco, and Medure in Ponte Vedra Beach. Weyand’s favorite restaurants include Medure, The Wine Cellar downtown and Bistro Aix in San Marco.

Woodley favors Maggiano’s a legendary Italian eatery in Town Center. “They have excellent space,” she says. “They also have excellent food and pricing.”

Jacksonville Landing on the riverfront is a popular venue for dining, shopping and entertainment. “And in the last year or two, we’ve also had an influx of new restaurants, cafés and bars, so there are now a lot of good options for planners in the downtown area, which also makes it very convenient,” Urban says.

Jacksonville also features an award-winning local brewery scene. It has more than doubled in the last few years and now claims some of the state’s most popular craft beers. Popular spots include Intuition Ale Works, Bold City Brewery and Aardwolf Brewing Company. Each offers daily tours, and at Engine 15 in Jacksonville Beach, groups can arrange a special session for brewing their own craft beer.

Activities

For obvious reasons, the most popular activities in Jacksonville are water-related. Top among them is fishing. “That’s by far our No. 1 activity,” Urban says. “Everyone loves to go fishing in Jacksonville.”

And that includes both deep-sea fishing in the Atlantic and freshwater fishing on the St. Johns. The most common fishing charters can accommodate from 12 in two six-passenger boats up to 45 on fishing party boats. Foxy Lady Cruises offers private yacht charters for up to 149 for corporate events.

Kayaking is also very popular. “That’s No. 2 in popularity,” Urban says. “And what’s so amazing about it is the wildlife you see, and especially the bird-watching. We offer one of the best opportunities for bird-watching you can find anywhere, because this is where a lot of the birds from up north, including Canada, migrate to in the winter. So you see more varieties of birds here than just about anywhere else in the country.”

Airboating on the Intracoastal waterway is another highly popular activity. “It’s like being in a swamp without really being in a swamp,” Urban says. “But you can see alligators and lots of other wildlife. It’s a great experience that’s another example of the great things there are to do in Jacksonville.”

Astleford says many of the city’s most popular attractions offer teambuilding options. Examples include kayaking with Kayak Amelia on nearby Amelia Island; car racing with Autobahn Indoor Speedway; Jacksonville History Scavenger Hunt with Gary Sass of AdLib Tours; painting class with Yes You Canvas; a PGA Tour Experience golf day at the World Golf Village south of Jacksonville; an “Amazing Race” style activity at Adventure Landing: Jacksonville Beach Shipwreck Island Waterpark; and multiple dining and entertainment experiences  at Latitude 360.

“There are a lot of great options for teambuilding,” Urban says. “And one trend we’ve seen over the last several years is that companies want to do a teambuilding activity that contributes to the community. For example, we had one group recently that wanted to do something for the military, because Jacksonville is such a large military community. So we bused a couple of hundred people to a location where they created care kits to be sent to troops in Iraq.”

Given all its attractions and amenities, it’s not at all surprising that Jacksonville is finding its way onto the radar of more meeting planners. The essential message that Visit Jacksonville wants to communicate, says Astleford, is, “We want you in Jacksonville, and we’ll do everything possible to make you desire to return. Our city has the perfect meeting venues and accommodations for your group, and you need to come here to see it. Jacksonville’s business community is eager to welcome you and have you experience our vibrant city and all that it has to offer, from our rich cultural scene, to our natural wonders including 22 miles of beaches, the largest urban park system in the nation, and the beautiful St. Johns River. We want you to come and explore a new side of Florida.”  C&IT

We all know that meetings can achieve potent outcomes by bringing people face-to-face, whether the focus is learning, networking or strategizing. But figuring out how to outdo yourself year after year and meeting after meeting is a topic that keeps planners’ eyes open at every event they attend and bookshelves full of the latest tomes on interactive education techniques.

“Anything that I read about that allows people to be more engaged in the discussion and part of it while getting instant feedback is so important,” says Laurie Kemp, CMP, CMM, director of client events and marketing services at Dallas, Texas-based Essilor of America, a leading manufacturer and wholesale distributor of optical lenses in the United States. “The entire team is always looking to make our events more efficient and more productive.”

In response, a new meeting design trend is slowly making waves due to highly visible — and easily measurable — results, though it takes some time to implement. Based on the larger design thinking trend that crosses numerous industries, experiential meeting design offers planners a method of looking at their meetings and mapping their guest experiences to reliably provide laser-focused results.

Experiential Meeting Design Foundations

When experiential meeting design was first being codified, the time was ripe for planners to have a tool to consistently promote attendee engagement in meetings. According to the 2012 “American Express Spending & Saving Tracker” study, 48 percent of travelers seek more meaningful experiences when they travel.

Prevailing meeting goals once looked more at what the meeting or incentive could accomplish generally or for the company. But today ROI is determined on many more levels. Driving greater value to meet attendees’ individual needs is paramount in justifying the expense and inclusion of each individual.

“Many years ago, at another company, I wanted to measure how a customer event affected call rate,” says Austin, Texas-based Tracey B. Smith, CMP, CMM, curator of education at the Hive Network. “Were people learning enough that they didn’t need to call us for support? But people thought that was too complicated then.”

To help meeting planners better meet increased expectations with limited resources while focusing on providing an outstanding experience for attendees, Maritz Travel developed its experiential meeting design program. “If everyone is delivering high quality, what else is there?” says Greg Bogue, vice president of experience design at Fenton, Missouri-based Maritz Travel  Company, who co-presented “Explore Best Principles for Experiential Meeting Design” at PCMA’s Convening Leaders this year. “There aren’t more destinations to take people to.

“Experiential meeting design evolved from a number of things happening in the meeting and travel space,” he continues. “We looked at what we could do from an engagement perspective in areas like neuroscience to create tactics to drive greater engagement. We’re beginning to employ the concept of design thinking where we change a strong view of the guest experience and get clients to think in terms of what their guests would want. What we’ve done is we’ve really begun to put together a very clear methodology we put our clients through.

“My specific history is in corporate marketing, and I’ve been in the creative business for years, blending a number of disciplines and an intense focus on people,” Bogue explains. “I have a passion for engaging peoples’ emotions, but from a business perspective, we usually focus on taking peoples’ emotions out of businesses, but that’s not how you elevate the experiences guests have.”

Experiential meeting design evolved from design thinking, also known as human-centered design, because it is a type of design that puts people, and individual needs specifically, first. In neuroscience, it is called perspective-centered design, because the diverse viewpoints of each individual inform how they experience the world. As a result, experiential meeting design both engages guests in inherently personal ways and evolves over time.

The practice revolves heavily around management and meeting staff exploring the perspectives of other participants in their meetings and events. “Perspective-taking is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, but that means you have to take your own shoes off first,” says Bogue.

“Sometimes I think we overthink things, or we do it over and over the same way without breaking it down to basics, without saying what do we want to communicate and how do we make sure attendees are engaged and part of the overall outcome,” says Kemp. “I was with the same company for 13 years, and I came here a year ago, and we have new leadership over our sales team and we’re saying, ‘Okay, let’s brainstorm: how do we do this?’

“To put yourself in the shoes of the guest, you have to remove the lens that you look through and look at it through their eyes.” — Greg Bogue

“To put yourself in the shoes of the guest, you have to remove the lens that you look through and look at it through their eyes,” Bogue says. “When I ask people, ‘When was the last time you registered for your event like a guest who had to register?’ they have no clue what that experience is like. You have to walk their journey to understand their journey.” This “taking off your own shoes” is the first — and often most eye-opening — step in the experiential meeting design process.

The Design Process

One of the key ways experiential meeting design differs from other approaches is that it starts long before the meeting and also continues after it ends. Most events follow a natural course from initial conversations to post-event paperwork and survey reviews, but experiential meeting design incorporates several additional steps into their guest and host journey.

Starbucks, a fan favorite the world over, has mapped its guest experience into five stages: anticipate, enter, engage, exit and reflect. Experiential meeting design takes things further with an eight-stage guest roadmap that includes every interaction stage attendees have with meetings and events: announcing, attracting, anticipating, arriving, entering, engaging, exiting and extending.

As part of the experiential meeting design process, planners and other stakeholders decide how they want the guest to experience each stage. For instance, rather than planning how to disperse the initial announcement about a meeting or event, experiential meeting design encourages planners to begin by thinking of how they want their future attendees to experience the announcement.

However, the road to creating this attendee roadmap begins much earlier and more simply, with an exercise Bogue calls “one word.” “In a lab-type environment in the sessions we do, we try to get a broad group of stakeholders, including the business owner, event planning team, a marketing person or two and someone involved in content, and we challenge them to define their program in a single word,” he explains.

“To get a group to distill their program down to a single word is kind of fun, and once they get there, we guide them to the idea that this is their design standard,” Bogue continues. “If they are doing things that don’t line up with that, we say, ‘Stop it! Don’t do that!’ Our event blueprint methodology allows you to dive in and understand an organization’s purpose, values and brand, because every event experience is an expression of your brand and purpose.”

As a result, the process can be time-consuming to implement the first time around. “You can get through it in minutes if you’ve done it before, but it took us a while to first get through,” says Smith. “Then we said, ‘Oh, I see how to do this.’ It’s about formalizing how you think about it in the first place.”

Dana Weaver, CIS, senior manager of marketing services at Bloomington, Illinois-based Growmark Inc., a regional cooperative providing agronomy, energy, facility planning and logistics products and services, as well as grain marketing and risk management services in more than 40 states and Ontario, Canada, has applied some stages of experiential design to his meetings, but has yet to do the process for an entire meeting. “I sit on the client advisory board with Maritz, and Greg (Bogue) made a presentation to the board and it intrigued me,” he explains. “It was a perfect fit, and it seemed like we were missing an enormous opportunity to make meetings more meaningful, memorable and fruitful.

“Within the last year, we’ve started talking about the eight phases,” Weaver says. “We incorporated a phase or two in a meeting last year, and it resonated with me that we haven’t moved much since we began, so we’re going to really put some flesh on the bones this year. It’s time we quit saying what we want to do and actually do it.”

For his January program, a high-end sales and marketing meeting that has run every year since 1992, Weaver is focusing on improving the arrival section of his guest roadmap. “They just had a long day of travel, and we were just trying to get them off to the rooms before, but now we’re trying to make it so that as soon as they arrive, it’s not that we’re wearing them out any more, but we really want to energize them and make them see it’s going to be a great event.

“In Hawaii for 2015, we want to move beyond the lei experience as they get off the bus or the pineapple drink when they get to the hotel, and come up with the magic ingredient. When they arrive, how can we make it something they’ve never experienced before? Something unusual but pleasant. And how can we make it something they’re going to be talking about for months?

“During January, when they’re attending, they’re four months into their current year, so while we’ve got them there, we have a prime opportunity not only to bait the hook but to reel it in to say, ‘Wouldn’t you love to be a part of this next year?’ and send them home thinking: I have eight more months, and I want to be back here next year.”

Results Come on Both Sides of the Table

While experiential meeting design is ostensibly focused on the guest experience, many planners and companies have experienced positive side effects for their own internal management.

“Eight weeks ago I was working with one of our clients, and the executive who owned the sales meetings was skeptical at first that this was going to be a worthwhile experience when we started on the first day on the unifying design principle,” says Bogue. “But he came up on the second day and said, ‘I really believe now that we have a process we can go through to create better meetings. I feel like I could stand up in front of the senior executives and say we now have a method for creating events.’

“At the end of the first day, it feels like hard work, and as we walk them through a process that drives communication, there’s an aha moment when they settle on a word that is a great experience,” he continues. “With one group, we took the whole idea of exiting and how we can make that happen in a way that is more profound, and what came out of it was so simple.

“We had the executive come to the airport, stand in front of the bus, and say thank you to each attendee individually before they left,” he says. “It’s profound. People did not expect it. They expect the executive sneaking out in the sedan late the night before, not sneaking ahead to the airport to wait for the guests.” Experiences like this heighten attendee experience, but also touch upper management through the power their gesture has on attendees.”

The process of walking through the guest experience can be both one of the biggest game-changers and one of the best bonding experiences for event staff and management, according to Smith. “We struggled on what the stakeholder responses were or their issues were, and we started negotiating with each other,” says Smith. “It was kind of funny to say it could be this and it could be that, and it took us longer because we were doing that.

“If you’re working with a team, whether a department or a committee, you have to consider their thoughts, and it can slow you down, but once you come to consensus, the result is stronger,” Smith continues. “I tend to do things by myself, but when other people share their ideas, I often think, ‘Oh yeah, I could consider that.’ Some people had ideas I hadn’t thought of. It’s absolutely valuable to have a fresh set of eyes,” she says.

Smith also found that getting more people involved in the planning process has created extra buy-in from internal stakeholders. “It’s like fantasy football. You pick from what’s available to put together your team, and it creates a sense of ownership in what’s happening. In the modern world of peer-to-peer connections, whether at a staff meeting or conference, that sense of ownership gives another perspective.”

Applying These Principles in Your Meetings Today

While Bogue walks through an extensive program over a number of sessions with his clients, you can easily implement many experiential meeting principles and techniques on your own in the time frame that fits best for your group.

Weaver found working through parts of the program in bits and pieces more digestible for his group. “What worked for me and might for others is to do it in bite-sized chunks. Get one or two areas you need to beef up. One thing we have done is the exit, because that’s the last thing they’re going to remember as they leave this great destination and program. The first year, pick one or two you want to focus on, and it becomes easier to incorporate into other parts of the guest experience.

“During the engagement stage, to get them more engaged during the awards, rather than have a gift sent to the room after the ceremony, they went to another area of the resort where they could choose from things like a laptop to Bose stereo systems to 42-inch TVs to sunglasses. Then, rather than have them have to haul it back home, we had it simply shipped to their house, so their gift was waiting for them when they returned home. Otherwise, when you give gifts, maybe they liked it and maybe they didn’t. It’s not as motivating.”

For this first time, Smith is experimenting this year with mapping her guest experience not through each of the eight experiential meeting design stages, but from a simplified approach for each kind of stakeholder in which you map what behavior they have before, what you want them to have after, and how you make changes to get there.

“It makes you walk through what is happening for host and the attendee,” she says. “What you get from that is a roadmap for measuring the return on investment. You’re looking at your cost as well as revenue, or if you don’t have revenue, how the business will be affected by behaviors. It’s a good way to set up ROI measurement because it’s not always measured in values and cents. It’s more how they feel and how you change their behavior.”

Kemp has used pre-event surveys to better understand where their attendees are coming from and seamlessly tailor the engagement portion of the guest journey to their needs. “When we did our national sales meeting last year, we did a survey ahead of time, because we’ve been B2B and we’re moving B2C so we focused training on our brands to our sales team,” she says. “You can have the same group and the same presentation and some people will always say it was too technical and others will think it wasn’t technical enough, so we surveyed them ahead of time asking questions about our brands.

“We assigned them to breakouts based on the results on the survey, and they didn’t necessarily know how they were divided, but they were all able to get more out of the group,” she explains. “We have advanced individuals together, and groups that weren’t as familiar on the products do a deeper dive.” As her initial group of sales staff was nearly 500 strong, breaking that group into four groups of 125–150 people each allowed each group to zero in on its members’ knowledge base.

Moving Beyond the Hype

For now, experiential meeting design is a buzzword. But its goal — heightening attendee engagement and providing better and more measurable ROI — is clearly in line with what planners need and want, so it’s unlikely to stay just a buzzword for too long. With foundations in psychology and neuroscience, it’s likely to move quickly from the hot new thing to a standard strategic meeting management practice. C&IT

Bluewater adventures abound at Sandals Royal Bahamian, Nassau, Bahamas.

As more and more corporate groups are staying close to home either out of concern for optics, budget or flight schedules, the white sands and dazzling emerald waters of the thousands of Caribbean islands couldn’t beckon any louder.

However, for planners who are having to deal with hotels that are gaining the upper hand in most markets as business picks back up, Caribbean hotel rooms and meeting spaces are increasingly harder to come by.

“A lot of hotels won’t give up space for groups because they want to keep it for leisure travelers,” says Kathleen Krawczyk, CMP, event planner at Chicago, Illinois-based Lawson Products, an industrial distributor of maintenance and repair supplies. “They’re outpricing themselves. Prices have gone out of control. I’ve seen hotel prices rise $300 more a night in two years. They’re so full with leisure travelers, if they didn’t get the group business, it doesn’t really hurt them, so they’re either telling us these are their rates or they don’t have the space.”

But while meetings and incentives have long whisked attendees to more exotic Caribbean isles such as Aruba, St. Lucia, Jamaica, Barbados, and Turks and Caicos, a string of property openings and renovations in the nearby Bahamas and the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are benefiting planners in many ways.

Emerging Opportunities Closer to Home

Overall travel to the Caribbean islands bounced back to pre-recession levels as early as 2012, when 25 million visitors flocked to the islands. The destination has grown its arrivals at a rate that outpaces the world average, but the U.S. territories are actually some of the best faring of the bunch. Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands experienced a 7 percent increase in visitors in 2012, when the global average was 5 percent, and Puerto Rico has been growing its meetings business at a significantly higher rate.

Though some of the main traffic to the Caribbean comes from North America, many planners find that when they do a site visit or plan meetings in non-native English-speaking areas, the language barrier is higher than they’d like.

“I was pleasantly surprised by (Spanish-speaking) Cancun and the Dominican Republic,” says Donna M. Walker, CMP, meeting planner at Batesville, Indiana-based medical technology company Hill Rom. Walker primarily plans one or more incentives per year in the Caribbean. “They’ve really turned those destinations around with some of the new restaurants and hotel upgrades, so when I went to site and I hadn’t been there in a few years, I was really impressed, but the language barrier is huge.

“It’s challenging, because the properties are beautiful, but you can’t really venture off of the property because there’s not really anything to do outside, like a so-called town, where on the other islands there’s a shopping area,” she explains. “It’s one of the things we mentioned to our contacts when we were down there. When they’re trying to recruit U.S.-based customers, they need to keep that in mind.”

Beyond the language barrier, despite the fact that Caribbean islands cater to Westerners, whether from nearby North America or the various European countries that oversee different island groups, meeting planners do not always find the experience as they would expect back home.

Unlike many meeting planners who stick to the Caribbean for incentives, Darrieux Harvey, CMP, meeting planner at Chantilly, Virginia-based Internet service provider Arin, oversees the board and advisory council meetings for her company’s territory in the Caribbean as well as North America, so she plans several meetings there each year.

“The Caribbean islands are a little bit difficult to plan a meeting in, because they don’t plan as far in advance as we do here,” she continues. “If I send an RFP a year out, they look at it like, ‘Why are you sending this so far out in advance?’ I think it’s key for organizations to send planners on a site visit, because I know that when I first started going to the Caribbean, I would say I needed 200 set like this, and they would say absolutely, but I would get down there and see that you couldn’t even get 50 in the room.

“I’ve been all over — Jamaica, Barbados, Nassau, San Juan — and the American territories are easier to plan meetings in because it’s America,” she says. “You don’t have to deal with some of the things you usually deal with in the Caribbean, like a lack of air conditioning.”

For meeting planners, the islands of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Bahamas, where English is widely spoken, offer the beaches, tropical food and weather you come to the Caribbean for, but with the level of meeting services you expect at home. And a new wave of hotel openings and renovations, focused on a Caribbean sense of place with modern luxury, are creating a sleek new style for island meetings.

Big News in the Bahamas

With a mix of polished resorts and easy-to-visit towns, the Bahamas have been a top choice for corporate meetings and events for decades, but a new development opening in stages from the end of this year through the end of next is changing everything.

Set on 3,000 feet of beach on Nassau’s Cable Beach, Baha Mar, branded as the new Bahamian Riviera, will incorporate four separate but adjoining luxury resorts: Rosewood, SLS Lux, Grand Hyatt and The Baha Mar Casino & Hotel. The $3.5 billion venue spreads over 1,000 acres and is just 12 minutes from the airport.

The headliner of the show, the Baha Mar Casino and Hotel, will encompass 1,000 guest rooms and suites, 23 private residences and a 100,000-sf casino. Second in size, but in many ways more intriguing for meeting planners, the Grand Hyatt includes 700 guest rooms and a 200,000-sf convention center. The flexible space, outfitted with state-of-the-art AV, will include three ballrooms and 16 breakout rooms.

The Rosewood will feature 200 beachview rooms and suites along with five beachfront villas along with state-of-the-art event spaces for meetings and catered events. The SLS Lux will comprise 300 high-design guest rooms and event spaces for small, high-end events.

In addition to the entertainment options in the hotels, the resort will feature an 18-hole championship Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course, which will become the highest-level course in Nassau when it opens. After the initial stages of the resort launch, in addition to adding future hotels, Baha Mar plans to open a second golf course.

While this addition to New Providence, home of the capital Nassau, has drawn many eyes and press, neighboring resorts and resorts on nearby islands continue to provide superior service to meeting planning clients.

Sandals’ two Bahamas locations, the Sandals Royal Bahamian, also in Nassau, and Sandals Emerald Bay on Great Exuma, are long-time planner favorites. “I’ve been using Sandals every other year,” says Krawczyk. “We try to offer something people wouldn’t book themselves; something I feel comfortable with that has a wow factor. We don’t like to repeat if we don’t have to, and I don’t mean to keep coming back to Sandals, but I love that property.

“We try to offer something people wouldn’t book themselves; something I feel comfortable with that has a wow factor.” — Kathy Krawczyk

“The first thing we look at is something that is truly all-inclusive,” she says. “With Sandals, everything is included from transportation to a welcome reception for two hours and a private cocktail hour. Our coffee break is even included. We look for the most we can get with the dollars that we’re spending.”

Krawczyk has found that the CSR component of her meetings is also easy to check off with Sandals events. “Whenever we do Sandals, we make it into a group thing where we donate to the Sandals Foundation. This year everyone brought schools supplies and some medical stuff down, and donations. We matched the donations and presented them with a check, and the kids who received the school supplies came to the banquet that evening.”

Across the bridge from New Providence island is Paradise Island, which boasts the mega ocean-themed and gaming resort Atlantis, known for having the largest open-air marine habitat in the world. Atlantis offers 3,400 guest rooms including The Cove, a resort within a resort that features 600 oceanview suites. The conference center can accommodate up to 4,000 attendees and includes the 50,000-sf Imperial Ballroom, 40,000 sf of prefunction space, 30 breakout rooms and three boardrooms. There are 21 outdoor event spaces — totaling 300,000 sf — that take advantage of tropical settings including, of course, the beaches, lagoon, waterscapes, marine habitats and more. And with 21 great restaurants on-property (including chef Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill and Chef Nobu Matsuhisa’s Nobu), planners can stage an exceptional dine-around program without ever leaving the resort grounds.

Powerful Connections in Puerto Rico

For meetings where you want to dip your toe in the Caribbean but keep the meeting element front of mind for attendees most days, Puerto Rico offers a mix of Caribbean sensibility and North American business sense.

“The CVB in San Juan is very good,” says Harvey. “What I do generally when I send my RFPs for meetings in the Caribbean is that I partner with the convention bureau to send them. They’re good at making sure my RFP goes out. I’ve found on the other islands that I have to do a lot of legwork on my own. In Puerto Rico, I have support so I can get around and deal with the hotels or if I need to travel.”

The 580,000-sf Puerto Rico Convention Center is the largest facility of its kind in the Caribbean and features the largest ballroom in the region at 39,500 sf. A 152,700-sf exhibition hall and 54,949 sf of meeting rooms, which can be broken into 28 breakout rooms, round out the center’s indoor space, but the growing convention district has much more to offer.

Spread over a 113-acre area formerly used as a U.S. Naval and Coast Guard base, the convention district is one of the largest waterfront development projects in the U.S. The adjacent 503-room Sheraton Puerto Rico Hotel and Casino with its own 35,000-sf conference center is currently the main hotel in the conference district, but the Hyatt House San Juan, with 126 studios and one- and two-bedroom suites is set to open this month.

In addition to the big wave in the conference district, two major renovations in other parts of the island are revamping Puerto Rico’s meeting hotel offerings. In Rio Grande, the Wyndham Grand Rio Mar Beach Resort & Spa is completing a multimillion-dollar renovation at the end of this year that will enhance its 48,000 sf of meeting space, 10 dining establishments, 400 guest rooms and suites, and public areas. Uniting all the new elements is a renewed focus on Puerto Rico’s indigenous history and architecture, from its rain forest to characteristic cobblestone streets.

El Conquistador, a Waldorf Astoria Resort in Fajardo, has just completed an overhaul of all public spaces and meeting levels. While its ballrooms and terraces already afforded visitors views of the ocean and El Yunque rain forest, the resort has refreshed all carpeting and furniture on the meeting levels and added new windows, paint, curtains and lighting in the ballroom to better unite the spaces with their surroundings. The resort’s 100,000 sf of meeting space includes 16 breakout rooms, two adjacent conference centers and a private island for outdoor events.

In San Juan, Hilton has recently brought another property into the fold, The Condado Plaza Hilton, with 571 rooms and 41,000 sf of indoor and outdoor meeting space, including a 24,480-sf ballroom. Uniquely positioned as the only hotel in the city overlooking both the Atlantic Ocean and Condado Lagoon, the hotel is the fourth Hilton property on the island.

A $38 million investment in upgrading Puerto Rico’s airports and an increase in scheduled flights from major mainland carriers has also made arriving in Puerto Rico even more convenient for corporate travelers. Delta added daily non-stop service between Chicago and San Juan, and expanded its daily service between JFK and San Juan.

JetBlue matched Delta’s daily Chicago-to-San Juan initiative, expanding from its previous U.S. non-stop routes departing from Boston, Fort Lauderdale, Hartford, Jacksonville, JFK, Newark, Orlando, Tampa, Washington, DC, and West Palm Beach.

USVI — the Best of the Islands

While Puerto Rico is a large enough island that you can almost forget you’re on an island when not in view of the beach, in the U.S. Virgin Islands — comprised of St. Croix, St. John and St. Thomas — it’s nearly impossible to get far from the shore, and the islands’ group activities offer unique ways to take advantage of the area’s connection to nature.

Though St. John often looks like the wild, unpopulated island next to cosmopolitan St. Thomas, The Westin St. John Resort has long added an air of sophistication. It has upped the ante with a $50 million makeover, which started last January and continues through January of 2015 when the resort will debut complete refurbishments of all 96 guest rooms and suites, the addition of 146 Starwood Vacation Ownership villas, and updated public and meeting spaces.

On all three islands, local groups are launching new outdoor activities ideal for teambuilding with a strong sense of place. On St. Croix, Mount Victory Camp ecolodge runs sustainable living workshops teaching attendees how to build a fire and make a bow and arrow from scratch in the wild, while Ridge to Reef Farm, focused on providing the USVI with local produce, offers naturalist-led ecology and agroforestry tours.

St. Thomas’ Ritz-Carlton has partnered with Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Ambassadors of the Environment program on special ecological explorations of the island, and thrill seekers can get an entirely new perspective on the island with Iron Man-style flyboarding 30 feet above the waters of St. Thomas’ Lindbergh Bay. On St. John, the Adventure Center now offers night kayaking with clear-bottom kayaks affording a clear view of the turtles, sharks and sting rays that inhabit the bay.

While Puerto Rico has experienced a sharp uptick in non-stop flights over the past couple years, the USVI is now taking its turn. Beginning in December of this year, Delta will offer a new non-stop route to St. Croix. American Airlines also has entered into an interline agreement with Seabourne to offer easier access between St. Croix, St. Thomas and Puerto Rico.

Final Thoughts

As airlines are now increasing airlift to the Bahamas, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and hoteliers are increasing available rooms and meeting space, planners have a window while supply outpaces demand. But as the siren’s call of short, non-stop flights to pristine white sand beaches is heard by more groups seeking to lock down prime meeting space years in advance, it surely won’t be a very big window. C&IT

A panel discussion on the Meetings Mean Business campaign at IBTM America in Orlando included (left to right) Paul Van Deventer, Deborah Sexton, Kevin Hinton, John Graham IV, David Dubois and Roger Dow.

In 2009, in the wake of a severe economic downturn and the throes of what came to be known as the “AIG effect,” which made many corporate executives afraid to hold meetings, an emergency coalition of industry leaders from organizations such as MPI, ASAE, PCMA, IAEE and SITE came together under the leadership of U.S. Travel Association president and CEO Roger Dow. They mounted a defensive campaign dubbed “Meetings Mean Business” that is credited with saving the meeting industry from disaster.

In January, Meetings Mean Business (MMB) re-launched as a proactive campaign designed to ensure the long-term health of the meeting industry.

In June, its leaders convened for a panel discussion at IBTM America’s annual meeting.

In August, they spoke with Corpo­rate & Incentive Travel about the progress that has been made and what lies ahead for the initiative.

“In 2009, U.S. Travel helped quickly convene Meetings Mean Business (MMB) with industry leaders in large part to respond to a crisis,” says Roger Dow. “Our industry was under attack and we needed to mobilize quickly. We pushed through that trying time, showed the industry’s incredible value, and reset the tone of the conversation.”

Essential to that ongoing mission are some key facts.

For example, the meeting and events industry in 2012 generated more than $770 billion in total output and $280 billion in direct spending, as well as $90 billion in federal, state and local taxes, according to a study from PwC. The industry also supports 1.8 million jobs — more than the computer, trucking or broadcast and telecommunication industries, notes Dow.

Likewise, Kevin Hinton, chief excellence officer at the renamed Society of Incentive Travel Excellence (SITE), invokes data released earlier this year by the Convention Industry Council in an Economic Significance of Meetings to the U.S. Economy report, which states that during 2012, 1.83 million meetings were held in the U.S. and attended by 225 million participants. The economic contribution of meetings to U.S. GDP surpasses that of the air transportation, motion picture, sound recording, performing arts and spectator sport industries. More than 67,000 motivational events and incentive travel programs were held in 2012 with more than 9 million delegates. Although incentive travel programs represent the lowest percentage of all meeting types, the direct spend per delegate of $1,570 is the highest, Hinton says. It accounts for $22.5 billion in direct spending in the U.S. Furthermore, Hinton says, the SITE Annual Forecast for Incentive Travel predicts that the industry will continue to grow at a significant pace through 2016.

Earlier this year, Dow says, Rockport Analytics released a report detailing the economic value of IPW (Pow Wow), the U.S. travel industry’s premier international convention, and found that it rivaled the economic impact of the Super Bowl. For the host city, IPW produces more than four times as many direct expenditures; delivers more than five times the amount of GDP value-added direct impact; and generates greater federal, state and local tax revenues. Moreover, the economic impact carries over for three years, Dow says.

“We need to keep telling these kinds of stories that speak to the industry as an economic engine,” he says.

Status Report

Since its creation in 2009, Meetings Mean Business has had significant and ongoing impact on the perception and performance of the U.S. meeting industry.

And its importance to the future of the industry cannot be overstated, says Paul Van Deventer, president and CEO of Meeting Professionals International (MPI). “MMB represents an effort where, for the first time,” he says, “a significant majority of the leading organizations and influencers in our industry are speaking in a single unified voice — telling a clear and consistent story of the value of our industry.”

Telling that story clearly is vitally important to the future of the industry, says Larry Luteran, Hilton Worldwide senior vice president of group sales and industry relations, who moderated the panel of industry association CEOs at the IBTM America event.

“For a long time, the public focused on a negative rhetoric about frivolous spending during industry meetings,” Luteran says. “But something that got lost in that conversation was a focus on the real impact and benefits of face-to-face meetings. With MMB, we’ve created a mechanism to tell the positive stories, to gather facts and figures, and make sure business leaders, policymakers and other stakeholders understand the value of bringing people together for in-person meetings and events.”

The progress made toward that goal in 2014 has been significant, says Deborah Sexton, president and CEO of the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA). “What’s different now is that we have all the leaders from across the meetings and events industry — destination marketing organizations, professional associations like PCMA and all the others, hotel brands, suppliers, incentive travel organizations and others — uniting behind one campaign. That gives us a louder voice and a broader platform to stand on as we promote the critical importance of face-to-face meetings.”

Key Accomplishments

Although MMB has had a positive impact on the debate over meetings, its biggest accomplishment has been rallying a broad range of industry leaders and influencers to a common cause that is being addressed with a collective and focused voice, Van Deventer says. “That will enable us to provide a consistent and strong message outside of our industry, bringing awareness and recognition of the significant economic scope and impact of the industry to a much wider audience,” he says.

Dow agrees that MMB’s key accomplishment is creating an unprecedented, industry-wide alliance. “For the first time, we have all of the different industry leaders, representing all of the different sectors, united behind a single, proactive campaign. MMB has successfully created a dialogue within the industry. It’s an effort that reaches across business, professional associations and destination marketing organizations, and the greater travel industry, to offer one voice that extols the undeniable value of business meetings, events, conferences and conventions to all sectors of the economy.”

“For the first time, we have all of the different industry leaders…united behind a single, proactive campaign. MMB has successfully created a dialogue within the industry.” — Roger Dow

That said, Dow adds, now the attention will turn to the education of rank-and-file stakeholders in the industry, such as meeting planners and hosts. “We need to continually look for ways to capture the true value of a meeting or event whether it’s in terms of the business value, return on investment, local impact or, sometimes harder to measure, relationship-building, and make sure that stakeholders within organizations can communicate that to their own management and beyond their organization to the broader industry.”

Sexton concurs that a more broad and far-reaching educational initiative will be a critical step in the next phase of MMB’s evolution. “We have to educate people about the real economic impact of the industry and how meetings and events create jobs, stimulate local economies and lead to stronger business outcomes,” she says. “As an industry, we’ve come a long way since 2009, but there is still work to be done. As MMB looks towards the future, I think there will be a heightened effort to reach mainstream audiences. This includes a larger push towards consumers and key policymakers, as well as engagement with national and business press. These audiences are critical to the overall success of our sustained campaign.”

Building Momentum

Hilton Worldwide’s Luteran believes that continuing to build the brand momentum of the Meetings Mean Business campaign is critical to a full recovery of the meeting industry.

“We need to continue the momentum that we’ve built,” he says. “We need to keep highlighting the industry’s value to businesses, the government and communities. The next crisis is around the corner, and the more proactive we are now, the better equipped we will be to handle it.”

John H. Graham IV, CAE, president and CEO of ASAE, stresses the importance of increasing awareness of the economic impact of meetings to corporate America and the mainstream media. “The coalition is now working to reach these audiences, as well as educating corporations about the vital role the meetings industry plays in strengthening our economy,” Graham says.

Another extremely important goal, Hinton says, is “engaging with the federal government so that they stop their harmful rhetoric and avoid the passage of legislation that would be punitive to our industry. That’s an ongoing effort, but real progress is being made. Beyond government, we need to align our interests with the interests of the business community so that those who make financial decisions about meetings and events see them as productive investments and that we as meetings and event professionals are part of the solution to the complex issues businesses face.”

Graham agrees that encouraging more understanding and less criticism from government officials is important. “We are definitely making strides on Capitol Hill, as well as with other people outside our industry, but there’s still plenty of work to be done,” he says.

To be successful in the long run and generate results that endure, MMB will require a broad, sustained effort over many years, Van Deventer says. “We also will need to expand our partnership to include other strategic partners, such as more global corporate executives and the airlines,” he says.

The U.S. Travel Association has invested in tools that help quantify the value of in-person meetings and events, Dow says. “For instance, a report by Oxford Economics reaffirmed that business travel drives corporate revenues and delivers profits to the bottom line. Business travel fuels growth, with every dollar companies spend on business travel generating $9.50 in new revenue. Face-to-face meetings are essential for keeping customers and winning new business. Conferences and conventions are vital for gaining new insights and improving sales.

As the MMB juggernaut continues to move forward, Dow says, “it will continue to leverage such compelling data points while also identifying qualitative examples that attest to the travel and meeting industry’s return on investment and economic impact.”

An immediate next step for MMB, Sexton says, is to continue gaining new supporters and advocates throughout the meeting industry. “That includes event planners, incentive travel leaders, exhibition coordinators and more. MMB is looking to engage with all the members of the broader meeting community to ensure that all voices are being heard and the undeniable value of each facet of the meetings and events industry is continuously communicated through social channels, member communication, social media and public advocacy to all stakeholders. Additionally, we need to advance and broaden this initiative beyond the U.S. and engage the global stakeholders; utilizing organizations such as JMIC, SACEOS, IAPCO and forums such as IMEX and EIBTM to reach their audiences with our global message.”

Van Deventer adds that the far-reaching success of MMB “will be dependent on each member of the coalition successfully engaging and activating their employee and partner networks to build the grassroots momentum. MPI has done this with our own Meetings Move Us Forward Initiative, which was launched last December to help our members tell their own stories.”

Graham agrees that it’s very important for MMB to create and widely disseminate testimonials from a diverse group of people within and outside our industry so that the ROI of face-to-face meetings can be clearly and powerfully demonstrated. “These profiles, white papers and articles will help communicate how these meetings have impacted people personally and professionally, and how these events have led to the creation of new groups and opportunities.”

Luteran puts it even more simply: “We have to keep reinforcing the importance of meetings and events,” he says.

Meanwhile, says David DuBois, CMP, CAE, CTA, FASAE, president and CEO of the International Association of Exhibitions and Events (IAEE), fundraising and effective public relations and communications programs on behalf of MMB are other vital objectives. “Our fundraising efforts have been very successful,” DuBois says, “and that has allowed us to further enhance and execute a more proactive public relations plan.”

Keep It Simple

Although MMB is, by definition, a complex and challenging undertaking as the meeting industry continues to evolve rapidly, its essential message must be kept simple and clear, its organizers say.

“The campaign name captures our essential message— Meetings Mean Business,” Dow says.

“Organizations depend on face-to-face meetings to win new customers, close new deals and develop high-performing talent. The business outcomes of face-to-face meetings far exceed any other. Nothing replaces face-to-face meetings when it comes to getting the job done.”

Sexton corroborates the opinion that a clear and unwavering message is at the core of MMB’s efforts. “The message is that face-to-face interactions are irreplaceable tools as we look to advance business and find solutions to hard problems,” she says. “Throughout the coming months, MMB will continue to show how meetings drive positive business outcomes and provide a return on investment for both the private and public sector.”

And a big part of that message must be communicated to and fully comprehended by meeting planners and hosts.

“We are now actively engaging with meeting stakeholders to drive a conversation around the value of our industry,” Dow says.

Corporate meeting planners are critical to the conversation, Sexton says, because they are the audience that must continuously see measurable successful and solid ROI from their efforts.

Hinton concurs. “We need all meeting and event professionals to realize there is a lot at stake here,” he says. “My message to planners is that the upside here is real, but it’s not someone else’s cause to take up. It’s yours. Practice your answer to the question, ‘What do you do?’  Make sure it’s compelling and positions you as a business professional, which you accomplish through the planning and execution of meetings and events.”

At the same time, Dow makes the point that the new incarnation of MMB is meant to be proactive and positive. “We re-launched MMB as an offensive campaign, not a defensive one,” he says. “With our front foot forward, we are enlisting the help of leaders across many industries to help share our story and explain to our customers, the business community and political elites, that investing in collaborative, face-to-face meetings and events has a real and measurable return.”

Graham cautions that neither MMB nor the meeting industry at large can take for granted that the public, elected officials and policymakers understand the value of face-to-face meetings. “We must continue to assertively advocate on this important issue because at some point in the future, meetings will again be under attack,” Graham says. “But next time around, we will be much better prepared.”

A key element of that preparedness, Luteran says, is the “tool kit” MMB developed earlier this year available at www.meetingsmeanbusiness.com. “It includes messaging, talking points and social media content, to ensure that we all are speaking with one voice,” Luteran says. “Along with the tool kit, MMB released a mobile app that features industry-relevant news, MMB-specific content, and updates.”

In early August, MMB launched its official Twitter handle @MeetingsMeanBiz with the hashtag #MMBusiness.

“That enables all of our supporters to track the news and join the Twitter conversation by following the handle and hashtag,” Luteran says. “These new tools are critically important for the industry as it allows us to stay in touch with all of the announcements and news stemming from MMB and the industry as a whole. Moreover, it encourages us to get involved throughout the year, whether that involvement means a tweet or adding MMB language into our corporate newsletters.”

Five years ago, the meeting industry faced an unprecedented challenge that represented an existential threat.

Today, thanks to the innovative and aggressive efforts of MMB and its coalition of committed industry leaders, meeting and events are on their way back to the forefront of most corporate activities.

And next time there’s an economic downturn or another optics scandal, the industry will be in a much better position to respond.

But MMB needs your help, its leaders stress. C&IT

Pharmacy professionals arrive at Cardinal Health’s Retail Business Conference at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. Credit: Alabastro Photography

It’s almost a cliché for a convention and visitors bureau to bill itself as a “one stop shop” for planners, but recently, the idea has been taken a step further with the formation of Synchronicities, a partnership among three convention and visitors bureaus in disparate areas of the country: the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau, Visit Baltimore and the San Antonio Convention & Visitors Bureau. Planners working with all three cities (e.g., for different installments of the same meeting) can now enjoy a “united sales and services platform,” as described by Casandra Matej, director of the San Antonio Convention & Visitors Bureau.

The partnership also allows the CVBs to expand their marketing reach, combine their resources and share knowledge. “One of the strengths of the Synchronicities partnership is the sharing of intellectual capital between the three cities,” says Tom Noonan, president and CEO of Visit Baltimore. “The communication between the cities will ensure consistent service delivery and simplify the meeting planning process.” According to Jay Burress, president and CEO of the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau, Synchronicities has already yielded ROI for the three organizations. “Senior leadership from all three destinations have dedicated the time and resources to make our solution very valuable for planners, and we are seeing results from our joint effort,” he comments.

A more localized “synchronicity” occurred 10 years ago in California, when Team San Jose was launched. The organization unified the San Jose Convention and Visitors Bureau, hotels, arts, labor and venues in order to further the city’s tourism and overall events industry, including corporate meetings. Team San Jose serves as an intermediary for planners working not only with the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, but also with the Center for the Performing Arts, Montgomery Theater, Parkside Hall, City National Civic and South Hall. With the recent 169,000-sf expansion of the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, the city has begun to draw more conventions. And via Team San Jose’s convention calendar, planners can stay up to date on incoming groups in order to determine whether their desired dates will work. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has a similar calendar at Vegasmeansbusiness.com, which is an especially critical aid in a first-tier meetings hub. The site also allows corporate planners to categorize their event before submitting an RFP in the “What’s Your Event?” section, which distinguishes among corporate meetings, executive meetings, incentive meetings and small meetings (under 500 attendees).

RFP Distribution

Once a planner has decided a city is viable and initiates the RFP process through the CVB, there are certain signs that he or she is dealing with a quality one-stop shop, observes Kevin Fleetwood, marketing director with Atlanta, GA-based CRIF Lending Solutions, a loan origination software company. “First off, somebody gets back to me immediately with who my contact person is: ‘Hey, I’m the person to send the RFP to. I’ll be your primary contact, and in case I’m not here, this person is my backup.’ ” According to Fleetwood, unless one has worked with the CVB before, it can be difficult to divine who the contact person is, even by looking at the CVB’s website. When the organization identifies that contact, “I already know upfront that they are interested in my business,” he says.

Fleetwood is currently working with the San Diego CVB for the 2015 CRIF Lending Solutions Forum, to be held next April at the Hyatt Regency Mission Bay Spa & Marina in San Diego. He has found the staff to be especially detail-oriented in the RFP process, which is one of his main reasons for using a CVB. He notes that his contact “read through my RFP and asked me questions about it. She knew my program very well, so that she sent out the RFP only to those properties that matched the specs in her opinion.” And when preliminary results were received, they were organized in a user-friendly spreadsheet. “She had it laid out in such a fashion that I could easily go through it and check and see what worked and what didn’t,” says Fleetwood. “That’s especially key when you’re comparing multiple properties in multiple cities.”

Smaller CVBs, he has observed, “have a tendency to let their hoteliers send the results directly to you even though you request they not, either because they don’t have the staff to (compile the results) or just because they’ve never done anything like that.”

And after the shortlist of properties had been established, another nice service that the San Diego CVB provided was to inform the other hotels that they are no longer in the running. “For the CVB to let them know was much better,” Fleetwood says.

Site Inspection Expertise

Planners are busy people, and the best site visits optimize a planner’s time with the most relevant meetings and experiences. A capable CVB goes a long way in that regard, helping to develop the itinerary and connecting the planner to the key players at the destination. The Long Beach CVB, for example, offers to “suggest venues, research date availability and make initial contacts to assist you in coordinating your…pre-planning visits.”

Farther up the West Coast, Conni Siegmund, PMP, CMP, director, retail independent marketing with Dublin, Ohio-based Cardinal Health, benefited from a masterfully coordinated site visit to Seattle, thanks to the local CVB. “We bring out an army of people on our site visits, 20–30 people including meeting planners, our marketing team, exhibit company, AV reps and more. So I really leaned on the Visit Seattle crew to set up all the relevant meetings I needed, and we would have three to four meetings happening simultaneously,” Siegmund relates. “They would help set up meetings with the convention center, IT people, in-house AV, different DMCs, different ground transportation companies and so on.” The ultimate result was a smoothly run Retail Business Conference, which brought thousands of pharmacy professionals to the Emerald City in 2013.

Fleetwood finds site visits especially effective when the CVB provides a guide to accompany the planner, a person who is knowledgeable on everything from airport transfers to local events taking place. “For example, I happen to be doing my site visits at the end of March, first of April, which also happens to be spring break time, and I had not a clue that people descended on San Diego for spring break,” he relates. Some CVBs, Fleetwood notes, will provide a guide who is “just sent to drive you around,” with little understanding of the planner’s goals for the site visit.

Apart from providing the “inside scoop” on logistical issues during the site visit, the CVB can help to keep it running on schedule. Not only will they make the introductions between planner and hoteliers, but they also can“keep the hotels on a time frame,” says Fleetwood. “They will tell them, ‘We’ve got an hour and a half,’ for example. Hotels tend to want to keep you at their property, which means less time spent at other properties. And if you are running behind, they call the hotel that’s next and let them know.”

Having a Plan B in case there is an unforeseen glitch in the site visit also is important. “In San Diego, a hotel called and said they had booked a meeting over the time I would be booking one, and so they were no longer available. And the CVB knew what to do over the time I would be meeting with that hotel: They took me around to Old Town San Diego and some of the other places that might be used for evening events,” Fleetwood relates.

To conclude the visit, the CVB asked Fleetwood how their service was and whether he needed further information. And, as a nice touch, “they took all of my hotel materials and FedExed the package to my office for me so I didn’t have to carry it around.”

Promotional Assistance for New Media

CVBs have long offered a list of materials and services to help planners promote their event and the destination. The services in recent years have expanded to include new media. The Anaheim CVB, for example, provides editorial content, destination images and a video library, local media outreach and video coverage of the meeting, along with social media promotion and targeted blog posts.

And the New Orleans CVB has “a whole e-marketing plan put together,” notes Lorie Thomas, director, events and trade shows with Bellevue, Washington-based Concur Technologies. “So they were prepared to offer us all those services, which I thought was pretty remarkable.” Concur, which held its annual client conference in May in New Orleans, has its own social media and PR managers to handle the e-marketing, “but for companies that are smaller and maybe don’t have those assets, the CVB is prepared to fully support them and be part of their team,” Thomas adds. Quality content also is important, of course, and Thomas observed that “if I had utilized their services, I wouldn’t have had to provide much editing.”

Similarly, Siegmund noted that Visit Seattle’s supplementary materials and marketing services were ahead of the curve. “We were using 13 different hotels across the city, and they created a customized map for us that just had our hotels on it,” she relates. And when it came to ensuring that enough pharmacy professionals filled those hotels for the Retail Business Conference, CVB reps were very hands on. “They did something no CVB has ever done for me before: They got on calls with our salespeople,” says Siegmund. “We have an internal salesforce of 400 or so people who sell the packages to come to our show to our customers. And my Seattle contact would get on regional conference calls with our salesforce, (saying) ‘Here are ideas for how you can sell Seattle to your customers.’ ”

Personalized Welcomes

What “sells” a city to attendees is not just its venues and sightseeing experiences, but also a sense of being at home in what may be an unfamiliar destination. With this in mind, CVBs often coordinate the installment of branding elements for the group’s visit. Team San Jose, for example, allows groups to “Own the City” via welcome and event signage at the convention center and airport, on public transportation and street poles, and so on.

Toward the same end, Visit Jackson­ville can (with 30 days notice) secure a welcome letter from city of Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown, and/or a welcome letter from leaders at the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce.

For Hazelwood, Missouri-based Aclara’s April 2015 Client Conference in Nashville, Bob Whittemore, marketing campaign manager, suggested an even more personal welcome from a city official, and the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp. followed through with the idea. “This year they’re working with the city and the mayor of Nashville is making a welcome video for our customers that we’re going to put on our website. That’s huge,” says Whittemore. “Our hotel, the Renaissance Nashville, the city, mayor’s office and the CVB appreciate our business, and when you spend this much time and money in the city, it’s nice to be appreciated.”

A welcoming overture is extended south of the border as well. Cecilia Cruz, executive director for the meetings industry for the Mexico Tourism Board in Washington, DC, encourages planners to see what’s new in Mexico for themselves, citing Mexico Tourism’s “Live It to Believe It” campaign. “This campaign is really about inviting everyone to Mexico,” Cruz says. “If you don’t go, you can’t imagine how beautiful and how amazing it is — and not just our beaches and sun. We also have good venues and good cities and good infrastructure for all of the MICE segment. I invite the meeting planners to go and visit Mexico and live it to believe it. We will welcome them when they want to go and visit on a FAM trip or come to our road shows so they can know Mexico and do business in Mexico.”

Mexico’s new government is working hard to address areas of concern to make tourism in the country world class reminds Cruz. “We are increasing security and doing many, many things in the cities, in the venues and in the resorts. I know it is one of the things that meeting planners care about. We also care very much about it. I think it is one of the most important things we’re working on.”

Vendor Referrals

One sign that a CVB really knows its city’s resources is when a planner is truly pleased with the organization’s vendor referrals, and even develops lasting partnerships with those companies. For instance, the Nashville CVC recommended a certain DMC to Whittemore, “and I’m using that DMC for the third time,” he says. The organization also has referred him to a company that will assist in coordinating a 5K run for the upcoming conference, personally introduced him to the owners of three venues that can accommodate an outside function for 650 participants, and recommended numerous honky-tonks for client events. “I’ve been very happy with all their recommendations; they always point me in a direction that saves me a lot of time and a lot of money,” he says. And unlike other CVBs Whittemore has worked with, the Nashville organization was more focused on fitting their recommendations to his needs. “I’ve worked with other cities that have a ‘package deal’; they email you and say, ‘This is what we’ll do for you.’ Nashville has always said, ‘What can we do to help?’ ”

CSR Programs

With corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the minds of many planners, CVBs today often refer groups to organizations that can provide these kinds of activities. Visit Orlando is one example, matching groups with volunteer projects such as building houses, preparing meals, landscaping work and book drives. And the CVBs themselves regularly highlight social and environment responsibility at their destination.

The Greater Miami CVB, for instance, notes that The Greater Miami & the Beaches Hotel Association is working closely with the Miami-Dade Office of Sustainability to promote Miami-Dade’s Green Lodging & Restaurant Program. One new feature is that hotel rooms in the city now have cards that guests can use to indicate that they would like to reuse these items during the course of their stay. Through the CVB, planners can learn of these initiatives and convey them to eco-conscious attendees.

Follow Through

During the meeting, the best CVBs stay in touch with the client, even though the client is now primarily dealing with facility convention staff. The New Orleans CVB, for example, “stopped by our show to make sure everything was going well, which was impressive,” Thomas notes. “Normally, once the sale has happened, you’re kind of old news. They kept in contact with us throughout the course of the planning and the event, and they followed up after to make sure we got what we needed. They were very interested to make sure the whole experience from start to finish was a good one.” That includes helping a planner with post-con communications. “I do a pretty extensive post-con document, and the Seattle CVB kept in touch with me to make sure they got all of our notes and feedback,” Siegmund says.

The New Orleans CVB “kept in contact with us throughout the course of the planning and the event, and they followed up after to make sure we got what we needed.” — Lorie Thomas 

The People Factor

To a planner, a CVB is more than just a list of meeting services, it is a group of people who deliver those services with a certain disposition and personality. “The way they treat me is the way I think they’re going to treat the rest of their guests,” Thomas maintains. “I’m looking for a CVB who’s going to treat my customers, if they happen to reach out to the CVB, with respect, excitement and enthusiasm.”

The best CVB representatives also will give a planner a sense that he or she can depend on them. “The thing that sets Visit Seattle apart from a lot of CVBs is that they really excel in relationship-building,” Siegmund says. “From their salespeople to their convention services people, I felt like they were my friends. And one of the reasons I want to go back to Seattle is just so I can work with them again.”

Such a “good friend” always will have a planner’s needs in mind, even during those times when their involvement isn’t, strictly speaking, required. “It takes nothing for a CVB to send you an email to say, ‘Hey, I know your program’s a few months away. Is there anything we can help you with?’ It’s just good business policy,” says Fleetwood. C&IT

Christine Shimasaki CDME, CMP, is the managing director of empowerMINT.com and the Event Impact Calculator for Destination Marketing Association International. She previously served as executive vice president and chief strategy officer for the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau, as well as a distinguished career in sales with Marriott.

Most of us have a love-hate relationship with technology. What used to take days or even weeks to accomplish can now be done in minutes. As terrific as requesting — and receiving — instant responses can be, we often pay the price with information overload, impersonalization and getting lost in the sea of online communication. Nowhere is this more evident and frustrating to both the planner and the hotel community than in the distribution of electronic requests for proposals (eRFPs).

An improving business economy and the world of eRFPs have changed the corporate and incentive meeting planning landscape, ultimately creating a seller’s market: With increased demand, desirable hotels in popular destinations can pick and choose the business they want. When widespread distribution is as easy as clicking a button, it becomes too easy to barrage hotels with proposal requests. And when bogged-down salespeople see a large distribution list, they give the RFP low priority and often either don’t respond or send back a cookie-cutter proposal in lieu of a truly competitive bid.

In response to the often heard cry “I can’t get proposals! Why don’t the hotels want my business?” Ed Kady, associate director of sales for the 1,625 room Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego, says, “Sending an RFP to 30 hotels is truly wasting the meeting planner’s and hotel’s time. The majority of the hotels won’t meet the meeting planner’s needs.” Indiscriminate distribution signals to the hotel that the planner doesn’t know what they are looking for and that they don’t take the RFP process seriously. It’s no surprise, then, that many RFPs get buried and never result in a competitive bid.

Before the advent of online RFP engines, planners were more selective in the number and locations of hotels they contacted for proposals, simply because of time and effort constraints. But, by narrowing their interest to the top four or five properties appearing to be the best potential matches for the meeting, the planner was essentially pre-prioritizing for the hotel. From the hotel’s point of view, nearly every lead or RFP that landed on the salesperson’s desk had legitimacy and therefore attracted consideration.

Pre-select Before You Hit ‘Send’

How can you keep from shooting yourself in the foot with too many eRFPs? Take careful aim.

To ensure you grab the hotels’ attention and get the proposals you really want, narrow down the list before casting the RFP net. When your RFP is sent to too many properties, the hotel that might be the best fit may not take the time to dig for variables, flexibility or details that could result in an attractive proposal. So, instead of e-blasting the RFP out there, waiting to see what comes back, then deciding which of the responding hotels might work, try borrowing this approach from pre-electronic RFP days: start by narrowing the playing field, then take aim at three to five pre-determined “best targets” — and ultimately score a perfect fit.

“To ensure you grab the hotels’ attention and get the proposals you really want, narrow down the list before casting the RFP net.”

Follow these four important steps in pre-selection before you send out even the first eRFP.

1. Make a wish list of what you really want/need to have a successful meeting:

• A big city or a smaller town?
• A high-rise convention hotel or a golf resort?
• 500 sleeping rooms, 10 breakouts and enough space to feed 750?
• Deluxe amenities or a value property?
• Easy accessibility? Does it matter?
• Cultural facilities, nearby family attractions, gourmet restaurants, warm weather, walkability and nightlife?

2. Compare your wish list with the characteristics you know about each of those destinations. 

Use the “must haves” (mid-U.S. location, large hotels) to narrow the list of potential destinations that can provide them. If there are still more than five, narrow further based on the “nice to haves” (good shopping, convenient airport). Both empowerMINT.com’s Destination Finder or Cvent’s Destination Guide provide extensive destination information, which you may find helpful in narrowing your destination “hit list.”

3. Talk to your CVB destination expert.

Once again, use empowerMINT.com’s Destination Finder or Cvent’s Destination Guide for contact information to reach a sales professional at each of the convention and visitors bureaus (CVBs) in the destinations you’ve decided to target. Discuss the special personality of your meeting. Learn about appropriate hotels and what will make your RFP attractive to them.

4. Fine-tune your RFP accordingly to land on top of the hotel’s priority pile.

Tips for Getting the Best Bid

Once you’ve narrowed down the number of serious hotel contenders, and you’re ready to craft the RFP, be sure it includes the following:

• Complete organizational information. The more information you include in your RFP, the better. Provide an introduction that describes your group’s needs, objectives and attendee profile — the “philosophy” of your organization and meeting.
• Nuts and bolts information. Provide the details of the meeting schedule, including session times, number of seats (and type of seating preferred) for each breakout, meals, technology requirements, hospitality, possible exhibit space, etc. If you have held this meeting before, attach a copy of the previous program as a guideline. If there are certain non-negotiable items, a rate ceiling or deal-breaker concessions required, say so. Include the number and type of sleeping rooms your group requires each night, from earliest arrival to departure.
• Three years of meeting history. Think of your historical data as your “credit rating.” Hotels give priority to groups that can demonstrate a consistent event history that includes the number of attendees, where they’ve stayed, the number of rooms they used and what they spent.
• Demonstrate flexibility. Every hotel has a sweet spot when it comes to date patterns, room nights, space usage and food and beverage spend. If you can consider an alternate time frame or pattern, say so in your RFP.

The CVB is Key

The CVB is the best first point of contact to help you identify properties that can provide the right fit for your meeting, and continues to be your partner throughout the entire site selection process. CVB sales professionals are uniquely qualified to deliver on this promise because they have a comprehensive view of the destination, local expertise and extensive in-market relationships. Through dialogue with the CVB sales professional, he or she understands both your hot buttons and where there may be room for flexibility. “If the CVB has a relationship with the customer and understands their needs,” says Ed Kady, “they essentially qualify the lead together and the customer is guided in the right direction. The CVB should then share the insights they’ve gained with the hotel, and the result can be a more customized, competitive proposal.”

By partnering with the CVB, being clear about your needs, and creating a complete and thoughtful RFP with a narrow distribution, you’re on the road to a timely and complete response and successful site selection. C&IT

When they take up the CMP designation, meeting planners must pledge to perform all responsibilities in accordance with the laws and regulations of the local, state or national governments under which they reside and communicate all relevant information to their employers in a truthful and accurate manner to facilitate the execution of their fiduciary responsibilities.

But while this and other meeting planning ethics codes paint things in black and white, their generalizations often do not account for the shades of gray that meeting planners encounter in the field in the everyday tasks of doing their jobs. In the case of the Convention Industry Council (CIC) CMP Standards of Ethical Conduct, this particularly comes into play in the first two rules: maintain exemplary standards of professional conduct at all times and actively model and encourage the integration of ethics into all aspects of the performance of one’s duties.

Most everyone would agree that accepting an unrelated gift, such as a purse or an iPad, from a hotel or vendor could be construed as a form of bribery, but what happens when a planner goes on a FAM (familiarization) trip and has no intention of booking the destination or finds it is not appropriate for the group’s needs? Would that be viewed as abusing a free trip? Or what if a planner reviewed proposals from a DMC, didn’t use them but implemented their ideas? Is that considered sharing or stealing intellectual property? And, if so, what are the repercussions of these violations?

What Is the Best Way to Research Destinations?

FAM trips are a core issue in meeting planning ethics, both because they are often necessary and because they are an easy ethical gray area, but they really stand for the entire area of accepting free items from potential future contract-holders. “In terms of FAM trips, I think that’s a place where ethics can get very dicey,” says Marcy DeBiccari, CMP, senior meeting planner at Albany, New York-based Sematech. “It presents an opportunity for people to go away for some fun, and that’s not fair for the vendors or cities or whoever is hosting. If you’re not serious about having a meeting there, you’re taking away from people who are.”

Many companies, like DeBiccari’s, have a loose official policy regarding FAM trips that relies heavily on trust in the planner’s own personal ethics. “We don’t have a formal policy in place; I need to present a justification presentation, showing this, this and this meeting might be a good fit for this place,” she says. “By presenting the justification prior to going, you have to prove why you’re going so it ensures the trip is an appropriate use of your time.”

Ronald E. Havens, CMP, MBA, senior meeting planner and group travel coordinator at Culver City, California-based Sony Pictures Entertainment, shares his company’s policy. “As long as they’re known about and the management is aware, we’re encouraged to familiarize ourselves, but if I’m lucky, I get one invitation a year,” he says. For both Havens and his colleagues, FAM trips have become a rarer occurrence of late. “There have been fewer trips in recent years both because we have less time to go on trips, and we receive fewer invitations.”

“To be honest with you, I can’t remember the last time I went on a trip,” DeBiccari concurs. “I don’t receive a lot of invitations to go on FAMs.” While the cost cutting and do-more-with-less meeting planning culture that has arisen from the recession clearly illuminates why planners have less time to go on FAMs, it’s less clear why there are fewer invitations in circulation.

Optics may play a large part, as hotels and CVBs are sensitive to the internal and external perception issues, but there also is a slow renaissance going on with destinations that do offer FAM trips as they reorganize their itineraries to provide a heavy education component on the trip.

Lynn Walstead, CMP, senior meeting planner at Mounds View, Minnesota-based Medtronic Inc., finds this change happening, particularly in the medical device industry, in which companies feel more optics pressure than in other industries. “There’s an overarching policy that you have to make the right ethics decision or your manager does,” she says. “On the whole, FAMs are discouraged unless you’re truly using that destination or considering it. In the medical devices industry, I think because it is becoming more frowned upon, more companies are clamping down.

“If I’m considering a trip, it has an education component, not just seeing the hotel, wining and dining, and then leaving,” she continues. “A broader FAM, if you want to call it that. Increasingly, I’m seeing truly educational content like you’d see in an industry event. Depending on the property, there will be a panel on F&B trends or a talk on the Sunshine Act or contract negotiation — stuff you’d find at a conference — given by industry speakers, other hoteliers or additional planners.”

Another factor in the diminished number of invitations meeting planners experience may be increased selectivity on the part of hotels and CVBs, who narrow their invitation list to focus on companies that are more likely to eventually use the destination and need the extra experience of the visit to make that decision.

“Way back then, it used to seem like the invitations were more broad,” says Walstead. “And it was about coming down and having a good time with a little bit of site visits in there as well, but now, when I talk to people I know about other trips they’ve been on, I haven’t heard of them.

“My guess is that they are segmenting different parts of their audience in terms of who should attend,” she continues. “There are certainly times I sell myself or the destination short on opportunity, and it may be something I would have considered if I attended, but when I am considering going on a trip, it’s a combination of my availability and if it’s a destination I would consider, but it also has to have an education component.”

“When I am considering going on a (FAM) trip…it also has to have an education component.” — Lynn Walstead, CMP

As Walstead points out, without going on FAM trips, it can be difficult to know if an unknown location is really the right place for them. Havens keeps up on destinations profiled in trade magazines and does a lot of scouting at trade shows, and also uses personal vacations to check out properties in lieu of FAM trips. While that in theory extricates the potential dilemma of going on a work-related FAM and treating it like vacation, it can also be unfair to planners with little vacation time to have to treat their time off like a work-related FAM just to get on the group experience scouting potential destinations.

Digital Privacy Issues

No matter the confidentiality level of your meeting, Internet access has become so necessary and pervasive both for presentations and meeting setup as well as attendee business responsibilities, that an entirely new area of meeting planning ethics has blossomed around attendees: information security concerns.

In her division of Medtronic, Wal­stead and her group have been very slow to bring technology into their meetings in any form because of these issues. “It’s a touchy issue for us because of the company we are. We only just used our first app,” she says.

“For our meetings, because they are so specific to products and materials, we do not engage social media as part of it,” she continues. “We have not yet incorporated it as part of the meeting, because we would need to create boundaries and firewalls etc. to keep it within the meeting context. But in a way, we have not incorporated anything with our meetings to encourage sharing, because they also don’t get a chance. They come together to meet and then they go home.

“Though I’m sure people are out there doing it on their own, that doesn’t fall under my purview,” Walstead explains. “There are medical forums out there that my manager monitors, and it’s part of his responsibilities to see some of the stuff that goes out there. You can’t really say you can’t do it, so it’s hard in this world of social media and access.”

DeBiccari, on the other hand, experiences both sides of the sharing spectrum, because she plans both confidential and non-confidential meetings. “When we plan confidential, we’re very careful about keeping track of what attendees are doing, because we deal with a lot of intellectual property,” she explains. “In our non-confidential meetings, we’re very free in allowing people to use their phones and social media, but for confidential meetings, we’re very careful in terms of monitoring.

“We actually have confidentiality agreements in place, and on the first issue, there is a mention or reminder, but if it becomes an issue, it escalates quickly to legal,” she continues. “We’ve never had issues actually, because most attendees deal with it in their day-to-day lives so it’s already ingrained in their behavior.”

While meeting planners are under corporate pressure — and face serious internal ethics repercussions — for failing to protect the security of their own proprietary information, the line has become less clear in recent years what counts as intellectual property violation in correspondence with third parties.

Intellectual Property, Sharing or Stealing?

Due to the recession and other changes in the meeting planning industry, more and more new and seasoned planners are going independent or third-party, and in-house planners now often work with a patchwork quilt of external providers to put together their events.

In the course of evaluating ideas and considering which external parties to work with, many proposals come across planners’ desks, from something simple like a destination hotel from a sourcing firm to something more unique, such as an entire gala concept from a DMC.

DeBiccari found herself on the other side of this issue at a previous job as a third-party planner, and it has forever changed how she handles her relationships with outside companies. “I had a client who was interested in doing something in Atlanta, Georgia, at the aquarium, and I had used a DMC there in the past, so I called and got a proposal and passed it on to my client,” she says. “They ended up not using the DMC or our company, but they used the ideas for their party.

“I had actually left the company by the time it happened, but the community is small, and the DMC found out what had happened through their contacts at the aquarium,” she continues. “The DMC was certainly wary of working with that client again, so I told them the name of the client, because I felt badly for them and in case that situation ever arose again, I wanted them to be prepared.

“Now, when I work with outside parties, I try to let the vendor or the DMC guide the ideas at least initially,” she explains. “If there’s anything I’ve seen in the past that I’d like to use, I use the baseline but make changes so I’m not stealing it. I think in this industry, a good idea goes a long way for everyone, and planners are willing to share ideas about what worked with them. They’re careful about IP (intellectual property) on the one hand, but on the other hand, they’re happy to share.”

Ethical Education

For Havens, ethical issues have few gray areas, because his company goes to great lengths to make sure that everyone on staff, regardless of department, knows what the company stance is on issues that affect all employees. “We have a yearly review that we take, that you take when you start as well,” he explains. “It’s a series of questions to make sure you’re aware of company policies, not specifically on meeting planning ethics.”

Offered similarly to how many companies offer sexual harassment training — online quiz style, to the whole company, with mandatory participation and passing — the training and test create a common knowledge base as well as trust level among employees and management. “It’s all about knowing what is considered ethical and what’s not, dealing with company policy, clients and customers,” Havens says.

“I think in general it’s good to keep aware of how the company approaches those kinds of questions and keep people on their toes regarding what they should and shouldn’t be doing,” he continues. Havens finds that having such a policy in place virtually eliminates doubts of any kind for his team on typical meeting planning ethics issues they might encounter.

For companies in certain industries, such as medical companies that interact with physicians in their meetings, this type of education also has become increasingly mandatory and standardized. Though Medtronic has separate meeting planning groups in different divisions and she herself is not involved in customer meetings and programs, Walstead has seen the overall move toward transparency affect the level of ethics awareness throughout the company.

“In our industry, we have to be so transparent with everything,” she says. “Luckily for me I’m not part of the customer world, and we have another group that is dedicated to Sunshine, but it makes it more work for everyone because you have to be an expert in what is a transfer of value. If you do something wrong, it’s going to be out there for everyone to see that this doctor was involved. I think its unfortunate because it takes away from the purpose of having meetings, and it puts a whole different twist on a meeting.”

Increased ethical scrutiny can come from press, government regulation or changes in technology, but through one means or another, it comes. Whether on the level of a professional organization or individual company, ethics codes and education resources must find ways to remain dynamic and contemporary.

“Very recently, there were some changes with the CMM that turned some people off,” says DeBiccari regarding planned changes to the name, qualification standards and testing procedure for the CMM, which caused a swift negative backlash among meeting planners.

“Companies and organizations need to look to planners and get their opinions. I’ve found, in many of my experiences, that we’re really supportive of each other and likely to band together not necessarily against the certification organization but on our opinions on these issues. There are really interesting ethics topics that come to play on a daily basis with planners as an industry, and it’s something we have to be careful of,” she says.

Final Thoughts

In meeting planning divisions across industries, ethics have come front and center as a result of meetings and events hitting general news outlets in a negative light, whether it’s finance companies taking ill-timed big budget trips or physician spending for medical meetings coming under tighter scrutiny due to the Sunshine Act.

On the ground in the lives of most meeting planners, though, ethical issues come in smaller, more muddled guises. Planners, who have becoming increasingly efficient and business-savvy due to other changes radiating from the recession, are relying on their strong intuition to make good choices and typically coming out on top, but increased codification and education in individual corporations can go a long way to keep everyone on the same page and operating along the same ethical lines. C&IT

Outdoor event space at the Chateau Nightclub on the rooftop of Paris Las Vegas overlooks the Fountains of Bellagio. Credit: AlliedPRA, Las Vegas

It’s no secret that Las Vegas hotels offer an extensive selection of meeting rooms and ballrooms to choose from for corporate events. But sometimes, a different type of venue is a better fit for what planners have in mind. Carla Alarcon, director of marketing for Open Systems Inc. headquartered in Shakopee, Minnesota, found exactly what she wanted at the South Point Hotel & Spa.

Alarcon plans an annual users conference for approximately 250 IT and accounting professionals who use her company’s software. Someone had recommended South Point to her, and Open Systems ended up having their event there three different years. “We were really looking for something that was a little off the beaten path so that we didn’t have all of our customers going on The Strip. They’re there to learn.”

In addition to a casino, the 2,163-room South Point includes a spa, a 400-seat showroom, a 16-screen movie complex, a 64-lane bowling alley, the 30,000-sf Spa Costa de Sur, an equestrian center with more than 1,200 stalls and a total of 165,000 sf of meeting and exhibit space.

At first, Alarcon thought about bringing in some Cirque-style performers to entertain her attendees in the hotel’s ballroom. But then she asked her contacts at the hotel, “What about this little showroom? Can I just have that? They worked with me. They’re the easiest people in the world to work with.”

The South Point staff arranged for her to bring in the ’80s cover band the Spazmatics to entertain her group. According to Perfect World Entertainment, the Spazmatics offer “all the awesome sounds, styles and way-cool dance steps from the 1980s decade we’d love to forget. Complete with skinny ties, Brylcreemed hair and horn-rimmed glasses, the Spazmatics recapture all the best of the worst.”

Alarcon explains, “We let people know ahead of time that it was going to be a kind of funky night, and we just had a blast. We had the whole club. It was just so much fun. The second year we had the Boogie Knights, and they do the disco thing where they come out with the big shoes and big wigs and stuff. The fact that we had the showroom to ourselves, we could get wild and crazy. Our employees all brought outfits in. The third year, we did another band. The hotel worked with us on (booking) the bands.”

Open Systems’ showroom events followed a sit-down dinner and offered a nightclub-like atmosphere with an open bar. “After the nightclub, then everybody in their little goofy outfits went upstairs and went bowling,” Alarcon adds. “It was a fun group of people.”

Alarcon explains the benefits of using a unique venue inside the hotel versus one that’s located offsite. “We didn’t have to transport people places, so when they’re ready to go back to their room, they can go back to their room. To me, that’s huge. The conference is only two days, and most people are coming in from the East (Coast), so they’re three hours ahead on time. People can leave for a while if they want to gamble and come back into the showroom. Or they could go to a movie if they wanted to. South Point has a lot of different things to do. I just liked having everything contained.”

In fact, South Point offered more things to do than Alarcon could fit into her program. “We thought it would be fun to do a rodeo one night, but it didn’t work out with our timing,” she says.

Alarcon describes another advantage of hosting an event in-house versus transporting attendees to an offsite venue. She says it helps planners avoid dealing with a common pitfall: “You get somewhere and somebody wants to go back. It never fails.”

She had high praise for the South Point staff. “They’re super fun. They’ve been there a long time. I’ve worked with sales people all over the country. Working with Mo and Rich out there is a dream come true.”

The Right Venue Sets the Scene

“When we start with clients, we really try to find out what the goals and objectives are for the meeting, and then we always want to give them a little bit of Las Vegas,” explains Candie Clark Priest, DMCP, general manager of AlliedPRA Las Vegas. She says that some clients look for traditional venues such as museums, but the AlliedPRA team likes to show them how something like a nightclub can become a fantastic venue. “I’m going to use Chateau (Nightclub & Gardens) as an example, which is on the rooftop of Paris Las Vegas. You step outside and you feel like you’re in this garden and the legs of the Eiffel Tower cut right through the venue space and then you’re overlooking the Bellagio fountains. That’s really the start of a phenomenal event. The venue kind of sets the scene, and we enhance it from there.

“We’ve had great success at the Keep Memory Alive event center downtown,” she continues. “It’s a fabulous facility, and they really include a lot for the meeting planner, so you get a lot of bang for your buck, and the catering is just fantastic.” Priest says that the center’s rental fee includes upgraded chairs, tables, linens and even centerpieces.” What’s really unique about that particular venue is the lighting that’s also included. They can customize the lighting to any corporate color or they can mix it up and change it, and it’s throughout, which makes it really awesome, both inside and out. A lot of times, that’s something additional that you have to pay for, so that’s a definite benefit.” The Keep Memory Alive event center is at the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, which was designed by famed architect Grand Geary.

“The Palms (Casino Resort) suites have always been fun and people love that,” she continues. The Palms’ Luxe Collection features a series of themed suites, including the Celebrity Suite, Director’s Suite, Hot Pink Suite, Crib Suite (described as worthy of hip-hop royalty) and the Hardwood Suite, which has its own basketball court.

“The Las Vegas Motor Speedway has been very popular lately,” Priest notes, “doing events down in the Neon Garage or in the Blackjack suite, and they can offer any of the racing experiences that are out there, as well. What’s great is that you can do things like fireworks that you couldn’t normally do on The Strip. I just did an event out there in April for about 200 people, and they did full food stations and a play-by-play live feed from pit row where all the guests did Richard Petty ride-alongs on the track. They alternated between dinner and the ride-alongs, went inside, had a great dessert and then they had a fireworks show.”

Priest also describes how The Venetian makes creative use of a small theater it has outside of their convention area by using it to host what she calls “over the top” precons. “Their precons are ridiculous in a fantastic way,” she says. “It’s a miniature performance and show, and it really gives a great start to the meeting.”

“(The Venetian’s) precons are ridiculous in a fantastic way. It’s a miniature performance and show, and it really gives a great start to the meeting.” — Candie Clark Priest

Partying Like a Rock Star

Susan Nicoletti, vice president, meeting operations, for NHS Global Events, a Chicago area meeting and event consulting and hotel site selection firm, found a unique hotel location for a program she planned for a retail company. The venue they chose was the Penthouse Suite at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.

“Our theme for this incentive trip of 25 couples was Las Vegas VIP,” she explains. “Each element of the trip experience was designed around making the winners of the annual trip feel special and important to their organization. We believe that creating experiences (like this) is so incredibly rewarding for our groups because we fully immerse them in a fantasy-inspired experience, one that they can’t create on their own, and especially not in a ballroom.”

Nicoletti explains how the program worked. “On the day of the event, we delivered to each attendee’s room upscale, jeweled lanyards with backstage VIP all-access passes attached. Their instructions only directed them to wear the pass, be at the VIP limo pickup area in their club attire at 7 p.m. and to be ready to party like a rock star.” The group was staying at The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas.

“Upon arrival to the Hard Rock Hotel,” she continues, “they entered the hotel from a private, secured access point where bodyguards dressed in black suits met them and escorted them to the red carpet where they were photographed in front of a custom step-and-repeat-banner branded with the event name. Private elevators whisked them to the Penthouse Suite where the suite’s entry hall was lined with mounted replica platinum albums labeled with their names and the award they won.”

That was just the beginning of the attendees’ rock star experience. Nicoletti explains, “The suite was decked out with casino tables, billiards, deejay and electric guitar duo, lighting effects, large-scale, rock-band canvas art, celebrity psychic, makeup artist, hairstylist offering exotic hair extensions and hair color spray, and henna tattoo artists using replicas of famous rock star tattoo designs.” They also had a caricaturist capture the couples’ “rock star attitude” while sporting their choice of a black leather biker jacket or rhinestone-encrusted denim jacket.

The guests even learned how to dine like a rock star. “The food was served green-room style and included some unusual items labeled with the names of celebrity rockers who are famous for quirky snack and food requests when touring. Some of the items were bowls of all yellow M&Ms, seedless watermelon balls, fresh pitted cherries on toothpicks, PB&J sandwiches with crusts removed and cut into tiny circular shapes, and popcorn freshly popped in truffle oil and sprinkled with pink salt,” Nicoletti explains. “The bar was accented with a martini ice luge serving up a custom potion called ‘Famous.’ ”

The attendees also signed an electric guitar, which was presented to the president of the company to thank him for the incentive trip. At the end of the night, the guests returned to their hotel room to find their rock-style photo, imprinted to look like the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, with the magazine’s reviewer singing praises about the trip-winners and thanking them for a great year.

NHS Global Events added one more special touch to ensure an encore performance. “To encourage the recipients to be a top performer next year, inside a metallic envelope that accompanied the photo were two custom-designed concert tickets with the recipients’ names as the rock band detailing the location and date of next year’s trip destination. All of this was accompanied by each recipient’s platinum album replica displayed earlier at the suite, and a sincere note from the president of the company.”

Venue News

Scheduled to open in February 2015 is the Venue Las Vegas, which will feature 36,000 sf of versatile special event and meeting space with two full stories and a rooftop patio, including six indoor and outdoor event spaces for parties that can accommodate from 30 to up to 2,000 guests.

The Mob Museum, the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, recently added two new displays of rare gambling artifacts as part of a collaboration with the Museum of Gaming History. The first display features rare, early- to mid-20th century casino chips, photographs and other memorabilia from the 1946 opening of Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo Hotel. The second display presents artifacts from legendary illegal gambling halls around the U.S. Located in downtown Las Vegas, The Mob Museum offers a variety of unique venues for private events.

A new venue recently opened at Caesars Entertainment’s The Linq. Titled F.A.M.E., which stands for Food Art Music Entertainment, the venue specializes in the street foods of Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Korea, China and Vietnam along with live entertainment that includes lion and dragon dances, Taiko drum performances and Gangnam-style music.

One of the most unique venues in Las Vegas, the Neon Museum, pays tribute to the city’s legendary neon signs by putting them on display in a “neon boneyard.” The venue recently opened its Neon Boneyard North Gallery at its downtown Las Vegas campus. The new facility contains approximately 60 rescued signs from Palms Casino Resort, New York-New York, Lady Luck and O’Shea’s, among others. The signs provide a dazzling backdrop for special events.

Las Vegas Arena Company, which is owned by AEG and MGM Resorts International, recently broke ground on a $375 million indoor arena. Located between the New York-New York and Monte Carlo resorts, the new 20,000-sf arena will host sporting events, major headline entertainment, awards shows and special events. The arena will feature 50 luxury suites, more than two dozen private loge boxes and other hospitality venues, and is expected to open in the spring of 2016.

The VooDoo Zip Line at Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino is now open. Riders take off from the patio of VooDoo Steakhouse on the 50th floor of the hotel’s Masquerade Tower and are propelled at speeds up to 33 mph to the adjoining 20-story Ipanema Tower, covering one-third of a mile in 70 seconds. The VooDoo Steakhouse’s rooftop patio event space offers great views of the city.

Pure Nightclub at Caesars Palace has been acquired by Hakkasan Group and is currently closed to undergo a complete remodel. The new nightspot is scheduled to open in early 2015.

Hotel Updates

Stay Well Meetings, the industry’s first-ever wellness meetings experience, was officially unveiled at MGM Grand Hotel & Casino in August. Created by Delos, the pioneer of Wellness Real Estate, the program offers healthful environments for high-performance meetings with meeting rooms and spaces designed to optimize the health and well-being of attendees while complementing the existing Stay Well room and suite experience in the hotel’s main tower. The Stay Well Meeting rooms incorporate elements such as ergonomic seating, air purification, circadian lighting, virtual window lights, aromatherapy, healthful menu items, and much more. The Stay Well rooms feature vitamin C-infused shower water, advanced room lighting tailored to sleep/wake cycles, air purification systems, EMF protection and more.

Tropicana Las Vegas – a DoubleTree by Hilton announced a March 1, 2015, completion date for the expansion of the Tropicana Pavilion. The expansion, which also includes enhancements to the existing pavilion area, will increase the resort’s total meeting and convention facilities to 100,000 sf.

The new 26,000-sf Tropicana Pavilion area will offer up to 11 separate breakout rooms, some with up to 16-foot ceilings, and will feature new private restrooms as well as new escalators. The current Tropicana Pavilion also will be enhanced, including a decorative acoustic treatment for the walls. Once the addition is complete, the Tropicana Pavilion will provide 55,000 sf of meeting space.

Caesars Entertainment announced in July that The Linq Hotel & Casino will welcome its first guests beginning on October 30, 2014. The Linq Hotel & Casino, combined with The Linq retail, dining and entertainment promenade and the world’s largest observation wheel, the High Roller, is located at the heart of Center Strip. The hotel, which is a complete re-imagination of the Quad Resort & Casino, will feature 2,256 brand new rooms and suites, a completely renovated welcome experience built around a signature lobby bar, all-new retail and spa amenities, and a new pool deck.

Caesars Entertainment also has recently opened its first standalone boutique hotel on The Strip. The Cromwell includes 188 rooms, including 19 suites, and is home to Drai’s Beach Club Night Club and Giada, the first restaurant to be opened by celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis.

Delano Las Vegas opened this month in the Mandalay Bay complex, bringing the chic style of its iconic sister property in South Beach to the Las Vegas Strip. Located in the 43-story tower that was formerly home to THEhotel, the new hotel will feature 1,100 suites, the Bathouse Spa and Delia’s Kitchen, a restaurant specializing in sustainable foods.

The three-level Mandalay Bay Convention Center recently unveiled plans to expand the facility to more than 2 million sf from its current 1.7 million sf of event space. Plans call for the addition of more than 350,000 sf of exhibit space, as well as underground parking and additional carpeted ballroom space. Construction on the $66 million project is scheduled to begin this fall, and the new exhibit space is expected to be available in late summer 2015.

Station Casinos is planning to invest $20 million over the next year to create four new restaurant concepts at its Green Valley Ranch Resort in Henderson. The new dining outlets at the 490-room resort will include Mercadito Mexican restaurant, the Tippling Hall cocktail lounge, Pizza Rock pizzeria and Tony’s Slice House, a traditional Italian venue.

Station Casinos’ crown jewel, the Red Rock Casino, Resort & Spa 10 miles west of The Las Vegas Strip in Summerlin, is undergoing a major renovation, which will feature the addition of a Restaurant Row with four new dining outlets.

Among the MGM Resorts properties that are featuring new restaurants is The Mirage’s 250-seat Tom Colicchio’s Heritage Steak, which opened a year ago. And Masaharu Morimoto, renowned Japanese chef and star of Food Network’s “Iron Chef America,” will debut Morimoto Las Vegas at The Mirage in 2015. Both restaurants offer private group dining options. The Mirage boasts other distinctive event venues outside the ballroom, including Siegfried & Roy’s Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat, the Bare Pool Lounge and 1 Oak nightclub.

The Monte Carlo Resort and Casino recently completed a multimillion-dollar renovation of its outdoor area to create an open-air plaza and gathering area that offers six new dining concepts and live entertainment.

After a $415 million renovation of the legendary Sahara Hotel, SLS Las Vegas resort and casino debuted in August featuring 1,600 rooms in three towers, three nightclub concepts, including one with a rooftop pool, and 80,000 sf of flexible meeting space.

The salons at both Wynn and Encore have been overhauled under the new artiste-in-residence Claude Baruk, managing director for the salons. The Claude Baruk Salon at Wynn opens this month, while the Claude Baruk Salon at Encore reopened in March 2014. Claude Baruk offers techniques not available anywhere else in the world, the “Baruk 5-step system.”

Westgate Resorts announced the acquisition of the LVH – Las Vegas Hotel & Casino as the newest addition to its portfolio of 28 resorts. The property was formerly known as the Las Vegas Hilton and will be renamed Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino. The LVH is a landmark property that, at one time, was the largest hotel in the world and was home to such legendary greats as Elvis Presley and Liberace. The hotel is located just one block off the Las Vegas Strip, is adjacent to the Las Vegas Convention Center, and is one of seven stations on the Las Vegas Monorail.

Planners who need a more serene, meeting-focused environment can look to The Westin Lake Las Vegas Re­sort and Spa in Henderson. Although it’s only 30 minutes from The Strip, the Moroccan-inspired resort is a world away with its tranquil setting featuring lake and mountain views, a new three-acre white-sand beach cove and any number of water activities. The Westin takes advantage of its stunning environs by offering 50,000 sf of outdoor space from gardens and poolside decks to a terrace overlooking the lake. There is another 45,000 sf of indoor space including a 20,000-sf ballroom and naturally sunlit meeting rooms and boardrooms. The resort underwent a major renovation before re-opening under the Westin flag in 2012, and the Reflection Bay Golf Course will reopen November 1 following a major renovation.

Much More Than Entertainment

While Las Vegas hosts more than 22,000 meetings, events, conventions and trade shows each year, the city is always ready for more. So the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) recently unveiled two new advertising campaigns designed to reinforce the destination’s image as a premier venue for hosting successful, memorable and cost-effective meetings and events. The first campaign “We’re Here to Do More Than Entertain You” targets C-suite executives who are the final decision-makers on selecting a venue for their meetings. The ads will feature iconic Las Vegas entertainers such as illusionist David Copperfield, a Cirque du Soleil performer and a Las Vegas showgirl in office settings. The second campaign “Neon Signs” takes a playful poke at dry-sounding meetings by showcasing their names in neon lights, and by taking items commonly used at meetings and covering them with jewels.

The LVCVA reports that convention and trade show delegates represent approximately 12.7 percent of all visitors to the Southern Nevada region, or approximately 5.1 million business travelers a year — critical to the health of the Las Vegas economy.

There’s Always Something New

“We’re constantly dealing with clients who have been here before or they’re very well-traveled so they need to be wowed,” AlliedPRA’s Priest notes. “What’s great and not great about Las Vegas is about every six months it reinvents itself with more great new venues. Sometimes that gets challenging for us as DMCs to stay on top of the next great thing, but as far as a meeting planner goes, they can come back here every year and there’s something new that they haven’t seen and tried.” C&IT

The newly refurbished Silversea Discoverer is designed for exploration.

In the wake of the economic downturn, planners are still having to do more with less or uncover “new,” exciting destinations without traveling far from home. Many find that cruises fit the bill and then some. While cruises offer a clear savings over land-based itineraries due to their all-inclusiveness, which includes not only the rooms and F&B of an all-inclusive resort but entertainment, labor and activities as well, they also showcase the latest food and entertainment trends.

Earlier this year, Cruise Lines Interna­tional Association (CLIA) named growth of millennial guests one of the top trends in cruising, which is in line with one of the main shifts the meeting industry has encountered in recent years. To cater to this change, Norwegian Cruise Lines has added “Next enhancements” to its ships, balancing traditional entrées with trendy dishes such as mojito shrimp ceviche. On the Norwegian Getaway, dinner excitement goes up another notch with the world-class, magic-filled Illusionarium, while guests can enjoy Broadway productions “Burn the Floor” and “Legally Blond,” performances by Grammy award-winners and delectable treats from Cake Boss Buddy Valastro.

Cruise lines also are changing their experience in port to expand their entertainment options. Carnival Cruises is creating a first-of-its-kind experience that allows guests to enjoy concerts from such performers as Chicago, Lady Antebellum and Jewel in port for 90 minutes in the main lounge before the ship debarks. VIP tickets include an artist meet-and-greet and photo.

Silversea Cruises, already known for its immersive and inventive excursion options, is adding new off-the-beaten-path tours that allow guests to arrive on one ship, take a multi-day excursion, and depart on another. New options for 2015 will include a two-day bush-walking safari in Africa and one-night overnight in overwater bungalows in French Polynesia.

Opportunity Is Knocking

“The trend of corporate meeting groups cruising together is gaining more and more interest,” explains Christine Duffy, president and CEO of CLIA. “Hosting a meeting or corporate gathering on a cruise ship offers an experience for attendees that is intriguing, cost effective and highly efficient. Cruising delivers the greatest value proposition as well as the highest guest satisfaction rating.

“For groups of all kinds, cruising offers many advantages including a cost-effective way of producing a meeting that doesn’t look and feel like every other meeting, and exceptional value,” she says. “The all-inclusiveness of the typical cruise ship product is hard to match in a land-based venue. In addition to accommodations, meals and entertainment, cruise ships offer their conference centers at no extra charge. Most lines also provide standard audio-video equipment on a complimentary basis. Cruising provides the opportunity for great networking and teambuilding opportunities, and you have a captive audience.”

While some companies and their meeting planners are still waiting to dip their toes in the cruise meeting pool, others have been happily reaping the benefits for decades. “I love cruises because we want to do a meeting but also something fun,” says Gayle Warren, CMP, global events manager for Lehi, Utah-based Natures Sunshine Products. “I’ve probably done a cruise every year if not every other year. They’re our go-to for meetings. Everybody loves to cruise. If it’s an incentive, we think, ‘What will they want to do? Let’s send them on a cruise.’

“We had a very good experience this last cruise we did in April. We took 300 or 310 people on Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas, and the ship was awesome,” she says. The largest cruise ship in the world when it was built, the Allure of the Seas accommodates 5,400 guests at double occupancy and departs from Fort Lauderdale for predominantly seven-night Caribbean itineraries, though it will turn to Europe in 2015. It has been named the best cruise ship by Travel Weekly for its signature experiences, such as the Tony Award-winning musical “Chicago” and the first Starbucks at sea. “We brought independent distributors that sell our product and earned the trip through sales and recruiting. We chose the top 200 accounts, and the top 20 got to be in the nice cabins and suites.

“I do know that our return on investment was very high,” Warren explains. “I’ve been doing these events for 18 years, and I remember saying to my co-worker, ‘Did we get complaints at all?’ and she said, ‘No, I didn’t. Did you?’ It was a great experience for us as well as attendees! We did a group photo in the AquaTheater, and people were smiling big time. There were lots of happy faces. It was clear they’d had a good experience.”

Jo Kling, president of Miami, Florida-based cruise event and ship charter specialists Landry & Kling Inc., has seen a significant shift in the last year alone in corporate bookings as more planners experience the mindset shift Warren describes. “We’re seeing more receptivity to the cruise concept,” Kling says. “Corporate incentive buyers who have been hearing for years about the exceptional experiences created during a meeting or incentive at sea — they’re finally getting it! When you pull away from shore, something shifts. Being physically separated from the shore and your normal way of life, opens you to new possibilities.

“The continuing corporate pressure on controlling meeting and travel budgets and the preference of today’s incentive qualifiers to have more memorable travel experiences rather than having more electronics, jewelry and things lead quite naturally to high-end ships and river boats where the staff to passenger ratio allows for more individualized service, more physical space, fewer lines and more refinement,” she continues.

“There is more focus on the luxury lines and river cruises for corporate programs because their great delivery of value. Special price promotions that corporate buyers become aware of demonstrate the great disparity in group pricing, which does not benefit from retail price promotions, so the value of the luxury brands is greater, with more truly ‘included’ elements.”

More Bang for Your Buck

The all-inclusive nature of cruises is one of the main draws for planners. “It’s the biggest selling point, because they can budget for travel lodging, F&B and entertainment all in one,” says Vicki McGowen, president of Reno, Nevada-based McGowen Marketing, who is currently planning a cruise with Celebrity Cruises for a group of airline pilots. “It makes it much more attractive for potential attendees because they know exactly what it’s going to cost, but it’s a more unique experience because you can visit three different ports of call.

“This trip is exclusively to Bermuda because it’s an attractive destination and a fun place to spend three days at the same port because you can do and see so much and come back to ship and have a wonderful dinner and show without the cost of Bermuda,” she explains. On its Bermuda routes, Celebrity operates the Celebrity Summit, a Millennium class ship that holds up to 2,158 people. Incorporating Solstice class features, including additional lounges, world-class deejays, top Las Vegas entertainment, Broadway-style cabaret and more, Celebrity Summit caters to groups looking for high-value entertainment.

“This is really the way to see Bermuda. Hotels there are $350 a night minimum. One time an attendee had to go to the airport there, and the airport hotel was $800 a night. With a cruise, your food and your lodging and entertainment are right there yet you can go out and spend the day on the golf course or at the beach or doing some shopping.”

For a four-night incentive trip for a company in the home furnishings industry, Julia Vetsikas, CMP, senior account manager for Philadelphia-based United Incentives Inc., planned a cruise to Nassau and Key West with one full day at sea for 1,000 guests. While planning an incentive of that size would typically be a big-ticket item for the company, Vetsikas turned to a sea itinerary rather than land one to offer attendees more in terms of sights and entertainment while saving the company on event expenses.

“The trend in incentives for both the trip winners and the hosts is to minimize the winners’ out-of-pocket expenses,” she explains. “Cruises offer an economical way to host a group in a contained environment. The out-of-pocket expenses for the winner are low, since meals and entertainment are included. They get to visit multiple destinations without having to worry about transportation between the ports. Guests appreciated the quality of the ship and food, and that their out-of-pocket expense was relatively low.

“The trend in incentives for both the trip winners and the hosts is to minimize the winners’ out-of-pocket expenses. Cruises offer an economical way to host a group in a contained environment.” — Julia Vetsikas

“For the company, the costs are also controlled, and they have lots of opportunity to host their guests aboard the ship,” she says. “Since our group was so large, we had to be creative and Celebrity did a great job of accommodating us. My client appreciated the numerous hosting opportunities — nightly dinners, private cocktail receptions or excursions in port — because this all equaled to a lot of face time with their best clients.

“For our private events, Celebrity offered a variety of entertainment options to choose from,” Vetsikas explains. “We held a sales meeting for 800 people in the Celebrity Theater. We held two back-to-back welcome receptions in the Solarium. A highlight was a private after-dinner dessert reception in the Reflections Lounge. Our grand finale was a private cocktail reception for the entire group on the pool deck. We hosted all 1,000 guests, and Celebrity did a great job of transforming the space to make it feel special.”

Non-stop Networking

As much as incentives are about rewarding employees and corporate events are about effectively using the time you have employees together to produce productive results, one of the key aspects of face-to-face meetings is spontaneous networking interactions. Meeting planners are increasingly finding this networking element to be one of the biggest benefits of cruising.

“I think in the meetings industry in general, it has been a trend to focus on collaboration,” says Tracy Judge, CMP, director of business development, meetings and incentives at La Jolla, California-based Cadence Travel Management. “I’m seeing it across the board whether land or sea, and it’s a great opportunity for cruises because of their opportunities for collaboration.

“In incentives you’re trying to keep people together,” she says. “You’re bringing in the top salespeople from your organization, and you want them to spend time together, and collaborate and learn best practices so they go back into the field and do even better than they have. In Hawaii at a huge resort, people are all out and about. Or when you’re in Las Vegas, people just vanish,” says Judge.

“On a cruise, there’s meeting space and you can do activities together, but you’re not forced to be with people. They have the opportunity to be on their own or with their guests, but it’s much easier to bump into one another. It’s about the balance of collaboration and personalization.” That’s why, Judge says, the excursions offered on the cruise are important as well.

Judge’s team works with companies to determine the right balance between time at sea for focusing on business or networking and time in port for attendees to make individual plans and have fun. “Usually it depends on the length of the program. For a four-day, three-night cruise in the Caribbean, one day at sea is plenty,” she says. “If you’re on a seven-day cruise, you’ll have two, but you don’t want to trap them on the boat because you want them to have the itineraries they want, so they can come back from an excursion and do a dinner.”

Judge’s team recently planned a three-night Caribbean cruise for 100 employees of a start-up that typically gravitates toward all-inclusive resorts. “It’s hard to get the schedule right when you have a salesforce all around the country and you’re taking the whole team, but the Caribbean ones are really reasonable, because the ships are large, and there are a lot of options in terms of patterns, whether Thursday to Tuesday or Friday to Wednesday, so it’s easy to plan. It happens to us every once in a while that there’s already a big group in there, but I don’t see that happen actually that often.”

During land-based meetings and incentives, it’s not unusual to have several other groups at the same hotel, let alone sharing your event space. “Many times you get to a hotel and find out that someone next door in the banquet room is having a dinner dance at the same time and their music is louder than yours,” says McGowen. “On a cruise, we’re usually the largest group, we pretty much own the space, and we don’t get interference from other groups. We run into each other on the ship and see each other everywhere. In a city you get up and everyone disperses all over Boston or Chicago. Here they enjoy the close proximity, have lunch with this person or go to a show with that one.”

For her cruise with Royal Caribbean, Warren found that “the whole cruise was one big networking opportunity for attendees. It was one of the most positive comments I received from all the attendees. There was I think one other smaller group, but we didn’t even notice them. We loved the conference center in the ship. The opportunity for meetings during the cruise was there all the time, and we had a lot of pop-up meetings where we could just go in.” Even without booking out a ship, being the only large event going on in a space affords your group a level of privacy and interactivity that can’t be replicated on land.

Easy for Attendees and for Planners

In comparison with traditional land-based meetings and incentives, meetings at sea have many powerful differentiating factors, but one that is often overlooked is the savings in terms of time and energy these meetings create for planners. “Meetings at sea provide exceptional ease in planning. Depending on the line, group sales departments, dedicated group planners and shipboard meeting and incentive staff make planning and implementing a meeting or group program at sea an extremely easy, one-stop process,” explains Duffy.

While a great planner can put on a fun and fascinating meeting or incentive that delights attendees (almost) anywhere, one of the biggest selling points of a meeting at sea is that someone else has already collected the options for you and will often help plan them.

“It’s totally different when I have an event on the cruise ship,” says McGowen. “You have general sessions in the theater, your social space in the lounge and you have lovely dining rooms and all the dining is together. The entertainment is spectacular and built into the budget, and they have entertainment every night. I don’t have to go out and hire entertainment. Staterooms are assigned in advance. Attendees know where they’ll be on the ship, what tours they’re going to go on and who they’re going to dine with.”

Warren took advantage of the opportunity to book priority seating for all the shows, picking three that she knew her group would enjoy and booking VIP seats ahead. “They thought they were treated royally. I talked to a few people to see what they’d like to do, but if you know your group, you’ll know what they like. I knew they’d enjoy the three headliners, so I picked show times according to the dinner seatings.

“For daytime activities, we pretty much just figured the cruise line does it so well, if it’s not broken, you know,” says Warren. “Once you’re on the ship, you can bring minimal staff, because attendees are taken care of, all their meals are there, and what more could they ask for in terms of entertainment.”

McGowen agrees. “My last few cruises have been on Celebrity, and they’re right there with me the whole time,” she says. “They’re bringing me the easel for my welcome banner before I even ask. I don’t know when they take a break, but I think the customer service training on a ship has a higher standard, maybe because it’s a smaller world than the hotel industry.”

Now’s the Time

In 2012, CLIA created a meetings, events and incentives task force, which is made up of 15 cruise line members who promote meetings at sea and focus on developing a strong relationship with the meeting and incentive industry. Cruises are adding more, well-equipped purpose-built meeting space to both new and existing ships, and reaching out to meeting planners with special packages.

While many planners find their site selection process eating up an increasing portion of their time as hotels return to a seller’s market, cruise lines are in the midst of an ongoing campaign to increase their meeting and incentive business, which puts planners in a very favorable negotiating position. But though meetings at sea offer an especially cost-effective choice for planners now, as the word spreads, that may change down the line.

Though ships are adding meeting facilities, most can still only accommodate one large or a few small groups per sailing. So as the trend to take meetings at sea picks up steam, it might be time to hop onboard. C&IT

Roughly two-thirds of adults are not happy in their current job, and yet they don’t do anything about it. After a successful 40-year career in the hospitality industry, most recently as the exhibition director of IBTM America, Philadelphia-based meetings industry veteran Mike Lyons shares his story of how he walked away from a secure job to pursue his passion to be a professional speaker and actor. 

From the age of 10, all I ever wanted to be was an actor. Instinctively, as the years went by I knew that was my calling and I pointed myself in that direction by honing my craft in numerous stage plays and working at the now defunct Valley Forge Music Fair theater. But that goal was eventually sidetracked by the realities of life and my own personal choices: I chose to get married young, and I chose to go into the business world instead of pursuing my acting career. Why? Because I fell prey to fear and my own insecurities, and dwelled on the uncertainty and inherent risks that an acting career brings, instead of focusing on being successful. At the time I was too young and ignorant to realize that risk is worth taking if you believe in yourself (ah, youth…wasted on the young, as they say). And so I abandoned that path and attended to the needs of my growing family, plugging along in my chosen business career as a travel/meetings industry executive, even though it left a big part of me unfulfilled.

Life Takes Unexpected Turns

But as we all know, life has a way of taking unexpected turns that change our destiny. Twenty five years ago — when I realized that five years from then all three of my children would be in college at the same time and I had nothing saved — I came up with a solution: become an actor in TV commercials on the side while keeping my business “day job”. I knew that commercials paid handsome residuals (each time a commercial airs, the actor earns royalties) and if I could make just a few, the college fund would grow quickly. The plan sounded easy at the time. I mean, how hard could it be? I was working in New York City then and knew that many commercials were cast and shot there, so all I had to do was find an agent and start going on auditions. I was ridiculously naïve, of course. I quickly learned what so many thousands of other aspiring actors find out: it is a highly competitive business with tons of talented professionals vying for a small number of roles. In fact, many of those seasoned pros go years without landing a commercial.

After a year of getting doors closed in my face and hundreds of “no thank you” responses to my letters and phone calls and just before I was about to give up — a talent agent finally took a chance on me and started sending me on auditions. Within two months I landed a national TV commercial for Honey Bunches of Oats cereal. From there I joined the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and began to book commercials, television roles and other jobs on a regular basis including “All My Children” and an Advil commercial that ran on national television for four years. All told, the income derived from my acting jobs did indeed pay for all three of my kids’ college education expenses, with a few dollars to spare.

The plan worked! I was able to keep my day job, make substantial extra money through my sideline career as an actor, and most important, carve out a little happiness doing acting projects that satisfied my cravings for the career I had consciously, though regrettably, left behind at age 21.

Taking the Plunge

As the years went by, I maintained this dual career scenario, and worked sporadically on movies, TV shows and commercials including “The Sixth Sense” and “Veep” on HBO, among others. All the while I was tempted to jump full-time into acting — but my responsibilities (and fear) kept me from taking the leap. Getting a paycheck every two weeks does create a sense of security and complacency, and the thought of going weeks or months without an acting job, quite frankly, scared me to death. But finally, at age 63, the tug of that calling became so strong that I took the plunge into the deep end of the pool: I quit my job with no guarantees other than a belief in myself and a confidence that I would succeed — regardless of the obstacles — and live out the rest of my days doing what I want to do with my life: act, write and be a professional speaker. Crazy? Maybe, but I know I won’t go to my grave wondering “what if.”

Just Do It!

Feeling free and empowered, I now encourage people to pursue their daydreams, whatever they may be — by following my own career advice. As a motivational speaker, I spread the Nike gospel of “Just Do It!” and attempt to inspire unhappy individuals to take the first step towards true fulfillment. It took me a long time to realize it, but I am now thoroughly convinced that you can achieve what you set your mind to. It has been proven thousands, if not millions, of times throughout history. People overcome odds. They climb mountains. They break sports records. They do what is seemingly impossible. They start a business, fail, and start others until they find the right formula (Walt Disney is a classic example). We have been told over and over that if we can visualize where we want to be and follow the path to get there, success can be ours. It is so true. That’s not to say it’s easy, or there won’t be obstacles or setbacks (in fact, you can count on them), but you only get one life — so go for it!

I spread the Nike gospel of “Just Do It!” and attempt to inspire unhappy individuals to take the first step towards true fulfillment.

If you are not happy doing what you are doing, I challenge you to look inward and reflect on your life/career goals and do an honest assessment. There is no question that it’s a little scary and clearly there is risk involved. But once you conquer that little internal “No” voice that holds us back from accomplishing the things we hope to achieve, the feeling is indescribable.

Though I left my position with Reed Travel Exhibitions with very mixed emotions, I am not looking back and questioning my choice. I am excited about the future and the opportunity to shape my legacy in keeping with my desire to make a difference in other people’s lives. By transferring my experience and knowledge on to younger generations as a speaker, I am exercising the skill sets and gifts I have been given and hopefully that will make a small imprint along the way.

Michael Lyons may be contacted by email at mlyons@lyonspride.us or by phone at 267-279-3376. For more information including his professional profile, biography, programs and videos, click here.